Greene County eighth grade science teacher Gerry Stein got to step back and watch someone else teach last Tuesday as Jefferson veterinarian Mark Peters did the culminating lesson of a unit on vertebrates. As he has for the past three years, Peters dissected a piglet for the classes. The piglet had died in transport to a local producer; the producer saved it in the freezer until the class was ready.
Students were intent as Peters showed organs, related swine anatomy to that of other animals and humans, and kept up a steady conversation with the students. No students shied away when Peters said, “Come up close. You can’t see,” as he removed a kidney.
Stein welcomes Peters to his classroom. “He does a good job keeping it at an eighth grade level. He takes all their questions and incorporates a lot of information,” Stein said.
Peters said he likes his day at school. “The kids are attentive because it’s real life. It’s what I do, and they know that,” he said. “You can’t get the same appreciation for something by looking at a text book,” he added.
It was Peters’ fifth classroom dissection. The first year he dissected a fetal deer that Stein acquired after pregnant deer was killed in an accident.
Eighth graders do their own dissections of frogs and earthworms during the year.
