Thinking Back to 7th Grade Life Science

As I dropped my son off at summer camp at Cary Academy this morning, where he'll be participating in a half-day camp called "Biology Bash", it brought back memories of 7th grade life science in 1976-1977 at Carmel Junior High in Charlotte.

My teacher was named June Davenport. Mrs. Davenport was an older black woman, who happened to be the sister of the then-jailed Wilmington 10 member, Ben Chavis.

What I remember most is our frog dissection lesson. Everyone in the class paired up and were then given a stinky metal pan containing a dead frog complete, with a strong formaldehyde stench. It really didn't bother me cutting open the frog.

Now in most classes, the teacher would walk around the room reiterating to students on how they were to cut the frog open and the organs they needed to identify. The teacher would then stop at each pair and have each student point out the heart, stomach, liver, etc.

Mrs. Davenport was a little different. Okay, a lot different. She had us cut out all the organs and actually tape them to a sheet of paper. She had passed out a sheet of paper with an area for our name and then areas marked "Heart", "Stomach", "Lungs", etc. We actually got Scotchtape and taped these gooey organs to the paper and turned them in to be graded.

My brother Kevin had Mrs. Davenport several years later and she was still doing this. Kevin, ever the comedian, wrote the words "Extra Credit: Flipper" at the bottom of his form and firmly taped one of the frog's feet on the paper. When he got his paper back, he got an 110.

Way to go Kev. I should have thought of that.