Zahra Gor­don

Trinidad-born high-school en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ence teacher Neal Singh was one of sev­en re­cip­i­ents of the Sloan Awards for Ex­cel­lence in Teach­ing Sci­ence and Math­e­mat­ics in New York City last month.

Singh, 42, has been teach­ing at Flo­rel­la H La­Guardia High School of Mu­sic and Arts and Per­form­ing Arts for the past five years where he has to­tal­ly re­designed the sci­ence pro­gramme.

The awards, pre­sent­ed by the Fund for the City of New York and the Sloan Foun­da­tion, are giv­en to teach­ers who use cre­ative meth­ods to "achieve su­perb re­sults and in­spire young peo­ple to pur­sue ca­reers in math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence."

When Singh joined La­Guardia in 2007, there was on­ly one ad­vanced sci­ence class and he's cer­tain­ly had to be cre­ative to now have 200 stu­dents on the wait­ing list for ad­vanced sci­ence at a per­form­ing arts school.

In a re­cent tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, the Pe­nal na­tive cred­it­ed his many achieve­ments to his Tri­ni up­bring­ing. "I am very grate­ful for the life I had in Trinidad and I wouldn't be who I am with­out Trinidad," said Singh who added that he had the best teach­ers of his life­time at his al­ma mater Pa­lo Seco Sec­ondary.

Singh mi­grat­ed to the US in 1989 re­ceiv­ing his first de­gree in ge­ol­o­gy from Brook­lyn Col­lege and post grad­u­ate de­gree in sec­ondary sci­ence ed­u­ca­tion from the City Col­lege of New York.

Grow­ing up on a farm in a rur­al area fos­tered Singh's love for na­ture. It was the pol­lu­tion of these ar­eas, how­ev­er, that gave him a sense of en­vi­ron­men­tal con­scious­ness. He re­mem­bers the riv­er near his for­mer school be­ing pol­lut­ed with oil and an en­tire flock of fam­i­ly ducks dy­ing in a con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed pond. "These things made me ex­treme­ly sen­si­tive to na­ture."

And al­though Singh does not con­sid­er him­self an ac­tivist, he tries to live a "green" lifestyle. "I try to make every­thing I do as en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious as pos­si­ble. I do or­gan­ic gar­den­ing and I don't keep any dan­ger­ous prod­ucts around the house."

Singh al­so sees him­self as car­ry­ing out ac­tivism through his stu­dents. Some of the sub­jects Singh cov­ers in class in­clude the link­ages be­tween the en­vi­ron­ment and pover­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal racism and cli­mate change. Along­side the sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge tak­en from text­books Singh screens doc­u­men­taries for his stu­dents, takes them to in­ten­sive out­door labs to study var­i­ous ecosys­tems and has a va­ri­ety of speak­ers year round such as en­vi­ron­men­tal lawyers, nu­tri­tion­ists, con­ser­va­tion­ists and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from en­vi­ron­men­tal NGOs.

"Many of my stu­dents will be­come fa­mous and I want them to have that en­vi­ron­men­tal con­scious­ness and to use that pow­er fame brings to cre­ate change."

Ac­cord­ing to Singh, quite a few of his stu­dents are now pur­su­ing sci­ence de­grees at Ivy League uni­ver­si­ties and even those who've con­tin­ued on to ca­reers in the arts are in­volved with en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­vo­ca­cy cam­paigns and projects. For Singh, ob­serv­ing the changes in his stu­dents has been one of his great­est achieve­ments. "When I'm in class and I can see the re­sponse of my stu­dents and see their gen­uine in­ter­est and the way they've com­mit­ted to these ideas, the way they've changed their lifestyles I feel com­plete."

In the near fu­ture Singh hopes to re­turn to T&T to as­sist with sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment projects re­lat­ed to the en­vi­ron­ment.