By BRIAN PORTER/Managing Editor

They were probably already familiar with bacon, ham and sausage prior to Friday, but sixth-graders at Doris Cullins-Lake Pointe Elementary School gained a more complete understanding of swine.

In fact, they learned the four-legged farm animal is in fact not that different from them.

“One of the things we are responsible for teaching them is how organ systems and cells all relate,” said Katie Braden, a sixth grade science and math teacher.

The tradition of “Pig Day” at Cullins-Lake Pointe Elementary continued for the third straight year. Students dissected pig hearts and got up close and personal with a set of pig lungs, a liver and a gall bladder. They even gained a new understanding for the use of a gall bladder.

During a two-week study of the human body, the students were instructed on the different facets of the circulation system and how they work together with organs.

The fun came Friday as sixth-grade teachers introduced the students to different organs in the body. Owens Foods, which is headquartered at Spring Creek Farm in Richardson, donated 52 hearts, a pair of lungs and a liver from pigs for the project.

“The pig heart is at least twice the size of a human heart,” Braden said. “The students are able to see the valves and the vessels better. They are always surprised to see how large pig hearts are. You want to see them connect it with the picture of a human heart.”

The students begin with the heart examination, in which they are asked to identify the left and right sides of the heart, ventricles, atriums, four valves, heartstrings, arteries, veins and the aorta.

“Some of them will be gung ho and dive right in,” Braden said. “There are the few that turn green when they see it.”

The day serves as the first introduction to the inner workings of the body for students, who progress to dissecting a frog in seventh grade and then to biology classes.

“This is a beginning look at it for them,” Braden said. “It is one of those projects they remember.”

The students advance from the examination of the heart to learn about the liver and lungs from teacher Venus Britton and Cindy Knockel, R.N.

Britton explained the uses of the liver and showed students the process a human body goes through from the intake to the liver to the output in the gall bladder. Students then had the opportunity to see the lungs of a pig and Knockel used a medical air pump to inflate the lungs.

“What I hope they will take away from this is the importance of organs in the body,” Knockel said. “We follow up with how diseases and things they might intake like alcohol and tobacco might affect these organs. If they have seen these organs, then they might be able to apply it and make good decisions later in life. Hopefully, they will take away appreciation for healthy, working organs. I have a son who is a senior at Rockwall High School and he still says this was his favorite day of school.”

Before the study is complete, students have the opportunity to meet a heart transplant recipient. Elyssa Jacobs, a freshman at Rockwall-Heath High School, details how an organ donor saved her life 14 years ago along with her mother, Edie.

“We ask the students if they could save a life, would they,” Edie said. “We want them to learn the facts about organ donation.”

Elyssa is a donor program success story. She was on the donor list for just a week before receiving her transplant, but her doctors said she wouldn’t have lasted two more days without the transplant.

“I caught a disease and it caused my body to attack my heart,” she said. “It was killing the muscle in my heart.”

Edie indicates her daughter was lucky. She says 7,000 people are on the organ donor list in Texas and each day 17 of those on the national list will die because organs are not available. She tells students the decision to donate can save the life of 50 to 70 people through removal of organs and tissue.

“I only ask that they go home and talk it over with their parents,” Edie said. “They might make a decision that saves someone’s life.”