Dental Students for a Day
They carefully went through the motions of washing their hands. They donned gloves, masks, and gowns. They reviewed their instrument tray.
Then they examined their walnuts.
The 80 third-graders from the Blackstone School who visited BUSDM Tuesday were getting a hands-on lesson about sealants. During a trip to the Simulation Learning Center, the children learned about oral health, with the grooved walnuts standing in for teeth. Children had two walnuts at their workstations, one sealed in nail polish.
“Ewwww,” they squealed when they covered the nuts with a stomach-churning concoction of Doritos, soda, crackers, and other junk food prepared earlier by Kathy Lituri, clinical instructor. After cleaning off the walnuts, of course, the sealed one retained much less of the gooey mixture. The message: junk food is bad for your teeth.
One bright and enterprising girl ventured to ask whether, if she got sealants, she could eat all the junk food she wanted. Lituri’s answer was an emphatic “no.” She said just the back teeth are sealed and that junk food is bad for one’s general health as well.
The annual fieldtrip aims to expose underserved children to the profession of dentistry while educating them about oral health. BUSDM participants in the morning field trip included Elliot Arnold, Dr. Marta Becker, Corinna Culler, Dee Devlin, Dr. Mark Ferreiro, Dr. Carmen Garcia, Neha Garge, Natalie Hagel, Brenda Heaton, Michael Hoge DMD 07, Hardik Kapadia DMD 07, Christine Keeves, Dr. Miguel Tabares, Sheree Norquist, Meg Ryan, Thayer Scott, Harpreet Singh, and Xi Sun DMD 07.