Headmaster's Blog

Today a small team of Saint David's teachers and administrators visited the DNA Learning Center (DNALC) of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory - the world's first science center devoted entirely to genetics education.  The team met with two of the DNALC's instructors to plan opportunities for our fifth graders to extract and analyze DNA at the DNALC labs and Saint David's science lab during the winter and spring trimesters. In addition to visits to the laboratories on Long Island to examine and conduct observations  of mutations in   Drosophila fruit flies and   C. elegans   nematodes, the boys will also visit the center's  DNA Laboratory for investigations and experimentations with DNA Fingerprinting - and an introduction to gel electrophoresis." Cold Spring Harbor staff will also be working with the boys at Saint David's science labs during the winter and spring semesters. 

Our technology faculty have been busy at work this summer immersing themselves in exciting projects that they will bring back to our STE(A)M classes. During a week-long course on DNA bar-coding, conducted by a partnership between Rockefeller University and the Cold Spring Harbor DNA Learning Center, they practiced extracting DNA from a variety of plant and animal samples, selecting a single gene, amplifying that DNA using PCR protocol, and performing gel electrophoresis to verify the success of the PCR amplification. Each DNA sample was sequenced in a New Jersey facility, and then provided to workshop participants as a digital file. Our teachers then worked with online databases of genetic information to compare their samples' gene sequences to those of hundreds of thousands of other species. They were able to identify the species of their sample organisms, and create  genetic "family trees" that show which species are most genetically similar to the organisms who...

Freaky Pets perform at Horizon's The school's strategic commitment to reaching out and contributing to the greater good took another huge step forward this summer with the second season of Horizons at Saint David's .  Directed by Julie Sykes and her team of exceptional teachers, Courtney Hopkins, Meghan Patterson, Melissa Ferrer, Lindsay Buhr, and Leah Kaplan, and accompanied by a host of volunteers, Horizons at Saint David's has delivered a program specifically aimed at preventing academic slide in children from low-income families. This summer, a second cohort of seventeen boys from Harlem public schools were added to the first cohort of seventeen, making total enrollment 34.  Rising First and rising Second graders have been at Saint David's for the past 5 weeks participating in a full academic enrichment program.  In addition to its heavy emphasis on academic skill maintenance, the program has also provided daily sports and swimming instruction at Asp...