Valley’s Spurrell will retire after 21 years bringing science to life
Kathy Spurrell, inside her lab-style classroom at Hermosa Valley, retires this week after 21 years in the district. Photo Last Friday afternoon, students in Kathy Spurrell’s seventh-grade science class were watching a brief segment of a video about the human body and sloughed off their post-lunch grogginess when they saw a man missing the top of his head. A brain surgery patient was being kept awake during a surgery to remove a small tumor so that surgeons could periodically ask him basic questions, in order to make sure that they weren’t harming the part of his brain that helps with language. The patient could be kept awake, students learned, because the brain lacks pain receptors. When the video concluded, a student raised his hand with a question. “Why would that be? From a biological perspective, it would seem like the system that would most need pain receptors?” the student asked. Other students disagreed, and Spurrell let the debate continue for a while. Then, sensing that the students were drifting, she managed to bring them back without quite dulling their excitement. She steered the discussion toward healthy foods for the brain, diseases that attack it, and even the…
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