Why My 7th Grade Science Teacher was Awesome
Perhaps this is an odd topic for a post, but it was asking to be written about.
Middle school is not the best time for students to learn about biology.
Middle school students are right at the pre-adolescent stage. Too old to be cute and forgivable, too young to be sensible or reliable.
Its a mad mad world in middle school. Even when I was a middle school student I felt sorry for my teachers. Who chooses to be a middle school teacher? How is that rewarding at all?
My 7th grade science teacher was beloved by all. He found out how to deal with the terror of middle school students. 1) tell them stories. 2) let them watch movies.
He told us what would happen if you ate the brain of the frog you were dissecting.
He told us that DNA stood for deoxyribonucleic acid…. without explaining what DNA really was.
(For those interested, DNA is a nucleic acid consisting of a phosphate group, a 5-carbon sugar, and a nitrogenous base. It is “deoxy,” because unlike RNA, which has ribose as its sugar, DNA’s 5-carbon sugar is missing an oxygen- it is deoxyribose.)
When we learned about genetics… very briefly…. and talked about the issues of cloning, it was time for a “science” movie. It wasn’t boring, and it wasn’t even Bill Nye.
We watched Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.
When we learned about Darwin, and his theory of evolution, it was time for another movie.
We watched Evolution.
If you don’t know that movie, its a comedy where rapidly-evolving alien organisms end up on earth. If you want to know how scientific it is, it has blue monkeys. Enough said.
He must have been a science fiction fan.
Kallen is currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Biology and Journalism at the University of Oregon and, of course, writing a blog.
Sarita said,
June 25, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
So what would happen if you were to eat the brain of the frog you were dissecting?
Kallen said,
November 17, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
@ Sarita-
The frogs we used for dissecting were preserved in Formaldehyde. Some sort of preserving agent is necessary to prevent the breakdown of tissues.
However, formaldeyhyde is toxic to the human body. It shouldn’t be digested. It is also a possible carcinogenic.
Even if you want to eat frog brains (why?), eating one that is soaked in formaldeyhyde is definitly not the best option.
One of his students took a bet to eat a frog brain during the frog dissection and ended up in the health center taking Ipecac (a medicine commonly used to induce vomiting) while the staff consulted Poison Control.
Needless to say, this story he told to each class before they performed the frog dissection probably seriously cut down on these incidences.