Around 80 students Sept. 16 headed to the Performing Arts Center lobby, where AP Psychology teachers Zachary Garrison and Meg Kaupp led students to St. Louis University for what they consider to be one of their most engaging activities of the year – dissecting sheep brains.

“I love this field trip because it’s so hands-on,” Garrison said. “It allows you to actually interact with the

basics of the brain. Even though we’re working with sheep brain, it still gives us this opportunity to look [and] see what’s going on underneath the surface. We also get to look at [a] human brain specimen, which is really amazing.”

The students gathered in a large lab where they each had their own sheep brain to dissect, following the detailed instructions of one of Saint Louis University’s high school outreach professionals. Throughout the dissection, the instructor gave detailed descriptions of the various parts of the brain that the students are working with, connecting them to the human brains the students are learning about in their AP Psychology classes. 

“It was really informative,” Silas Baltzell (11) said. “[It was a] very good hands-on experience getting to see a brain and getting a demo of a human brain. I really liked going to SLU and getting to see a lab, auditorium and everything else there.”