Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

Whitehead Begins Program for High School Teachers

YEAR-LONG EFFORT
Whitehead Begins Program
For High School Teachers
High school science teachers from Boston and Cambridge began a year-long 
partnership with young scientists at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical 
Research as part of a new program, "Molecules of Life: Exploring Science at 
the Whitehead Institute" on Monday.
 The 20 teachers will visit the Institute once a month through May for 
lectures by Whitehead faculty, a demonstration or lab project, and dinner 
with a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow "partner." 
"Recent studies by the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Commission 
on Science, Technology, and Government, and others have revealed disturbing 
inadequacies in scientific literacy among both adult and school-age 
Americans,"  Gerald R. Fink, director of the Whitehead Institute, said. "We 
believe that the most effective way to overcome this problem is to 
strengthen science education in the schools. 
"Modern science is moving very fast," Dr. Fink added. "Every time we help a 
teacher understand new material, we're providing a boost to every student 
in his or her classroom. The economic health of the nation depends on our 
ability to produce a work force with the knowledge and competence necessary 
to take on new challenges in all scientific fields." 
Melanie Barron, coordinator of science for the Cambridge Public Schools, 
said: "The Whitehead programs are responsive to the needs of urban high 
school teachers and students . . . It is unusual to find a collaborating 
university or science partner willing to treat public school staff with the 
same dignity and quality they treat their own staff." 
Topics in the Whitehead lecture series range from "Biomedical Science in 
the 90s" to "How Does the Egg Know Front from Back: Pattern Formation in 
Fruit Flies." Each lecture will be followed by a related demonstration or 
lab project. 
At dinner, the high school teachers and their partners will discuss the 
faculty lectures and explore how best to use their new knowledge in the 
classroom. Dr. Harvey Lodish, chairman of the Whitehead Education 
Committee, said: "As the partnership develops, we expect that some of the 
Whitehead postdoctoral fellows and graduate students will visit the schools 
to assist their teacher partners with laboratory experiments and to give 
guest lectures." 
In February, the teachers will be invited to bring selected students to The 
Whitehead Winter Lecture Series,"another new product of the Whitehead 
education program. The first winter series, "Unraveling Human Heredity: 
Genetic Traits, Diseases and the Human Genome Project," will be presented 
by Dr. Eric Lander, a member of the Whitehead Institute and director of 
MIT's Genome Center.