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Bonnie Berenger (shown above with daughters Eden Brook and Dakota
Brynn and her sister's dog, Maceo) brought non-dissection biology
classes to her high school in New Jersey. |
Bonnie Berenger used to fill her
classroom with live animals: an iguana, a chameleon, gerbils, mice,
even a rat saved from becoming a snake's dinner at a local pet
store. Students often brought her their cast-offs. She cared for
them all, transporting the animals back and forth to her home on
weekends, holidays and vacations, and weaving them into as many
lesson plans as possible. In addition to her post as biology teacher
at Hunterdon Central High School in Flemington, N.J., Berenger
volunteered to be the advisor to the school's environmental club.
When it came time to lead laboratory
class dissections of frogs or fetal pigs, however, she quickly
reached a point of saturation. "I saw many unethical practices
occurring in other science classrooms, and morally, I just couldn't
do it anymore," says Berenger, who notes that
she observed students violating animals with scalpels and dissecting
probes. A growing number of students expressed to her that they were
bothered and discouraged by the process, too. This compelled her to
find out how other students felt, and the more teenagers she spoke
to, the more obvious it became that Hunterdon High needed a
non-dissection biology course.
So, in 2000, Berenger and a
colleague designed one. They used a virtual CD program, movies,
human plastic models that students can take apart and manipulate,
and interactive labs in which students test human functions, such as
heart rates. After a few months, they won the support of their
supervisor. Moreover, the course quickly became more popular than
the traditional biology course at Hunterdon High, and has earned the
reputation that, "if you take non-dissection, you learn more."
Around the same time that Berenger
began teaching only non-dissection biology courses, she made the
decision not to have live animals in her classroom and brought them
all home instead. "I feel that seeing an animal caged devalues the
organism and encourages control over the species. It perpetuates the
idea that you can take an animal out of its ecosystem, give it food
and water, and that's okay. "Take gerbils, for example. What is
their natural habitat? Where do they come from? What are their
natural behaviors?" she asks. The first image that comes
to mind for most of us is not the desert, but a glass tank furnished
with shavings, a few toys and a wheel.
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Non-dissection high school biology classes can include hands-on
activities, such as examining microorganisms through a microscope or
manipulating real-life plastic models. |
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Currently, New Jersey's science
standards are molecular-based. Consequently, students spend a great
deal of time learning about DNA, protein synthesis and genetics.
"That fosters a huge disconnect between themselves and the natural
world," Berenger says. She worries that "students have lost any
tangible understanding of their world, and the neighbors with whom
they share it." Instead, she explains, "they are forced to
abstractly dissect these creatures without even an appreciation for
the organism's niche within the fine threads that weave us all
together in the same web."
To counter this perception,
Berenger teaches a unit on bioethics that focuses on the use of
animals in research. She also takes her students outside as often as
possible. Her school has a stream and pond that are just right for
performing macro-invertebrate studies and contemplating the effect
that humans have on what Berenger refers to as our "shared" spaces,
which are often visited by white-tailed deer, heron, snapping
turtles and flocks of Canada geese.
With 12 years of experience in the
field, Berenger has a piece of advice for teachers who are
interested in making similar changes: "Let your reputation speak for
itself. If you are a solid teacher who can remain objective in the
classroom, then your students, parents, peers and administrators
will support you. Present factual, unbiased information and you will
be fine."
The Digital Frog
 More and more teachers are turning to technology in the biology
classroom, to the benefit of both students and animals.
Incorporating features such as full-screen video, animation and
interactive quizzes, newly released version 2.5 software from
Digital Frog International allows middle school to college-aged
students to "open up" a frog with a digital scalpel, as well as see
how a live frog's body works. A section on ecology provides a
valuable reminder that biology is the study of living organisms.
The Digital Frog program also
includes a comprehensive section that teaches amphibian anatomy and
physiology, with human anatomy comparisons. In fact, a recent study
by Ph.D.
candidate Christine Youngblut concluded that the virtual model is
more effective than hands-on dissection in teaching students about
the frog's anatomy. To learn more about this wonderful
software, please visit
www.digitalfrog.com. |
