My students need 12 Carolina Sheep Hearts. With 12 sheep hearts, we are able to perform a dissection from 4-6x over the school year. The heart model provides a more engaging study tool for daily use.
I teach in an Alternative Education Program that is home to roughly 130 students between the ages of 14-18 from various communities in Southeastern Michigan. Our school/program offers many students a "second chance" and the opportunity, tools, and support to pursue their high school diploma with the goal of attending a higher learning institution or trade school.
My students are some of the most resilient people I have ever met.
Many have faced and overcome numerous obstacles in their lives such as poverty, homelessness, lack of to nonexistent parental support, drug abuse within the home, traumatic events, loss of a parent/sibling, learning disabilities, etc. Despite these events, my students have a positive outlook on life and understand that by being in our alternative program, they are making an active choice in improving their quality of life and putting themselves on a path to success.
Our staff takes pride in developing positive and meaningful relationships with our students. Within the program, we hope to not only provide a community that students can grow and develop within, but also a time and place of stability that might not exist outside the school day.
My Project
On the first day of the semester, it is not very long before one of my students stops me in my overview of the syllabus and asks, "When will we be dissecting?" Dissection day is definitely considered the highlight of the course and something my students look forward. We have used the Carolina sheep hearts before and my students loved them. With 12 hearts, we can perform 4 to 6 dissections over the course of the school year. In addition, the hearts can be used-post dissection for anatomical identification questions on a summative assessment (test).
The donations to this project will help to improve my students' understanding of the heart by bringing the material to life.
In addition, it will provide a once-in-a-lifetime hands-on experience.
The heart model will be a valuable tool to both myself and my students. Currently, we do not have any models in the classroom and must rely on the text and internet resources. With the model, it will provide a hands-on tool that students can observe and analyze. Also, students will be able to use this tool to study and assess their ability to identify the various parts of the heart. Many of my students have mentioned they would like to pursue careers in the medical field and by having access to these tools now will give them an advantage at the next step in their educational journey.
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