Ninth grade students in Larry Hollis’s Biology class got to experience dissection firsthand today. The students got to dissect a squid in pairs, meant to help them learn the structure of a highly developed animal.

“I think dissection is important because if you just look at diagrams all you see is lines. [With] dissection you get to make a hand-eye-brain connection,” said Hollis. “I think you can’t do everything virtually, because you’ll never get that immediate learning that you do hands-on.”

Students used scalpels, tweezers, and needles to take apart the squid’s body. They also completed a worksheet to go along with the experiment.

“It was so great because I got to learn about the inside of the squid,” said Holland Bakker (’17). “It was better than doing it virtually because you’re doing it, not someone else. I’d definitely do a dissection again.”