Gallery • 6 Photos

Forrest Matter

Junior Ethan Scribano poses in his costume of his interpretation of the cytoplasm

If you saw a student walking through the halls dressed as a bottle of glue this Halloween, it wasn’t random. For the first time, biology teacher Mac Bair had one of his two AP biology classes dress up as organelles.

“It was something we were kind of joking around about, and we said ‘Let’s do this, it sounds like it will be fun’, so you know, we just decided it was something we were gonna try…[Organelles was included in] the chapter we were in when we decided to do it, so we tried to keep it within the theme of Halloween and also be educational to do the organelles, so that was kind of the idea,” Bair said.

There was somewhat of a choice in which organelle one might portray.

“I drew numbers out of a hat and whatever number you got, it was like an organelle draft. If you were the first one you got to pick whatever organelle you wanted to be, and then it kind of whittled itself down from there.”

What made the best costumes for Bair was not only the creativity put into them, but the explanations behind them.

“The best ones were the ones where they didn’t just dress up, they also had a good explanation for theirs…I liked the ones where the people actually really thought about the scientific part of it not just the costume.”

Junior Ethan Scribano was one of those people who explained why he was wearing what he was wearing.

“I was dressed as a bottle of glue. For class…I was the cytoplasm,” Scribano said. “The cytoplasm is kind of like the glue of the cell holding everything together, so that’s what I dressed as.”

Scribano made his costume from materials he found at Michael’s and in his own home.

“I used two foam boards and cut out the letters and pictures and glued them. Then I connected them using some string,” Scribano said. “For my hat, I painted a foam cone orange and hot glued it to a foam disc and then connected it to a headband.”

Scribano was one who enjoyed this activity and hopes Bair will continue it in the future.

“It was nice to be creative and to see what others had thought of for their organelles,” Scribano said.

The class took a vote on the top three costumes and Scribano came in second to junior Marley Adamek, who was dressed as a cell wall.

“I liked Marley’s [most of all]. Neither of us could sit down so it was pretty funny…She had a box that she painted green and cut holes in it,” Scribano said.

The top three costumes were awarded extra credit points.

After the voting, the biology students had some downtime.

“We had some food and stuff and ate, and then we watched the magic school bus on photosynthesis and then I stopped it periodically with the light independent reaction and then we watched the Bill Nye video on photosynthesis and plants as well. I wanted to do a little bit of learning, but it’s more relaxation day for them. They need that every once in awhile,” Bair said. “It was better than taking notes for an hour and a half straight, anything’s better than that…The AP kids work really, really hard so it’s nice to have a little break in-between, have some downtime, just to hang out and have some fun.”

Though this activity was done in the A day AP biology class, something different will take place in the B day class.

“I have AP in an A day class and a B day class, and in the B day class we were going to do pumpkin carving, but then the girl who was growing the pumpkins, the pumpkins didn’t work out right, so we’re going to have everyone bring in food and have a little Thanksgiving feast that day,” Bair said. “[The two classes] didn’t do the exact same thing, I just like to give them a day where they can relax a little for a day or two.”

Bair might make the costumes a tradition, but it is all based on his classes next year.

“Maybe we’ll try [dressing up] again next year. I’ll see what the classes want to do; I gauge it more towards their interests and what they’re going to get into and what they want to do instead of me just saying, ‘Hey let’s do this’.”