Welcome, Ms. Bruce!

By Avae Velasquez

Tina Bruce

Pueblo welcomes many new staff members and teachers this school year, including Ms. Tina Bruce, our new freshman biology teacher.

Bruce has been teaching science for 10 years, but she has worked in the past with Exceptional Ed students for “a long time.”

She said, “I began as a volunteer, and the job just fell on me, and that’s when I knew I wanted to become a teacher.”

Bruce has previously taught integrated science at Cholla High School for seven years, however, this is her first year as a biology teacher.

“I’m so happy to be here because our students and staff are fantastic,” Bruce said.

Bruce foresees herself being here at Pueblo for a long time.

In The News: New TUSD Program Gives Biotech Students Leg Up

Pueblo High School juniors Justin Pledger, 15, and Vanessa Santacruz, 16, are among 240 Tucson Unified School District biotech students who will work closely with local employers to create career pathways and improve the district’s classroom instruction.

A new program launched Monday will help enable TUSD biotech students to take control of their future, researching career opportunities available locally and what employers are looking for.

The initiative is part of an effort to grow interest in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — and to create career pathways with help from students themselves. The information gathered by students will be shared with the Tucson Unified School District and Pima County One-Stop to develop meaningful programming.

About 240 students from Pueblo and Tucson high schools will take part in the Biotech Pipeline effort.

Students will gather information on nearly two dozen local biotech businesses and conduct interviews to make career connections, learn what companies are looking for and how that connects with what they are learning in the classroom.

“This gives students the opportunity to explore what they want to be and take the next steps,” said Carolina Canastillo, 16, an aspiring veterinarian. “I think it will help students understand what we are learning.”

While participating students have much to gain from the program, by documenting findings the lessons learned can be expanded upon and implemented for future students with an interest in STEM.

“Students learn quite a few skills in the classroom, and through working with people in the industry they’re able to see the application of those skills,” said TUSD Superintendent H.T. Sanchez. “The best part is it ties our kids to employers to begin the conversation about what the employers are looking for in terms of their workforce. That, of course, better informs … all of us in what we need to have in our curriculum.”

Courtesy of the Arizona Daily Star

Three Pueblo Students Participate In The Summer Institute Of Medical Ignorance

From Left to Right: Destiny Mankel, Judith Carranza & Cecilia Machado

Just this past summer, Pueblo had three students accepted into the Summer Institute of Medical Ignorance.  Destiny Mankel, Judith Carranza and Cecilia Machado of the class of 2015 participated in this yearly summer program.

This institute takes place at the UA College Of Medicine in Tucson. Each student was placed with a medical doctor who does research and each of them had a chance to do their own research and present to peers, doctors and medical students.

Only 25 students are accepted from the entire state of Arizona and Pueblo got three in!  We are very proud of these 3 Lady Warriors!

Science Students Awarded At Science & Engineering Fair

Congratulations to the following Warriors on submitting winning projects to the Southern Arizona Region Science and Engineering Fair:

Karla Placencio & Christian Vasquez– Research on the Comparison of the Antibiotic Properties of Creosote and Related Species

Christian Vasquez & Karla Placencio

Tricia Hindley- Worked with a student from CDO at a neuroscience lab at the University of Arizona. Their research was on the Effects of Backward Movement on Spatial Memory Networks in the Hippocampus.

Tricia Hindley

The Pueblo results were as follows:

3rd Place – High School Plant Sciences
Christian Vasquez, Karla Placencio – Comparison of the Antibiotic Properties of the Creosote Bush and Related Species
Teacher – Andrew Lettes
Pueblo High Magnet School

Tricia Hindley: The Effects Of Backward Movement On Spatial Memory Networks In The Hippocampus, United States Army 2nd Place – Certificate + Pack

The list of award winners can be found at http://www.sarsef.org/winner2011.asp.

Chemical Reaction Experiment

Honors Chemistry students were conducting an experiment involving mentos & diet soda to test the chemical reaction between the two.  The result is a giant geyser of soda spewing from the 2 liter bottle.  The questions is why?

Students love to conduct this experiment and the reaction on their faces is always the same. They tried different variables to see which produced the highest geyser. Check out the video:

This experiment was part of a training for these honors students by the University of Arizona.  They will be tutoring other students in science.

Training conducted by Jose of the University of Arizona
Training session by University Of Arizona

You can try this at home yourself.  You will need:

  • A roll or box of Mentos mints
  • 2-liter bottle of diet soda (diet or regular soda will work, but diet soda is not as sticky)
  • Piece of paper to use a funnel to drop Mentos in bottle

Anatomy Rube Goldberg Project 2010

The Anatomy class finished their 2 week project of creating Rube Goldberg machines to demonstrate the anatomy of our eyes and ears.

The students had to build their contraptions using only recyclable materials. Here’s a video on what the 6 teams learned:

After they ran the machines the class celebrated with nachos. Thanks for inviting us to cover your project.