Middle school teacher Nalini Shyam had a eureka moment with fellow New York City science teachers, who took turns shaking a sealed cardboard box at a workshop at Weill Cornell Medical College March 13.

"It's the bar of soap!" said Shyam, triumphantly guessing the contents after weighing and rattling the container. "It's not rolling, so it's not the tennis ball, and it's too heavy to be the tape."

The Mystery Box experiment mimics the kind of work conducted by particle physicists and other scientists who study objects they can't directly observe, explained Lora Hine, director of educational programs at the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education. Her facility, along with the medical school, Lab of Ornithology and other Cornell departments, designed such inquiry-based lesson plans for the Science Leadership Academy (SLA), a new yearlong professional development program for New York City middle school teachers.

The academy, which partners with the teacher centers operated by the city's United Federation of Teachers (UFT), began by bringing about three dozen science teachers from 17 schools -- predominantly in Brooklyn and Queens -- together for three days of instruction in Ithaca last summer. Periodically throughout the school year, the participants have met for full day sessions in Manhattan; the final one is scheduled for May 8, when teachers will share what they did differently this year as a result of the SLA.

The SLA provides ideas, supplies, mentors and networking opportunities that the academy hopes the teachers will use to engage students in biology, chemistry and physics and teach them basic concepts they would need to pursue these subjects in college.

At Cornell, a number of students come in wanting to be pre-med or engineers, but are "not able to cope with the demands of those courses," said Stephen Hamilton, Cornell associate provost for outreach. "With this program, rather than teaching science as a set of facts that students have to regurgitate, we're teaching science as a way of answering questions."

What's also unique about the program, added program manager Amanda Kittelberger, is its yearlong relationship, "which helps the teachers change how they teach science and gives them tools to do so." The academy helps the teachers "shift their thinking into what good science teaching looks like," she said, especially in such a diverse and complex place as New York City schools.

For example, the Lab of Ornithology's presentation last summer and a $2,500 UFT grant led seventh-grade teacher Mike Fernandez to create a birdwatching club at Middle School 584 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Every other Saturday, he takes eight students to a park to study avian life and record their findings on eBird.com.

"I knew nothing about birds beyond pigeons and sparrows before coming to Ithaca," he said. "I wanted to share my newfound interest with my students, and so the Woodpeckers Club was born." Several students, he noted, who had rarely participated in class now write lengthy journal entries and enthusiastically discuss the field trips.

"The SLA program has helped my students, because they're not just learning about science, they're being scientists," he said. "When they put on goggles and make corny jokes about calcium carbonate, I know they're getting it."

"This has been great for our kids," said Shyam, who teaches sixth grade at Middle School 217 in Briarwood, Queens. "We've got them creating their own electrical tests and all kinds of other experiments. They're really enjoying it."

Nicole Neroulias '01 is a freelance writer in New York City.