SAMPLE · ONE SESSION
Mouth-Body Detectives
Oral health, with a dentist, a dental hygienist, and a dental assistant. A look at what one of our workshops feels like from the outside.
One class period · Small groups · Trained facilitators · Bilingual
THE PATIENT · MR. FLORES
A father in his late forties, twenty years in the Imperial Valley. Long seasonal shifts, a distant clinic, and very little time for himself. He coaches his kid’s soccer team. His health risks come from the conditions of his life, not from personal failing, and we never frame them any other way.
This chapter: a hard year catches up with him, and it shows first in his mouth. Students have already followed him through three other chapters by the time they get here. That is the point: this is not a standalone lesson about teeth.
THE ONE BIG IDEA
Your mouth is a window into your health, and what happens there is connected to the rest of the body. A dentist and a hygienist catch that early. Risk, not destiny.
Clinically validated. Co-founder Christopher G. Martija-Flores is a Registered Dental Hygienist and validates every piece of clinical content and technique in this workshop before a student ever sees it.
THE SHAPE OF IT
Four phases, and only one of them is in the classroom
Excite in person, teach in the modules. The hour in the room is a hook and a hands-on experience, which only works because the teaching already happened somewhere else.
PHASE ONE · BEFORE, AT HOME
They arrive already curious
A short online module introduces the field and the science behind it, and moves the patient’s story forward. Students write down questions of their own to bring with them. Nobody walks in cold.
PHASE TWO · IN CLASS
They work the case
It starts on their feet, then the room turns into a case. Students are handed Mr. Flores’s clues and follow the trail from his mouth into the rest of his body, in small groups, and they practice a real clinical technique on models with someone who does it for a living.
PHASE THREE · AFTER, AT HOME
They teach an adult
The student brings the skill home and teaches it to an adult, in that adult’s language, and the two of them do a simple activity together that makes an invisible process visible. This is where the hardest thinking happens, and it is how we know the learning held.
PHASE FOUR · AFTER
They show the growth
A short check after the workshop, compared with the one before, shows what held.
WHAT IT TEACHES
More than a lesson about teeth
Every workshop we write is built on the same principle: the recall happens before class, the reasoning and the hands happen in the room, and the hardest thinking happens at home, where a student has to explain it to somebody else. Layered on top is one social-emotional skill, named in advance and practiced on purpose.
PROGRAM OUTCOMES
Four of seven, in one hour
This session moves four of our seven program outcomes. No single workshop carries all seven, and none of ours pretends to. Which outcomes each session carries is mapped for partner schools rather than published here. Clinical skills are simulation only, never a procedure on a real person.
THE SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL SKILL
One per session, on purpose
Each session carries exactly one, drawn from the RULER framework and attached to a real moment in the patient’s life. In this workshop it is about why people put off care they need. In a community where that happens constantly, it is as much of the lesson as the technique is.
STANDARDS IT TOUCHES
California CTE, Health Science and Medical Technology, Patient Care pathway, with UC/CSU A-G reinforcement noted. That documents alignment only. We own this content as a nonprofit, we do not pursue A-G course approval, and the program does not grant credit. The standard-by-standard crosswalk is reviewed with your district directly.
What students leave with
Something in their hands, and something they can actually do.
- A clinical technique they can perform correctly, coached and corrected by someone who does it for a living.
- Their case work, and one more link in the chain they are building across the year.
- A prevention plan made with their family.
- Supplies of their own to take home.
- A reason to think this might be their field.
How we keep it safe
Every workshop we write carries its own written safeguard. This is the shape of the one for oral health.
Dignity first, always
Facilitators never comment on a student’s own teeth or breath. Students analyze the patient, never their own bodies. Technique practice follows strict hygiene, and nothing is ever shared. Any student who needs care is connected quietly to the school’s resource list.
On the evidence. Every clinical claim in this workshop is anchored to current, peer-reviewed research, and each source is verified against the original journal before the workshop is written. The full cited evidence base is provided to partner schools rather than published here.
This page is the overview. The workshop itself is not published.
The minute-by-minute facilitator run-of-show, the activity design and materials, the volunteer run-sheet, the learning objectives and their standards crosswalk, the at-home family activities, the assessment instruments, and the cited evidence base are the work product of our team. They are provided to partner schools in the Sembrando Flores Partnership Packet, under agreement, and are not published anywhere on this site.
Request the Partnership PacketNEXT SAMPLE
A year with Mr. Flores
This workshop is one session of a full year. See how a year sequences around a single patient.