Ganado High students put hands on biomedical science

Posted by Christopher S. Pineo | Apr 28, 2016 | Education |

Navajo Times | Adron Gardner
Khana Slivers grafts a clay representation of the thyroid gland to a mannequin during a bio-medical assignment in Chris McNabb’s class at Ganado High School April 19.

A student rolled clay in her fingers as the teacher stopped at her lab table with a word of advice – she had sculpted the pituitary gland too large.

During the Human Body Systems class at Ganado High School on April 19, sophomore Leshauna Brown explored the anatomy of the human body as she sculpted glands using clay and placed them into the side-view split skeleton model. Students represented each gland and parts of the brain with different colored clay.

After science teacher Chris McNabb advised her that the pituitary gland was too large, she pulled the yellow clay gland from the model, pulled off a little clay, looked at her laptop to get the shape right, resculpted the gland, and put it back in place. She said the act of sculpture helped her understand the material presented in the class.

“When you do it on the sculpture, you do it by yourself,” she said.

For Brown that made the concept more concrete and easier to understand than if someone else explained it. Having sculpted the pituitary gland and placed it on the model, she learned exactly where in the human anatomy it fit.

For her lab partner Talia Yazzie, also a sophomore, looking the information up online using her laptop made the process of identifying the glands more accessible. If the first diagram she found she found online didn’t make sense, she could look it up on another website and find a different diagram. She said the process helped her understand better than if the instructor provided material or limited research to one website.