Paterson educator recognized as North Jersey's Amazing Teacher and wins $5,000 prize

Carlos Miranda, a planetarium manager at Paterson P-TECH High School, recently won Gannett’s North Jersey Amazing Teacher Award, which recognizes excellence in the profession.

Miranda takes an interactive approach to teaching space science. Students of all ages visit the planetarium dome at P-TECH to learn; Miranda also visits local schools with a portable dome. The planetarium program conducts outreach in the community, for which Miranda started an ambassador program that trains students to educate local families using hands-on activities.

“I think the immersive nature of being in a planetarium, it really involves the learner,” Miranda said. “They’re surrounded with visualizations that you don't get traditionally in a classroom, so it provides this spatial type of atmosphere, where I can now see what the teacher is talking about.”

This year, a team of four Paterson P-TECH students led by Miranda won the NASA TechRise Student Challenge. Their experiment — a capsule that measures radiation and the temperatures of different materials in the atmosphere — will be flown into the atmosphere by NASA in a high-altitude balloon flight.

Additionally, the planetarium program received over $5,000 in equipment from the NASA Citizen CATE project to photograph the sun’s corona and measure other data during this year’s solar eclipse. They were allowed to keep the equipment, which Miranda also used for mini-eclipse workshops at P-TECH and an Earth Day STEM event at Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park. Additionally, as an eclipse ambassador for NASA, Miranda was able to distribute over 1,500 pairs of eclipse glasses throughout the Paterson school district.

Miranda, who has taught for 19 years, originally wanted to be a pediatrician. After taking an elective course in college that involved teaching science, he discovered his passion for helping students find their confidence.

“It’s making others feel not just empowered, but kind of like making them feel that they can be successful in something that they didn't know they could be successful in,” Miranda said. “It's really inspiring when you see kids that didn't know that [they] can do science, and then they leave feeling a little more confident in themselves.”

Miranda does not know who nominated him but is thankful for the recognition.

“Education itself is really important, and I think it's just, you know, creating these informed citizens to make these decisions later on in life that are going to be hard,” Miranda said. "I think as educators, it's nice to be acknowledged. There's so many people that deserve an award like this.”

Miranda will receive a $5,000 check in addition to being recognized as North Jersey’s Amazing Teacher. The award is part of Gannett's promotion to recognize excellence in the profession.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson educator recognized as North Jersey's Amazing Teacher and wins $5,000 prize