Patty Fahringer, Instituto de Provo

marzo 5th, 2025 /
Spencer Tuinei /
CTE, Noticias, Provo High, Escuelas, Escuelas Secundarias

Provo High School’s Patty Fahringer teaches anatomy as the best teachers do: as scaffolding for resilience, for building self-belief. With Fahringer, students memorize skeletal systems and organs, of course, but in her classroom, they experience the discomforts of learning and face challenges that precede real growth.

“I think it’s one of the hardest classes on our campus,” Fahringer says. “A few students drop the course by the semester mark, but the rest who stay find themselves pushed to limits they didn’t know they had. I tell them to keep going. And, in the end, we get to look back and say, ‘You didn’t give up. That’s how you got that A.”

It is ironic in a course partially examining how one strengthens joints, builds muscle, that Fahringer similarly hones her own teaching philosophy in similar terms: she tears down misconceptions and rebuilds knowledge with accuracy and confidence. Or, maybe, it’s perfectly fitting.

“We start small; we start with the basics,” she explains, focusing first on terminology, the vocabulary of the body. From there, it’s about connections to prior knowledge: “I do a lot of, ‘Hey, remember this?’ And try to go back to past lessons they’d have had to compare and connect. I believe connections are how they will learn it best.”

Connections are, in fact, how we learn: connections to prior knowledge help you memorize, as the brain stores information in networks, not isolation, strengthening recall through linked neural pathways. It’s a time-tested associative process supported by neuroscience and schema theory, old hat to those familiar with teaching pedagogy, neuroscience– old hat if you’re Fahringer.

And another battle-worn teaching method involved hands-on manipulatives– manipulable enhance retention by engaging multiple senses and activating different brain regions, strengthening neural connections, and making learning more memorable. Fahringer, then, uses literal hands-on learning, too. Her favorite units are similarly those where the abstract becomes tangible. The skeletal and muscular system units are ideal for hands-on learning, as literally familiar as, well, the back of your hand. “They can see it, apply it,” she says. “It ends up being the student’s favorite unit most years too.”

Her background as an athletic trainer offers a blueprint for real-world application: she has insights for career readiness, fieldwork, you name it.

In sports medicine classes, she relishes teaching injury mechanics, not for the shock value, but for the practical wisdom: “Getting the kids to understand the anatomy, how injuries occur, and how they can protect themselves– that’s the goal.”

Fahriner notes that some lessons stick longer than others, not because they’re easier but because they matter. Fahringer recalls a former student who reached out after getting into medical school: “I’m here now, but it all started in your class,” they shared.

It’s a paradox at the heart of Fahringer’s teaching: the challenges students resist today are those they will later cherish.

Thank you, Fahringer, for building bonds with students and staff alike and for instilling the time-honored tenets in our kids: resilience, self-assurance, an eye for mastery. We’re thankful now and will be more thankful than ever in the coming years. Thanks for raising up the youth of Provo.