Rules of Grammer

It's a tiny, white fleck, barely visible to the naked eye. Look through the glass tube, and the fleck explodes into a nightmarishly large bulb with eight legs and tiny hairs sprouting from its back. And hey, it's moving!

Welcome to Russell Grammer's world of science, where George Washington Carver rules and even the ugliest mite goes from gross to fascinating under a microscope.

"Anything is interesting when you look at it closely," Grammer tells his students.

Glass tanks of various sizes line one wall of his classroom at Jefferson Elementary. The largest is home to angel fish, guppies and a disgruntled-looking algae eater. Another contains snakes. A third stands empty for now, but has housed a hairless guinea pig, flying squirrels and hissing cockroaches in the past.

Get 'em interested in the world around them. That's Grammer's daily mission.

There's a new addition to the class sitting on a table in the back of the room. Five plastic bins, stacked on top of one another, are one reason Grammer rarely leaves school before 5 p.m. these days.

The top bin is labeled "worm factory." Inside are 6,000 wriggling earthworms from California.

The worm factory is just one part of a new, long-term science project Grammer started at Jefferson this year. Through a grant and a teaching award he received, the school recently acquired a greenhouse and compost system.

Both will be helped along by the worm "castings" -- better known as "poo-poo" among Grammer's giggling students.

The fourth-graders spend much of their science classes studying earthworms. A recent adventure takes them outside to search for the invertebrates on a wet sidewalk. They find a few, although most worms have returned to the grass or started to shrivel now that the morning's rain has ended.

Grammer kneels, discussing the differences between Missouri earthworms and those from California that came with the new worm factory.

He looks up from the grass-bound worm they're examining and says with a smile, "I just want you all to know, this is what science is."

It's a different type of science than most of these 9- and 10-year-olds experienced before falling into Grammer's hands. It's a science not found in books or demonstrated on worksheets, although they do a little of both in the class.

With this science, students shout out discoveries and jump up from their chairs in excitement. And that's OK, because Grammer gets excited too.

He's a veteran of the Persian Gulf War who discovered his love of teaching after his military stint. This is his fifth year at Jefferson, where he teaches science to three fourth-grade classes.

Recalling Carver

Back in the classroom, Grammer warms to the subject of his favorite scientist, George Washington Carver -- the 300 peanut recipes Carver created, Carver's early love of plants, which led to the unofficial title of "plant doctor" at age 6.

And when talking about Carver, the conversation easily turns back to the subject of bugs -- the famous black scientist had a penchant for filling his pockets with bugs as a child.

The 6,000 creeping, crawling worms in the factory at Jefferson will grow to 20,000 within a year. Already the students are seeing tiny cocoons.

Grammer hands out small microscopes to his students. It's the first time they've used this particular scientific tool, and the prospect creates much oohing and ahhing. Small samples of dirt from the worm factory are distributed on paper towel squares that slip beneath the microscopic lenses.

Ten-year-old Cody Owens puts his eye to the microscope and lets out a shout of surprise at what he finds. The scope is focused on a single brown worm, covered in dirt and now several times its normal size. The microscope is strong enough to pick up the tiniest wrinkles and the minute bristles coverings its thin skin.

"It looks all shiny and slimy. It's a little creepy because it's so big," he says.

Nine-year-old O'Shea Lewis can't take his eye away from his microscope. At first, he was sure he'd only received a small mound of dirt in his sample. Then, the dirt wiggled.

"I got a worm! I got a worm!" he exclaims.

Grammer bounces from student to student, sharing in their enthusiasm. He knows most of these students passed worms writhing on the sidewalk this morning on the way to school and didn't give them a second glance.

But now, they're visibly enthralled with the creatures. Sheer excitement, Grammer calls it.

The class is over long before the students want it to be. Seven hands are still waving in the air, hoping to share worm stories five minutes after the class is supposed to end.

"You guys were just like scientists today," Grammer says as they leave his classroom. "Mr. Carver would be proud."

cclark@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128