Ms. Yun is a biology teacher at R. C. Palmer Secondary School. She teaches Grades 8 to 12. Biology 8, 9, and 10 are not individual courses. Instead, it is a unit that is part of the main course, also known as Science. Biology 11 and 12, however, are advanced courses, therefore separate from other fields of science. One is Life Sciences 11, and the other being Anatomy and Physiology 12. ​

 

You might wonder how Biology 11 is different from Biology 12.

 

"Life Sciences 11," Ms. Yun says, "focuses on evolution, animals, plants, and how organisms adapt to their environments. Students get to go through many different phyla, classes, and families of animals and plants."

 

She goes on to say, "Biology 12, however, focuses on human anatomy and its many different body systems," as the name suggests. 

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Students take Ms. Yun's biology classes because they are interested in this subject and would like a career in that field.

 

The teacher says, ​"Biology is very tangible, which also means it connects directly to life, since you get to encounter living things every day."

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Students say the videos Ms. Yun shows them are very cool. It features animals and organisms you don't usually see in everyday life. They also enjoy connecting everything into an evolutionary story. A few report dissections are the highlights of the course and extremely engaging. 

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Ms. Yun explains that there are many careers connected to biology. If students intend to study and work in that area, they can go into research, microbiology labs, or several other healthcare positions, like nursing and medicine practitioners. Other people might pursue zoology, veterinary work, and other animal-related fields. So if you really like animals and would love to work with them, biology is the way to go. 

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In Ms. Yun's class, dissections are held in several grades. Students in Grade 8 get to dissect an eye. In Life Sciences 11, students have dissected various different creatures, including squid, sea stars, rats, frogs, and earthworms. Ms. Yun also mentions that labs like dissections are privileges; only students who follow safety rules, procedures, and teacher instructions to carefully execute the lab are allowed and able to participate. 

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​​​​​​​​​​​Students are kept engaged in class because Ms. Yun values variety in learning. She thinks that by applying variation to her teaching, will allow students to learn better and take in more. For examples, Ms. Yun uses videos, guided notes, diagrams, readings, lessons from the textbook, and real-world application lectures. 

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Ms. Yun says, "I'm always there to interact with them, like answering questions, starting discussions, giving them time individually to work on projects, and of course, getting labs for them to do."

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Student learning and progress are assessed using quizzes, tests, projects, and labs. Paperwork examinations are a must; it checks your overall understanding of the course material. Hands-on experiences and work are also taken into account because some students learn better that way. 

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Biology impacts everybody's daily lives. It helps us appreciate the world around us and understand interactions between living things and ecosystems. It connects to everybody's health, nutrition, medicine, and even bacteria in our own bodies. Most importantly, though, is how it makes us realize humans' impact on the environment. 

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While being fun and all, biology can sometimes be difficult. Ms. Yun recalls that students have trouble differentiating between very small concepts, like genetics and chromosomes, and very large concepts, like evolutionary processes. Memorization is also sometimes an issue for students, especially in anatomy, which has a lot of terms. 

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Ms. Yun encourages students to not worry, "Students shouldn't take memorization too seriously in this course. I think it's more important to understand how everything on Earth works together. That's the key."

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Lastly, Ms. Yun states that biology is super important. There are living things all around us and so understanding biology helps us understand life better. There are still a lot of things for us to discover, and if you're curious, you can find out yourself by studying life itself. 

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You can watch the full interview below.