Family Without Art Genes Survives High School DNA Model

Remember that insect project your kid had to do in first grade? The one where each kid made a model of an insect, and the teacher displayed all the insects at the parent open house in May? That’s when you said to yourself, “I guess my kid is the only one who did the project on her own." Either that or she’s got some serious small motor skill issues compared to other six-year olds.

That was just the first of a series of elementary school projects that we, as parents, had to survive. We tried to make sure she didn’t cut herself with those little scissors or glue herself to the table. Luckily, what our daughter lacked in small motor skills, she made up for with creativity, determination, and a certain laissez-faire attitude regarding asymmetrical shapes.

Neither my husband’s or my family tree is brimming with artistic or craftsy talent, unless you count my great-great Uncle Bunko who toured the Vaudeville circuit, and apparently made his own clown nose. People like us dread trips to craft stores like Michael’s, where all those perky do-it-yourself types gather before creating a bedroom set out of corkboard and felt. So thank goodness my daughter’s fourth grade class did the Mission model at school. Otherwise, it would have been Mission Impossible.

Middle school seemed to concentrate on perfecting the students’ PowerPoint skills, so we thought we were safe.

Oh, we poor innocents.

Our daughter came home one day this semester with her 9th grade biology project: create a three-dimensional DNA strand. Fine. Go find the pipe cleaners.

Sorry, that won’t do. The project’s rubric, which is a fancy educational term for grading rules, was a page long. My heart sank as I read some highlights:

• Neatness counts. You shouldn’t be able to see glue or tape. Uh oh. In past art projects, you pretty much saw only glue and tape.

• Size counts. The strand must be between 14” and 18” in height. Off by an inch or more and you lose points. This is the same teacher that specified exactly what kind of spiral notebook to buy, and demands you paste class worksheets into your notebook exactly the same way she does, or you lose points. We know her ruler stands ready.

• Hangability. Your project must be able to hang from the ceiling. I expected that the teacher was going to decorate the classroom with these things. But no, my daughter’s project came back home the same day it was graded.

Additionally, there were academically-inclined rubrics about how to show the actual parts of the DNA strand, such as making the deoxyribose and phosphate different colors, connecting the sugars to the bases, the phosphates to the sugars, and the knee bone to the thigh bone. Fair enough.

But wait! You know I saved the best for last. Here is the rubric that made me, great-great niece of Bunko the Clown, break down and cry:

• Uniqueness counts.

For full points for the uniqueness rubric, your DNA strand must be “One of a kind. Nobody else used the same materials."

This rubric meant one thing: family project.

My daughter was the brains of the operation, since she immediately started spouting off biological terms and clearly already understood the material. My husband was the Chief Structural Engineer. I was the Project Manager. We had two weekends until the due date. I laid out a schedule that worked around volleyball, softball, dance class, homework, and piano—just your average overachieving Cupertino student’s week. We had a brainstorming meeting. We debated strategy and materials. My daughter chose a theme: girly.

But even a girly DNA strand needs a solid—and unique—foundation. Off to Orchard Supply we go. We scour the store. We enlist the help of three of those OSH sales guys who all look like they guest-starred on Myth Busters. We find the perfect solution: 3/8“ aluminum piping. Just enough “give” to create the ol’ double-helix twist, just enough firmness to stay put once you’ve shaped it.

My husband disappeared into the garage and reemerged with a four-foot-long device that to my Project Manager’s mind looked like Death’s Scythe, and I figured he had concluded that mass suicide was our only option. Turns out this thing was a wire bender, and in an amazing imitation of David Copperfield, before our very eyes, without his hands once leaving his wrists, he turned a coil of piping into a double-helix. Between 14” and 18” long.

Now came Operation Uniqueness, Phase 2: cover the strand with girly – and unique—materials. Two trips to Target, and two trips to the Dreaded Michael’s later, we had several bags full of ribbons and scrunchies. Sadly, a gross miscalculation had led us to believe that we would need 27 scrunchies to cover the strand, when in fact we would need 113 scrunchies. Not only would that break the bank, but we estimated that at three minutes per scrunchie, it would take almost six hours to cover the strand with them.

So at 8:45 on the Friday evening of the weekend before the due date, 15 minutes before closing time, the three of us made a third trip to the Dreaded Michael’s in search of a new—and unique—girly material. We swept through the store like Dementors looking for biology teachers. In mere moments, our daughter saw the answer. (Insert Hallelujah music here).

Feather boas!

We cleaned out the Dreaded Michael’s supply of pink and black feather boas. Back at home, the Chief Structural Engineer devised a way to wrap the feather boas around the strand, adhering to the color-coding rubric, and glory be—without involving glue or tape. 

The final step, which involved tying ribbons between opposite sides of the double-helix, was a wonderful lesson for my daughter. She learned how not to murder her mother whose job was to hold the structure still.

We awaited our grade. Yes, our grade. Our daughter knew the information and could have shaped pipe cleaners into a double-helix in five minutes. We thought it was unfair to let her take the fall for the Uniqueness Rubric, which her babysitting money and structural engineering skills couldn’t cover without help.

We got an A! We lost 3 out of the possible 60 points. One point was lost for hangability. I guess the ribbon attached at the top was not precisely centered.

Two points were lost for uniqueness.  

I want to know this—how many other pink and black feather boa DNA strands were submitted?