I teach 11th and 12th grade Anatomy & Physiology (A&P) at an urban high school that serves a population where many of our students live at or below the poverty level.
The first two years at my school, I spent a great deal of effort trying to convince the administration of the need for an Anatomy & Physiology course at my school and last year I was granted with the opportunity to teach it! I thought that I would be teaching one period of it since it was a brand new course but to my surprise the demand for it was so great that I had 3 periods of it. So with the budget cuts being what they are in CA, I embarked on the adventure of teaching an A&P class with no textbook and a few models that I dug up out of the storage cabinets around the school. (These models consisted of 3 life size torsos that are so old the plastic is degrading, a skeleton that has fingers, teeth, and a leg missing, a heart, a kidney, and a lung chamber.) For the rest of the systems, I substituted in diagrams and ad hoc models (think a straw and some rubber bands to demonstrate a knee joint). Now, I am in year two of the program and was granted funding for textbooks but there are still many more supplies that are necessary for a high quality A&P class.
From my own experience taking A&P courses in college, I know that diagrams just don't cut it. Students need to be able to not only see but touch, manipulate and dissect life-like models of their own bodies. Imagine students working with a realistic model of a knee joint and then realizing what they witnessed in the model is exactly what their own knees do hundreds of times each day. Or through examining skull models, students discovering the amazing amount of structural changes that their skeletal system has undergone from before birth, through childhood and now as they approach adulthood.
Your help will make it possible for my students to further understand the wonder that is the human body and hopefully inspiring them towards furthering their education.
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