Meet the … technician: Rebecca Watkins

What is your favourite experiment to set up? Why?

I love designing something new and asking my department to try it out (they put up with a lot of my random ideas). I enjoy finding forgotten resources and updating them. Recently that was Rebecca’s Rockin’ Rocks (named by my head of department Emily, thank goodness she trusts my craziness) after finding dust-covered boxes of mineral rocks hidden at the back of a cupboard. I created a circus task using them to enhance teaching about mining.

Are you involved in any STEM clubs or extracurricular activities?

Our weekly STEM club is always asking for the weird and wonderful: the students very much lead it. I love keeping my materials box fully stocked for their creative projects and they recycle and use anything I give them.

What’s on your bookshelf?

A bit of everything, but like a true science nerd I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy. Somehow my books always leave me with science on the brain; whether it’s Jurassic Park and dinosaur DNA, The Meg and the adaptations of the deep, or my guilty pleasure Poirot and his constant references to ‘the little grey cells’. We have a little book club in our science department, so we are often waiting for each other to finish our latest joint read, usually involving dragons.

Tell us about your most memorable moment as a school science technician

I always laugh to myself when I remember that a student once called me the science ninja, because things kept appearing and disappearing in their classroom but they never saw me.

What do you wear to school? Do you have a favourite outfit for work?

Always my trusted lab coat and a comfy pair of daps (although steel toe capped trainers for heavy days are sometimes better). Being a technician means you get in a lot of steps every day.

What’s one piece of kit in your lab that you couldn’t live without?

Not necessarily kit, but I couldn’t function without my booking sheet. It’s a live online document through which my teachers request practicals. It lets everyone know what’s going on in real time, so my teachers know when I have more time to investigate a new practical, or when to make me a cuppa when my day is chock-full of practicals.

If budget was no object, what’s one piece of kit you would love to have in your lab/prep room?

I’d love to invest in fume hoods for every lab. I know several schools, including ours, have lost these with A-level teaching moving more to colleges, but there’s a lot of exhibition science that we could use to inspire learners, particularly at 11–14 level, if we still had them.

How do you relax?

I live life at a slow pace outside of school. I enjoy nothing better than sitting at home, radio on, a good book and my cat curled up on my lap. The school environment is so dynamic that slowing down is ideal in the evenings.

Imagine you can only share one piece of advice with your fellow technicians, what would you say?

Fully audit everything regularly. There were lots of things that weren’t on old lists when I arrived, so it took me months to get everything logged and organised. A little time each year to keep it updated will make everyone’s lives, including your own, easier in the future. It also allows you to find those forgotten resources and give them new life.

… And imagine you can only share one tip with teachers about making a technician’s life easier, what would you say?

Book everything as early in advance as possible.

Who’s your hero?

Sir David Attenborough, which is an answer many people would give but reflects the impact he’s had. I’ll always remember staying up late and racing downstairs to watch every new documentary. Being transported to whole new worlds was magical … because science is just magic with a different name.