I have found success in teaching beginning A&P by relating complex systems to things that they can relate to i.e. a cell to a hospital, where each component of the cell relates to part of the hospital operation. Nucleus = admin, Mitochondria = power plant ect. Once they have the concept go for details.
One popular technique is the use of acronyms or mnemonics to aid in memorization. However, it has been shown that conceptual understanding of anatomy is unparallelled by straight memorization of names and pathways (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12001213). Good luck!