Biology, The Science of Life
“Each of my students is an investigator of the future.” - Francesca Fuoco

Located in the Northern skirts of Montreal in the suburban town of Sunnydale, Science Academy is the home to 500 academically overachieving students who have a passionate love for the sciences. Science Academy is a private high school whose goal is to nurture and foster bright young minds into the future leaders of the next generation. My advanced biology classroom harvests the minds of approximately 20 grade 9 students and challenges them to think beyond the course material. From dissecting a pig fetus to understanding and analyzing scientific articles and to using recent technologies to complete assignments, students are given the opportunity to witness biology in real life. This unit plan, “Biology, The Science of Life”, is compromised of lessons regarding mostly the mechanisms of human biology and the impact science has on society. There are brief introductions to different mechanisms and processes of life in other organisms but they will not be covered in these 10 lessons. I feel that in order to be a great scientist, one must not only know the scientific material but must be aware of how science affects society. It is important to understand how society will react to advances in technologies and it is also crucial for society to be aware of the science that is presented to them. My goal in creating these lessons is to subject my students to human biology and engage them in topics regarding science in society so they can get a complete understanding of science from different perspectives (scientists and society). I am hopeful that this will provide my students the full understanding of what science is actually about; that is not solely composed of memorization. This class is taught in an authoritative fashion, meaning the instructor lectures for the duration of the class. There is, however, a component of the course which is geared towards group discussions when analyzing scientific discoveries and the impact science has on society through various media. 
My classroom’s foundations are be the Big Bang Theory proposed by George Lemaitre and the Theory of Evolution anticipated by Darwin. Students in my classroom are required to have an open mind, where they are directed towards the reality of the world: the sciences. An analogy of my educational philosophy is a conversation between Neo and Morpheus from the master-mind production "The Matrix", when Morpheus asks him to choose between the blue pill or the red pill (i.e. ignorance versus truth). I want my students to follow me as I teach them the incredible truth about the world surrounding us, like Neo follows Morpheus to learn the truth about his world. By truth, I mean the fundamental mechanisms of life. Morpheus mentions to Neo: “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself” (Matrix, 1999). Fortunately for us, electron microscopes allow us to see the matrix of our world for ourselves.
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