8th Grade Standards are Crap

8th Grade Standards are garbage.

Take Strand 4, Concept 2: Reproduction and Heredity.
PO 1: Explain the purposes of cell division (growth and repair, reproduction)
PO 2: Explain the basic principles of heredity using the human examples of: eye color, widow's peak, blood type.
PO 3: Distinguish between the nature of dominant and recessive traits in humans

And that's it. I can't just teach that! That's! Garbage! And not interesting! Yawn!
So instead, we talked about:

1. DNA and its location, shape, function, and how it fixes itself. Ligase, telomerase and all. The sugar phosphate backbone. The bases--adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. Histones. The discovery. Watson, Crick, Wilkins, Franklin and even Pauling. X-ray crystallography.
2. Genes. Their location. Sickle Cell Anemia. Mutations.
3. Chromosomes. Their location, number, variation in species, trisomy, male vs. female, how parents pass on different genes to their children. Chromosomal disorders.
4. Proteins. RNA's job. Ribosome's job. Receptor proteins. Structural proteins. Enzymes. The similarities and differences between RNA and DNA. mRNA, tRNA. Codons. Translation. Transcription. Replication.
5. Heredity. Zygotes. Sperm and Egg. The endless possibilities. In vitro and the crazy octuplet mom. Fraternal vs. Identical twins. Conjoined twins.
6. Traits. Acquired vs. Inherited. Physical. Behavioral. Gene-linked medical conditions. The impact of the environment and choices on us. Medical predispositions. Alleles. Dominant. Recessive. Homozygous versus heterozygous. Incomplete dominance. How much we have in common. Mendel. Punnet squares. Genotype vs. Phenotype. Tongue rolling to widow's peaks to hitch hiker thumbs.
7. Crazy shit. The spider goat. The human genome project. Cloning. Genetic engineering.

AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN COMPLAIN.
Of course, I'm sure all of it didn't stick. But that's okay!!!

Because.
Look at the.
HS Standards:
PO 1: Analyze the relationships among nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) genes and chromosomes.
PO 2: Describe the molecular basis of heredity, in viruses and living things, including DNA replication and protein synthesis.
PO 3: Explain how genotypic variation occurs and results in phenotypic diversity.
PO 4: Describe how meiosis and fertilization maintain genetic variation.

They will thank me later.