Northwestern College (Orange City, Iowa)

I have been offering two types of Brain Awareness outreach events in northwest Iowa for 10+ years. These events are conducted under the auspices of a small interdisciplinary neuroscience program I started in 2004 here at Northwestern College (where I teach) called the Neuroscience and Persons (NAPs) Program. One outreach is the traditional BAW outreach during Brain Awareness Week in our local elementary school. For that I did my usual hands-on introduction to neuroscience for the three separate 5th grade science classes. After a brief interactive presentation on nervous system structure & function, students do a wide variety of hands-on learning experiences covering neurons, synapses and neurotransmitters all the way up to whole brain anatomy, physiology and neural diseases. Activities include looking at chemical models of neurotransmitters, lock & key manipulatives for synaptic/ neurotransmitter-receptor function, microscopic viewing of neurons, making model neurons out of Play-Doh, models of peripheral nerve structure, sheep brain dissections, study of a cadaver brain, spinal cord and other models, wiring students up for pulse monitoring, drawing the brain on swim caps, etc. Though not occurring during BAW, I also offer annual fieldtrips to the college (“Morning of Neuroscience & Cadaver Study”) for regional high school Human Anatomy & Physiology (A&P) classes. They involve cadaver-study and an introduction to neuroscience using a variety of age-level adjusted manipulatives as well as a visit to my neuroscience research lab. Approximately 4 high schools participate annually. We don’t do it during the scheduled BAW week because the A&P teachers prefer to do the fieldtrips at the end of the semester to review their A&P.

Often I have my undergraduate neuroscience research students, students in my neuroscience courses or undergraduate biology science ed majors from the college help with the outreaches. The teachers in the schools love the outreaches. Here is a sample of a thank you note I received from one of the teachers: “once again I want to sincerely thank you for your efforts, time and passion for giving us the “Neurology Day” opportunity… My students loved it! See you next year!” That says it all.

I use some of the same manipulatives and learning materials for both the 5th grade and also for the high school anatomy and physiology students. I even use them for my intro college general ed course in A&P and my human anatomy course when we are studying the nervous system. So if you put together a basic BAW program with a variety of materials and also teach biology courses at a college, you can use the materials for multiple purposes. I have also used them for educational neuroscience outreaches in public libraries as well. So once you have all these things, just store them in a readily accessible place (like storage tubs) and they are pretty much ready to go when you need them, thus reducing the work load associated with finding and collecting them together for your next outreach or classroom teaching session.