DAISY STEM

Each issue, The Fourcast highlights a student who has accomplished something in the STEM world or a special event that is STEM-related.

By Caroline Petrikas | Managing Editor

Centered on the function and structure of human and animal body systems, the Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy course emphasizes hands-on learning through its sheep, shark and pig dissections.

In the semester biology class, students explore evolutionary adaptations for all the vertebrate classes, starting with the aquatic origins of life and continuing through terrestrial organisms, including mammals.

“While students are learning human anatomy and physiology, they’re learning about themselves as mammals,” Upper School science teacher Brandi Finazzo said. “Then, they dissect fish to see, feel and understand the differences and similarities of aquatic and terrestrial beings.”

Finazzo said she decided to teach the course because of her passion for anatomy and physiological biology. Since then, she has shaped it to reflect her passions, talents and clinical background.

“When I took over the class, it was a more traditional course where students would do three dissections and then compare them,” Finazzo said. “While dissection was the only hands-on way students learned then, I have tried to incorporate minilabs and demos in with the dissection series to make the course more engaging and to cover more material.”

At the beginning of the semester, the class concentrated on anatomy basics and terminology but then transitioned to full-time dissections.

“We spent a long time nailing down anatomy basics and definitions, but once we got that out of the way, every class has dissections,” senior Jordan Hanna said. “Now, the second we get to class, we get to immediately put on lab coats, resume our dissections and continue examining the organs.”

The course’s emphasis on dissection allows students to compare different creatures from a hands-on perspective and understand different organs’ roles in keeping an organism alive and in homeostasis.

“When you can feel the shape and texture of a shark’s stomach, you can then infer the texture and feel of a human stomach without actually holding it,” Finazzo said. “ It gives us an opportunity in the moment to really compare the two.”

“We made sure to make edits that would keep the assembly feeling like a ‘call in’ to a conversation rather than a ‘call out’ on anyone,” Kocsis said.

Her goal as a facilitator in the assembly was to ensure the student body could hear about others’ experiences and understand how words can have lasting effects. She said she hopes students and faculty members will develop empathy, compassion and perspective for the experiences of others.

“Any time you hear someone tell a story about the ways they are hurting, it’s difficult,” Kocsis said. “We all have space for growth and the ability to do better, and being gifted with such personal stories should encourage us all to do so.”

Currently, students are focusing on the dogfish shark and studying the different cavities in the shark, their functions, and their similarities to human anatomy.

“It was fascinating to dissect the dogfish sharks because we cut open their stomachs and we could see what their last meals were,” Hanna said. “We got to see one that had a giant school of fish and another that had an eel in it.”

The dissections and comparisons are some students’ favorite parts.

“Being able to notice and compare the same systems and organs in different organisms has been really interesting,” junior Mabry Dawson said.