By Brian Zahn- New Haven Register
There’s a lot about the digestive system that Celentano third graders Rachael Osei-Bonsu and Javaeh Denby said they didn’t know.
This conversation took place as Creed High School sophomores Ssanyu Rogers and Jamar Crawford were in their classroom recently and reading a book on how the digestive system works as part of a partnership between the schools, part of a larger program through which Creed students become Celentano teachers for a day.
“Your belly stretches so food can fit in,” Rachael said she learned.
“I learned there’s a long pipe to your stomach, and it’s big,” Javaeh said, referencing her first classroom exposure to the idea of an esophagus.
Ssanyu cleared up another misconception for one of Rachael and Javaeh’s classmates: the small intestine might be called small because it’s narrow, but it’s actually quite long.
Robin Miller Godwin, past president of the New Haven alumnae chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, said there are also some gaps in knowledge about health among adults who learned about esophaguses long ago.
“Among black women, heart disease is the silent killer for us because the symptoms are different,” she said, for example.
For four years, the sorority has helped coordinate the partnership between Creed and Celentano as part of its participation in the American Heart Association’s Go Red! campaign.
“This gives us an opportunity to touch the lives of boys and girls who we don’t deal with usually,” Miller Godwin said.
Read more at NHRegister-March 4, 2018