In addition to moving into new and advanced facilities last year, having a new class of freshman this year, and many new teachers on campus, there are also new courses offered in the Pine Crest curriculum. One of the new classes on campus is ­­­­Anatomy and Physiology I and II taught by Ms. O’Brien. Being an anatomy class, the curriculum primarily consists of studying the human body. Having just finished studying the human skin, students performed a lab on human fingerprints. Each student dipped her fingers in ink, pressed them onto the paper, and then compared her results with classmates.

Ms. O’Brien has structured her class to be a more hands-on experience where the students get to perform many different labs. Part of the class includes students studying their own, personal health. Soon, the class will be doing cardio, respiratory, and strength labs where they will calculate their own health and compare it to the national health average. Some of future labs include a tattoo lab where the students will dissect and tattoo pigs. They will also perform a muscular system active lab where students will participate in different levels of activity including jumping jacks and running, to measure their own efficiency levels. Also, Ms. O’Brien hopes to be able to take the students to watch a real life, human autopsy, but this idea has yet to be confirmed.

Senior Georgie Lopez is currently enrolled in the course and shared her opinion of the class; “You learn a lot of cool facts about the human body. We were able to look at our own fingerprints and soon we will be studying skin cancer and tattoos. I’m really glad I signed up because it is really interesting and very hands on”.

Overall, this course allows students to learn a lot about their own health and about the human body in general by participating in innovative experiments.