The Colonie Central High School is making sure students are going above and beyond in preparing for college, with its new distinction as a Princeton University satellite learning center for molecular biology instruction.
Jason Goldberg, a science teacher at the high school, had gone down to Princeton in New Jersey in July and August of 2010 for a series of workshops on project technology with 19 other teachers. He went for professional development but ended up walking away with something more.
“They asked me last spring if I wanted to host workshops,” Goldberg said. “They bought me a ton of equipment… HHMI [Howard Hughes Medical Institute] shipped it up here. Now I will hold teacher workshops for teachers around the Capital District and they can then borrow the equipment. We’ll use everything to run the same protocols here that we ran down there in their classrooms.”
Goldberg will now be hosting workshops for students around the Capital District with a three-year grant that bought him all of the new equipment. There have already been two workshops, one on Oct. 15 and one on Oct. 22, and there will be more planned for the spring. Goldberg said he wanted to start off small with just a classroom full of six teachers. He said in the spring he will open it up to teachers within a 50-mile radius of Colonie.
“Any teacher that wants to do this can put their name down,” Goldberg said. “We’ll take up to 12 for the first one.
Some items that were bought were laboratory tools such as a PCR, which is a thermal cycler used to amplify DNA. The program will not only benefit the teachers but it will also benefit the school’s students.
Goldberg said these skills will have students well prepared for heading into college, as he said New York State has recently lowered the standards of science instructions in schools around the state.
“What kids are getting out of a Regents diploma is not really much at all,” Goldberg said. “They get to college and they are not nearly as prepared as they should be.”
Now that the school has over $20,000 worth of new equipment, Goldberg said he would now be able to do simple activities such as testing if foods from local grocery store have been genetically modified. He went to the local Hannaford shop and picked up five items to test. He also will be running a molecular biology course next school year for those students who are interested in pursuing a career in the field.
What Goldberg said he has planned for next year is a half-year lab-intensive class where kids will not just be lectured but will actually be able to get their hands dirty doing different projects and experiments.
“The kids that really want to do it and want to work will get a lot out of it,” Goldberg said. “I hope I get the right kind of kids. Not just the ones that want to play with stuff. I want ones that want to learn.”
Colonie Central School District Superintendent Jon Buhner said he is very impressed by what Goldberg has been able to do. Buhner is impressed by the initiative taken by Goldberg to better himself by originally going to the Princeton workshops and is excited to see the benefits the students will get out of it.
“It’s rigorous and demanding,” Buhner said of the program, which his own son has gone through. “It is extremely demanding and really prepared kids to go into upper science opportunities when they leave here. It makes sure kids are ready for that level of work and expectations. He [Goldberg] does a tremendous job with the kids.”
Goldberg said he is not exactly sure how he was chosen to run these workshops but said he feels extremely lucky to have been selected.
“I’m thrilled they picked me,” he said. “I must have done something right.”
