By Haley Mitchell Godwin

Beverly Sport, Tammy Simms, Adrian Daniels, and Crenshaw County 11thgrade students who attended a countywide field trip to Panama City to visit Bodies – The Exhibition provided a presentation at the Crenshaw County Board of Education meeting held Sept. 12.

Sport, Sims, and Daniels are secondary science TEAMS instructors, all Nationally STEM certified, and teach anatomy. 

Bodies-The Exhibition is currently on display in Panama City, Florida. It features more than 275 real human bodies and specimens. The real bodies have been dissected and preserved, showcasing the bodies systems independently from the body. Exhibits include the complete nervous system, brain, lungs, sliced body segments, and more. 

Luverne student, Wyatt Cornette, attended the exhibit with Sport. Even though Cornette is not interested in the medical field, he said the trip was very interesting.

“It was like a textbook brought to life kind of experience, a once-in-a-lifetime trip,” he said.  “We were able to go around and apply things learned in the classroom right there in front of you.” 

Luverne student, Taylor Turner, was thankful to be able to go and not worry about COVID. 

“It was a great experience,” Turner said. “It was fun; it was a social thing where we can talk to people and get close to each other again on the bus, eat out in public, go places without a mask on or having to social distance. I made new friends; we became really close. It was a really nice experience and I’m very grateful I got to go.”

Madeline Jane Crowe, a Highland Home student, is planning to enter the medical field and thought the exhibit very educational.

“I want to be a psychiatrist,” Crowe said. “Whenever you enter into the exhibit, every bodily system was displayed in detail, including a child’s brain versus a fully-developed brain. That was very interesting to me. It was altogether a great opportunity.”

Samantha White, a Highland Home student who plans to be a nurse,  said she enjoyed comparing the normal healthy lungs to a smoker’s lungs and told the board she was thankful and grateful they could go.

Sport told the board the trip represented a return to normalcy.

“We got on the bus and the day after at school I heard kids talking about how cool it was in talking about it, talking about the exhibit itself, but the recurring theme was, ‘Mrs. Sport it felt so good to get out of school with my friends and we didn’t have to have a mask and it felt normal and it felt good,’” Sport said. “I started thinking – this is kind of like a healing thing. It had so much social and emotional value, healing well beyond the academic value. It was a win on all accounts, and we appreciate you guys (CCBOE) allowing us to take our kids.”

Sport said the Crenshaw Community Hospital made a generous donation and paid for the trip. 

“One more thing we were concerned about how we could financially make this happen for every single advanced kid in Crenshaw County,” Sport said. “So, we reached out to the hospital, and they very graciously wrote us a check and every single junior that is an advanced student did get to go on this trip and we are very appreciative for that community partnership.”

For more information on the exhibition, please visit www.bodieshuman.com.