State education department offers organ donation curriculum


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Nevada teachers and students will have access to a new statewide curriculum about the importance of organ, eye and tissue donation through a joint effort between Nevada Donor Network and the Nevada Department of Education.

The NDE will use the online learning platform Canvas to inform middle and high school students about registering as donors and assist teachers, NDN community development partner liaison Kimberly Flores said.

“We’ve been putting together a grassroots campaign and doing hour-and-a-half-long presentations with the students,” Flores said. “It’s impossible to go to every middle and high school … but our goal has been to make a curriculum accessible where teachers don’t have to worry about putting all the pieces together and they have one mechanism to do it.”

State law requires organ, eye and tissue donation be taught in middle and high school health education classes. Using Canvas, district staff members can offer students current statistics, information about the donation process and stories about local donors and recipients. Ultimately, students will decide whether to become donors when they visit the Department of Motor Vehicles when they apply for a driver’s license.

Teachers can distribute pamphlets and hold discussions with students, and there is flexibility for teachers to shape plans into their needs through games or homework assignments. Students learn about the donation process, donating organs, tissues and corneas, how to register and about the myths and misconceptions surrounding donation.

Carrie McGill, who has taught health and physical education for 27 years at Douglas High School, has spoken about organ donation with her students and hosted Flores in her classrooms.

“As far as what the kids and community gets from this, hopefully more people will get hearts on their driver’s license to be donors,” McGill said. “My kids are 14 and 15, and right now, if they go into the DMV, they have to decide to be organ and tissue donors and they don’t know what it means.”

McGill said when she asks students in her classes who would want to be donors, about five initially raise their hands and once they learn about the process, about 75% of the total classroom will make the choice.

Andrew Snyder, health and physical education specialist for the NDE and a former Washoe County School District health teacher, said the department is happy to provide support with implementation at the local level to help align content with the NRS.

It also often takes time for educators to become familiar with new content before or during a school year before embedding it into their teaching or current platforms, he said.

“Teachers have been teaching organ and tissue donation since the regulation passed (in 2017),” Snyder said. “The following school year that it passed, resources and materials were to help implement new regulations etc., but it’s really providing technical support and professional opportunities especially with the use of Canvas all districts have access to canvas now.

Aspects of health curriculum can be made more relevant by including real-world decisions students eventually will make as they mature, Snyder said.

“The neat thing about health education is it’s very relatable to kids with a topic about organ and tissue donation,” he said. “They can see it in the real world. With health, it’s in the here and now. Everything is applicable and shows how it can be registered, and the curriculum isn’t to sway kids one way or another. It’s to inform them and provide the facts.”