A new way of learning biology Social impact course takes hands-on approach

By Amitha Nair | Staff Writer

Different from any other class, Biology, Impact, and the Zoo is a permanent social impact class that involves researching an issue, designing a product and presenting the product in a Shark Tank.

Five years ago, Laura Day, Executive Director of the Institute for Social Impact, and Brandi Finazzo, Upper School Science Teacher, worked together to come up with new ways to change a typical biology class to allow students to learn while integrating a real-world aspect.

One of the many differences that sets this class apart from the standard biology class is the partnership with the Dallas Zoo.

“Partnering with them and building relationships with their experts helps to expand the experiences of the students involved and increase the number of unique perspectives contributing to the solution design process,” Finazzo said. “The incredibly informative field trip to the Dallas Zoo each fall really sets the stage for our Design Thinking work.”

This partnership gave both teachers an outline of how the course would be set up. The Dallas Zoo had something similar, Zoo Core, which Day and Finazzo took into consideration when creating and finalizing this course.

Currently, the students’ solution are in the prototype stage. They are starting to create a product that will be presented in a style reflecting the show “Shark Tank, “where one group will win among all the groups. After the class ends, students who still want to continue their topic are able to do so.

A past group who focused on the disposal of refrigerators, one of the top pollutants in our world, has been and still is working on this topic.

“Our students set out to design a QR code that will go on every refrigerator sold, so when your refrigerator is done and you’re getting rid of it, you can scan it and there would be a way to scan it and use it,” Day said. “The EPA, which is the Environmental Protection Agency, met with them and applied their idea to EPA standards so they can have the QR code going on a good amount of refrigerators; because of this project they are pushing to have it mandated on all refrigerators.”

Currently, there are many groups who focus on ideas such as fast fashion, sustainable grocery shopping, misrepresentation of animals, conflicts around trash and abuse toward animals. The students are in the prototyping and design pitch stage, where they produce a physical and practical product to combat these issues.

“My group has worked very hard to factor expense, ease of use and functionality in our prototype that prevents animals from getting into trash,” Elena Zeballos, a junior focusing on animal-proof trash cans, said.

These activities have inspired Lower School to follow a simpler version of this social impact project. Upper School students currently enrolled in this class helped the Lower School students with ideas and how to execute them similar to their class and prototypes.

“The third graders are working through a reduced version of the design thinking protocol for a part of their social studies class with Mrs. Miller,” Finazzo said. “They will be participating in the same pitch workshop which will assist with their own pitch design coming up later this spring as well as to help brainstorm ideas with older students.”

Although this class is promoted as an out-of-classroom experience, there are still labs to ensure that students are getting the same practice and education about labs similar to other biology courses.

This course is a mixture of biology and social impact, learning more about the world on a molecular scale as well as in the eyes of a problem solver.

“It‘s applying biology as opposed to just learning it, I think that is the magic to the whole thing,” Day said.