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STEPHEN HEGARTYA gifted science teacher mixes science and Valentine's Day - and has students try their hands at dissecting a pig's heart.
LAND O'LAKES - Seventh-grader Kirsten McColl, 12, squinted. She wrinkled her nose, then looked away for a moment.
Standing nearby, science teacher Stephan Brown held up a large purplish-gray pig's heart. He pulled apart the moist, meaty blob, showing that it was sliced neatly into sections. He stuck his index finger inside a ventricle and wiggled it around. Kirsten and her classmates stared, transfixed.
"Mr. Brown, do me a favor," Kirsten said.
"What's that?" Mr. Brown said.
"Go wash your hands," she said. "I'm serious. Wash your hands."
Brown wore the satisfied smile of a teacher who knows how to push students' gross-out tolerance and stimulate their sense of wonder all at the same time. Yes, he would wash his hands (several times, actually), but first he had a bucket full of pig hearts ready for cutting.
Friday was the perfect day for it. For the eighth-graders, the FCAT science test is just ahead. Brown just covered lessons on the circulatory system.
And Friday was the day before Valentine's Day.
Students came to class with heart-shaped lollipops in their mouths. Girls wore T-shirts with cutesy little red hearts on them. Brown gleefully took the opportunity to give his students a real peek inside that iconic hunk of flesh that beats within us all.
It may be the favorite image of Hallmark cards and song lyrics. Perhaps absence does make it grow fonder. But ultimately it's an ugly blob of meat and muscle. It's a simple pump that will squirt if you squeeze the right spot.
Before breaking the students into groups of three for the dissection lab, Brown gave a few pointers, using a sliced up heart from an earlier class.
"This is structurally very similar to the human heart," he said. The goal was to identify the distinct parts: the aorta and the right and left ventricles. "You might have to pull it apart. You might have to put your finger inside it."
Hearing groans from many in the class, Brown paused. "Oh, that's right, you just ate lunch," he said. "Well, I hope you had a heart-y meal." More groans.
Before the dissections started, several kids in each class were squeamish and wanted nothing to do with it. Most came around.
Chelsea Williams, 14, pressed the scalpel to the heart, but the resistance grossed her out. She tried to cut without looking. Wisely, classmates Amy Null, Katie Ryan and Kirsten, all 12 years old, insisted she actually look while she sliced.
Amy discovered "it's like cutting frozen meat." Kirsten observed that "it's like a puzzle the way it goes together. A big, meaty puzzle."
Within minutes, Chelsea's curiosity got the better of her squeamishness. She took off her plastic gloves and pulled the heart apart with both hands. "I want to see what's inside. I want to see how it works."
After her group sliced up the pig heart, eighth-grader Lizzy Piurowski, 14, looked at the slices of purplish-gray pork on the tray before her. It looked nothing like the shape on her classmates' shirts.
"This kind of kills all the romance of the heart stuff, doesn't it," Lizzy said. "But," she added, "it is kind of cool."
- Stephen Hegarty can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is hegarty@sptimes.com