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As someone who worked as a scientist for 25 years before deciding to write full-time, I can only commend you for your approach.

Here are some additional insights from my experiences:

1. It was not until I had to share my work with someone else in writing that I really understood it. Writing enables scientists to reflect on what they have done and to challenge their own conclusions. As you write, you are forced to look at things from someone else's viewpoint, namely the person or group for whom the report/article/story/etc. is written.

2. Writing reinforces that science is a social process. Because others are involved, rigor can be enforced. Both writing and science are improved by critiquing. Colleagues--other scientists or editors in the case of published writing--help you polish good work until it becomes excellent.

3. Writing and science are both processes of discovery.

4. My experience working in science outreach programs for teens, which also included work on their rhetorical writing skills, is that their favorite audience is usually their peers. Your approach turns writing from an assignment for a teacher into a communication with their classmates about what interests them.

When I was awarded the 2002 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award for works intended for young readers, I was asked to make some brief remarks when the award was presented. I focused on the relationship between a writer and his/her audience. Among my words were these:

No one, not even I at first, understood the depth of connection between me and my young readers. It took me years to realize that each of us has a natural audience, and mine is the kids with hormones raging, full of questions, and eager to challenge anything adults tell them -- those dreaded, threatening, terrifying, barely human creatures we call adolescents.

Why they're just like -- gasp -- physicists who, hormones or not, question the obvious and challenge everyone else's perspective.

Nate, I think part of your success comes from your ability to convey your love of science, part comes from your ability to connect with each of your students, and part comes from your ability to put science in perspective with the entire learning process.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts in this forum!

Fred Bortz
Children's Science Books
and
Science Book Reviews