Pittsfield Education News

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="2d2d4c03.jpg"> <div> <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About the UEP">About the UEP</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id22.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Your Officers">Your Officers</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id109.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Grievances">Grievances</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id24.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Members Area">Members Area</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id120.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Discipline Grid">Discipline Grid</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id113.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Checking Your Paystub">Checking Your Paystub</A></div> <div> <B>Pittsfield Education News</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Links">Links</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Us">Contact Us</A></div> <div> <A HREF="how_to_access_member_area.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="How to access member area">How to access member area</A></div> <div> <A HREF="political_opportunities.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Political Opportunities">Political Opportunities</A></div> <div> <A HREF="teacher_evaluationgoal_setti.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Teacher Evaluation/Goal Setting/Assistan">Teacher Evaluation/Goal Setting/Assistance Plan Forms</A></div> <div> <A HREF="academic_coach_side_letter_o.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Academic Coach Side Letter of Agreement">Academic Coach Side Letter of Agreement</A></div> <div> <A HREF="nea_teacher_of_the_year_info.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="NEA Teacher of the Year Information">NEA Teacher of the Year Information</A></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> PHS Closed for a Week</div> <div> Double Sessions Slated</div> <div> New teachers enjoy opportunity</div> </td> <td valign="top" width="100%" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> Pittsfield Education News</div> <bR> <div> Dining tray project catches judges' eyes</div> <bR> <div> <U>By Jenn Smith, Berkshire Eagle Staff</U><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <bR> <div> Monday, May 12 PITTSFIELD </div> <bR> <div> Three Taconic High School sophomores are celebrating the power of the petri dish after taking first place in their division at the Massachusetts State Science & Engineering Fair. </div> <bR> <div> The girl-powered team of Morgan Craft, Melanie Dean and Jordan Eichelser earned acclaim at the local, regional and state fairs for their project on investigating the true purifying properties of the lunchroom dining tray sanitation process. </div> <bR> <div> After four years of Berkshire schools participating in this state event, Taconic brought home the county's first gold medal. They earned the 2008 Osram Sylvania Award, which was worth $1,000, and honor pins. </div> <div> Other teams from Taconic, as well as Monument Mountain Regional High School in Great Barrington, earned high ranks. </div> <bR> <div> But what may be good news for the girls may be a bit of bad news for any commercial dining facility. The result of their prize-winning project was germs. </div> <div> Initially, the team wanted to know how clean those plastic fast food restaurant trays really are. So they designed an experiment to compare a mechanical dishwashing process with the use of chemical sanitizer tablets. </div> <bR> <div> Their pitch to test trays was rejected by both commercial restaurants and the science fair regulators. So, they approached the operators of their own school cafeteria. Again, they were denied. </div> <bR> <div> "We were pulling our hair out at that point," said Craft. </div> <bR> <div> "It was so close to the local science fair, we were ready to give up," said Eichelser. </div> <bR> <div> Their teacher and liaison for the science fair, Kris Pearson, told the girls that was the nature of science. </div> <bR> <div> "But part of being a good scientist is perseverance. And I have to say, these girls are model scientists," she said. </div> <bR> <div> Asked what kept them going, Eichelser said, "Curiosity." </div> <bR> <div> Finally, the group got the green light to do a swab test on the trays and dishes in the Epicurean Room, an in-school restaurant run by its Culinary Arts Department. The department, which uses the restaurant as a living classroom for management standards, was curious to see how they were doing. </div> <bR> <div> The science team soon found support from the school's teacher mentor program as well as partners in the community. They used resources and equipment from Berkshire Community College and received laboratory help in analyzing the swabs from Berkshire Medical Center. </div> <bR> <div> The team swabbed ceramic plates and metal sheet trays, inside and around the dishwasher, inside and around the sink, and their own hands. </div> <bR> <div> In all, the girls prepared 50 culture plates using different agar gels, which allows bacteria, if present on the smear, to grow. The team then kept the samples in a controlled environment for 48 hours at a constant 38 degrees Celsius. </div> <bR> <div> The results, according to Craft, "weren't as bad as we thought they were going to be, but could be better." </div> <bR> <div> In addition to some forms of molds and fungus, they discovered trace strains of streptococcus (strep) and staphylococcus (staph), both common but potentially potent forms of bacteria. </div> <bR> <div> They also found that one in four objects cleaned with the sanitizing tabs had germs versus the three out of four in the dishwasher. </div> <bR> <div> After presenting at the local fair, the team moved to winning a third-place prize in the Regional I contest as well as the Northeast Institute award for food science, prior to winning a first-place rank at the state level. </div> <bR> <div> Team member Melanie Dean said a state judge recommended they show their school what was found. </div> <bR> <div> On Thursday, Principal Douglas McNally and members of the culinary department popped in on a brief presentation to a reporter. The group looked a little surprised by the slides but also thanked the young women for their efforts and requested more information. </div> <bR> <div> The team said that the point of their project was not to specifically cite germs in their school, but it was more to explore the microbiology. </div> <bR> <div> "We wanted to figure out what we would find," said Eichelser. </div> <bR> <div> "It opened our eyes. I was like 'Wow. This is what we could go into,' " said Craft, who added this thought. "This is what kids are exposed to. We hope it opens eyes for all the schools."</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> Pittsfield student chefs take honors</div> <bR> <div> <U>By Jenn Smith, Berkshire Eagle Staff</U><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <bR> <div> Friday, May 09 PITTSFIELD — A group of high school students from Pittsfield recently learned that two is better than one. </div> <bR> <div> A culinary team of Taconic and Pittsfield High teens teamed up against nine other Massachusetts schools and took home two awards in the cooking competition. </div> <bR> <div> Together, their skills, dedication and professionalism earned them a first place win in the management competition and third place in the culinary contest. The cook-off was held at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I. </div> <bR> <div> "We did really well. The judges had nothing bad to say about us and people told us to leave our résumés with them at the door," said Matt Shepard, a Taconic senior who will attend Johnson & Wales in the summer. </div> <bR> <div> The other members were Danielle Barnes, Sean Westcott, Matt McLaughlin, Sarah Moak, Jake Richardson, Heather Wildman and Jenna Davis. </div> <bR> <div> In addition to medals, the members earned a minimum of $1,500 in renewable scholarships. </div> <bR> <div> The students were coached by chef Douglas Luf and other members of the recently folded Spice restaurant. They also received guidance from the school district's culinary faculty. </div> <bR> <div> Culinary program coordinator Jeff Wallace said the students worked so hard they couldn't sleep the night of the competition. </div> <bR> <div> The team had to bring its own ingredients, make two of each dish and keep their grocery bill under $75. They had 30 minutes to prepare and 60 minutes to cook and plate; they lost first place due to a penalty for running three minutes over. </div> <bR> <div> The menu began with a celery and cucumber salad with Kalamata olives, feta and a sherry-honey vinaigrette. The main course was caramelized sea scallops set atop a potato pancake and topped with citrus fruit and a fennel-asparagus-radicchio salad. For dessert: chocolate flapjacks layered with mixed fruit and topped with Chantilly cream.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> Wallace said the students worked so hard they couldn't sleep the night of the competition. </div> <div> The team had to bring its own ingredients, make two of each dish and keep their grocery bill under $75. They had 30 minutes to prepare and 60 minutes to cook and plate; they lost first place due to a penalty for running three minutes over. </div> <div> The menu began with a celery and cucumber salad with Kalamata olives, feta and a sherry-honey vinaigrette. The main course was caramelized sea scallops set atop a potato pancake and topped with citrus fruit and a fennel-asparagus-radicchio salad. For dessert: chocolate flapjacks layered with mixed fruit and topped with Chantilly cream.</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>