When the special visitor walked into Matt Spearing’s AP Environmental Sciences classroom on Friday, she had to pause for a moment. The room, with its lab tables, late afternoon light filtering through the windows, and fish swimming in a small tank, felt very familiar.

This was the same Scott Hall room was where Melissa Dore ’86—who now works at the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography in Florida—first began her journey into biology.

“Thirty-four years ago, this is where I sat,” said Ms. Dore, the director of academic support and administration at Nova Southeastern University’s Halmos College. “I did my first shark dissection in that classroom. And a lamprey eel.”

On Friday, Ms. Dore returned to Scott to talk to AP Environmental Sciences class about sea turtles. She then headed over to Elizabeth Kay’s biology class for a marine animal version of “what am I?”

Along the way, Ms. Dore shared quick facts about turtle eggs (oil will kill them), sting rays (can’t see what they eat), the gulf stream (it’s fast), and sharks (you have a better chance of being squished by a soda machine than eaten by one).

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Mastering Inuit throat signing is a tricky business, and has a tendency to produce a lot of laughter. Thankfully, messing it up is part of the point.

As Brad Wells, artistic director and founder of Roomful of Teeth, explained to the Caterwaulers and Widdigers during a recent master class, the technique is deceptively simple, and yet wonderfully complex.

To do it right, the breathy, guttural, and rhythmic style—traditionally part of a one-upmanship game played between two Inuit women—needs to be staggered by a half second between a pair of singers.

“Normally, this game is meant to break down,” Mr. Wells explained. “So the leader is trying to trick the follower by changing the pattern. The follower is trying to keep up and eventually one of them laughs and one of them loses their breath or gets out of the pattern.”

Laugh the students did, as two by two they attempted to keep up the rhythms—and discovered just how difficult the style really was. When Gabby Record ’17 and Sam Madden ‘17 maintained the pattern for a long, impressive minute, other students burst into applause, and Mr. Wells declared them both winners.

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