On March 8, 2024, Sterling High School once again got the chance to visit the National University of Health Sciences in Lombard, Ill. Science teacher Nicole Schlemmer has been taking her students on this cadaver field trip every year since 2015, with only taking the pandemic years off when the University was no longer allowing outside high school students to visit their campus. 

  This field trip is a great opportunity for students to get a hands-on learning experience to better understand what they’re learning in class. 

  Junior Presley Winters said, “This experience bettered my understanding of what we were learning in class when the professor was able to show us each individual part of the body thoroughly and being able to ask questions.” 

  The trip always involves a professor there presenting the body to students followed by an open session in which students can touch the body and organs with gloved hands, in addition to other samples around the room including a pair of lungs with a heart, a full knee replacement, a lateral section of the spinal cord and vertebrae, a liver and gallbladder, kidneys, and a brain. 

  Schlemmer said, “My personal favorite part of being able to take this trip is seeing how much fun the students have because it isn’t every day you get to view a body and touch its organs! I also love seeing the connections they make between what we learn in class and with the table, and a real once living human being.” 

  Anatomy teacher and students enjoy this experience for not only its educational purposes but also for the social bonding within their classmates.