A Teacher's Day

The day in the life of an inner city large urban school district teacher after the high stakes testing ends and there is still three more months left before summer vacation.

Name:
Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States

I have taught school for over thirty years always in the inner city and for the most part always upper grade students. I have two children and I have been married for twenty years.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Dissecting a Pig's Stomach

My class and I explored the texture and inside and out of a pig stomach today. I asked the class to divide themselves into eight groups of four. Then I passed out safety razors and a few forceps, paper towels and sections of two pig stomachs.

Of course, there were a lot of anguished noises of disgust. A lot of grosses and eeews, but in the end every table had their section of the pig laid out on the paper towel in front of them and fairly soon—even though there was noise—everyone was hard at work.

There were rules. How to handle the safety razor (but we did this rule many times before). No talking at all when the teacher is giving directions. Handle the skin carefully. If you don’t want to participate, you don’t have to, but it would be nice if you would still watch.

And it went well. The students entered into the stomach, checked out the lining, studied the texture and strength of the stomach and generally enjoyed themselves.

I plan to do it again tomorrow with my seventh grade class.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd like to thank you for the link to one of my posts. Sounds like the kids definitely got into their pig stomach dissection. I can imagine how difficult it can be to capture their collective interest and keep hold of it.

8:10 AM  

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