LLOYD — First-year science teacher Justin Imel remembers the first time he walked into a college laboratory at Morehead State University.

He was wearing shorts and flip-flops, typical college attire but not, he was soon to find out, appropriate for an environment stocked with caustic chemicals and breakable glassware.

He didn’t know much about the layout of the lab or the equipment he’d be using on the way to his chemistry teaching degree, and his idea of writing a lab report was regurgitating the procedure from his text.

Imel attributes his ignorance largely to inexperience. He can count up his high school lab sessions on one hand and believes if he’d spent more time with the beakers and bunsen burners during those years he’d have been more prepared for college science.

His college professors soon set him straight, and Imel received his degree in the spring of 2012, four years after graduating from Greenup County High School.

He immediately applied for a teaching position there and over the summer spent time discussing the science program with the other five science teachers and interim principal Jason Smith.

Out of those meetings and others came a new format for Greenup’s science curriculum: Each of its five classroom science teachers devotes one day per week to lab sessions, with Imel as the lab instructor.

Since three science credits are required for graduation that means virtually all of Greenup’s students will gain weekly laboratory experience.

Imel was just the teacher for the job, Smith said, because his high school and college experiences are so fresh. “When we talked to Justin about his lab experiences, we realized our students need labs to prepare them for college,” Smith said.

College and career preparation are the lynchpins in Kentucky’s newly revamped accountability system.

With his own early lab experiences still close in the rearview mirror, Imel understands that high school lab neophytes lack the most fundamental skills, such as wearing goggles while handling chemicals. Teaching them the basics is the first step. He also will coach them on observing and reporting their findings accurately.

The weekly labs are an opportunity for new experiences and are particularly valuable for hands-on learners, according to sophomore Madison Thomas. “I’m planning on going into a science field and I feel I’ll be more comfortable in situations where I need to use lab equipment,” she said.

As the students progress, he hopes to shift from rote repetition of lab exercises to an inquiry-based approach. “Rather than me walking them through it, they will design their own experiments,” he said.

Laboratory work has a clear academic purpose, according to Ed Davis, with whose biology class Imel was conducting an exercise to detect the presence of an enzyme in a solution. ‘It reinforces what we do in the classroom,” he said.

In other words, Davis teaches the theory and Imel shows the students how to apply it in the physical world.

Davis and the other classroom science teachers also can devote more of their attention to classroom activities, while collaborating with Imel on lab days.

There also are practical implications to having two teachers in the lab, including more thorough supervision and more one-on-one time. That makes for a safer, more orderly lab with students getting the help they need.

The change in science curriculum comes at a critical time for Greenup, which is working to lift itself from a state designation of persistent low achievement.

The turnaround plan includes, among other things, tougher courses and changing the way students connect with their schoolwork.

“The plan calls for increased rigor and making school a place kids want to come,” Smith said.

The labs are expected to fulfill both goals. Indeed, during a Thursday session, most of the two dozen students appeared fully engaged with their specimen cups, pipettes and observations.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.