Recently, Federal Way middle school students were able to reflect personally on the meaning of live-saving biomedical research in an essay contest put forth by the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research.

Federal Way was well-represented among the winners by three schools: Totem Middle School, Nautilus K-8, and Woodmont K-8; and was one of two public schools districts that had honorable mentions and awards from the contest. The remainder of the winners were drawn from private schools throughout the Puget Sound region.

Breck Meagher, a sixth grader at Totem Middle School, received an honorable mention for her essay on heart valve replacement. “Breck is a leader in our school. She’s come in and shone in everything she does,” said Adrienne McKay, Breck’s science teacher.

Andrew Garzon, a seventh grade student from Nautilus K-8 also received an honorable mention for his essay on treatments for stroke.

“A lot of his processing is done through writing. His writing is professional quality,” said Candace Ray, Andrew’s language arts teacher. “We get that quality of writing out of him every day.”

Nicholas Chanthalangsy, an eighth grade student at Woodmont K-8, placed second in the English Language Learning category for his essay on Bipolar Disorder.

Nicholas’ teacher, Alan Harvey, described him as “well-liked and academic,” and that in addition to being committed to his studies, he also plays football for Sacajawea Middle School.

These accomplished students were able to participate in this intensive project because of the shared effort of their teachers. As part of continued work on the part of educators to prepare students for the next generation of science standards, middle schoolers were given the opportunity to craft a research paper and personal reflection in a joint assignment between science and language arts classes. Students conducted research on their topic of interest, and returned to their language arts classes to polish their writing.

Collaboration between teachers is nothing new, and this most recent project is an extension of study on medicine in Dan Haegle’s and Candace Ray’s classes at Nautilus K-8. Ray and Haegele mapped what the students needed to learn, and put together lesson plans based on the contest. It complimented a unit on the Ebola pandemic, which their students worked on earlier in the year.

“After the UW Medicine project on pandemics we did with the kids, their focus was in the medical field,” said Heagele. “Everything we did gave the students the focus for the whole year. When we saw this opportunity, it was just a natural fit.”

Ray emphasized the standard of being able to find the main idea of the text, understand it, and being able to cite the source. Students learned and applied Modern Language Association style citation for their paper. Citations in Modern Language Association are commonly used in high school and college, and are a significant portion of the Smarter Balanced assessment. At the end of the assignment, students then entered their essays in the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research contest.

Winners received a cash prize, a certificate, and will be invited to a celebration hosted by the Northwest Biomedical Research Institute and the Infectious Disease Research Institute on June 2. The event included recognition of the essay contest winners, presentations on careers and motivations of biomedical research, and a hands-on project wherein students can run an experiment with the assistance of working researchers.

A complete list of winners and runners up can be found at www.nwabr.org/node/507