When I first drove into the small town of Tracy, California, 21 years ago, I asked myself: “What difference can a teacher make?” Tracy, once a farming community in California’s Central Valley, has been transformed into a blue-collar commuter town serving the San Francisco Bay area. The demographics have changed accordingly. The current enrollment at Tracy High where I teach is about 2,500 students. One in five of them receive free or partially subsidized lunches. Only about a quarter of the students who graduate go on to study at a four-year university.

When I first started teaching, students asked, “Why do we have to learn this?” I quickly realized that I needed to relate core biology to what was happening in the world and relate that information to each student. Being so close to the Bay Area, I had access to a great deal of advanced research. Fortunately, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was starting to help local educators learn about the work being conducted there. In my early years of teaching, I attended a meeting in which scientists explained about tracking human migration by looking at generic sequences, and about the mutagens that were generated by cooking beef to blackness. I immediately realized that this was research I could relate to core concepts such as DNA replication and repair, as well as the Hardy Weinberg equilibrium. 

Over the years, as I continued to develop the curriculum, I forged partnerships with companies like Bio-Rad Laboratories (a life sciences research and clinical diagnostic products maker in nearby Hercules) that have enabled me to make scientific concepts relevant for students. What’s more, these contacts have provided equipment and supplies—items like thermocyclers, gel boxes, and incubators—so that students can develop the skills that enable them to believe in themselves and in their capacity to learn.

On that first day of school in 1987, driving into Tracy, I never would have guessed that one of my students would win a trip to the Nobel Prize ceremonies in Sweden and would shake hands with Glenn Seaborg (the only person to have an element named after him while alive). Nor would I have imagined sitting at a Stanford graduation ceremony and hearing a student mention my name in a keynote address. I never could have imagined one of my students being honored by the President as one of the five most outstanding science students in the nation. Let alone a time when three former students would be completing their residencies at the University of California, San Francisco at the same time. 

One of my students went on to Stanford, earned his BS and MS in computer science, then attended the University of Edinburgh, where he received his PhD, after which he did a post-doc at Cambridge. At age 27, he is now on the faculty at MIT. One truly inspiring young man just emailed me that he had been accepted for graduate study at Harvard, Yale, U.C. Berkeley, and U.C. San Diego. He is African-American. His dad drove him to school every day from a very rough part of south Stockton. He appreciated his father’s effort, and took advantage of everything we offered. He was in my biotech class, which began an hour before the start of the usual school. When he was a junior, he attended a summer research program at U.C. Davis. He was accepted to M.I.T., from which he will graduate this spring. 

Not all of our amazing students go on to the Ivy League. One girl’s parents didn’t even go past the fifth grade. She has three older siblings, and only one graduated from high school. She has struggled, and her parents can offer little support. She has spent many days in my classroom explaining how she wants to take the path of least resistance. I encourage her and help her through her times of self-doubt. Mary has been accepted to campuses in the California State University and University of California systems, and I am just as proud of her as I am of any of my future PhDs. She progressed from English-as-a-second-language classes in middle school, to our International Baccalaureate program, an advanced honors program, as a senior. I know that Mary will make a huge difference in the lives of others.

I’d be lying if I said every day isn’t a challenge. I arrive at Tracy High at 6:15 a.m., two hours before the start of the regular school day and 45 minutes before the beginning of my biotech class, a special course I developed to teach students core biotechnology skills. Keeping 25 sophomores, juniors, and seniors busy in an environment where mentoring is important demands lots of coordination. One group of students could be making agar with antibiotics added, while another pours and runs gels, while yet another uses a real-time PCR machine. When the bell rings, the regular first period begins and seniors who are in their second year of a two-year advanced biology course swarm in. They might be studying evolution or bioinformatics, or looking at protein sequences to make cladograms. During any given day, I teach five classes with an average of 30 students per class. And as every teacher knows, the workday never really ends. When I get home, I read lab reports, prepare lectures, update the class website, write letters of recommendation, and get ready for the next day of class all over again.

The success of my students convinces me that teachers can make a difference. What has enabled me to be effective, I believe, are the connections I have forged with the industry in which graduates are likely to seek employment. I have developed friendships and partnerships that keep me up to date on new developments and skill sets that would be of best benefit to the students in my classes. I have done internships in which I have worked in a lab right alongside researchers. I have ongoing partnerships with both Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Bio-Rad. They have not only provided me with training opportunities, but have also looked to me to help guide their efforts in developing quality educational opportunities for students in middle and high school. 

What really scares me now is the number of teachers who are getting ready to retire and the shrinking number of new teachers entering the profession. More than 40,000 teachers in California alone are over the age of 55. The issue is not merely one of numbers, but of knowledge, skill, and motivation, according to the Critical Path Analysis published in 2007 by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning. I’m also concerned that fewer American students these days seem to be excited about the sciences and, in particular, the biosciences, despite all the promise in the field. Whatever you think about standardized testing, the trends are not encouraging. A national study in 2005 found that smaller percentages of 12th graders performed at or above “basic” and at or above “proficient” in science achievement, compared with 1996, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. This is worrisome for many reasons, but here’s just one: The United States now trains only 70 percent of the physicians it needs to take care of its aging population, according to the World Health Organization.

Such issues have kept me energized over the years, but it does take work to make science as interesting to students as it is to me—and it also takes help. One big plus is that researchers from industry have made it possible for my students to enter into partnerships with people across the country. Recently, I had three students complete research projects that I believe are cutting-edge for the high school level. One student did a study to quantify the amount of genetically modified DNA found in corn products. She used q-PCR and wrote a paper summarizing her findings. Another student partnered with a researcher and connected a sample of students at Tracy High to each of the seven mitochondrial mothers they may have descended from. Another worked with canine DNA to explore a single nucleotide polymorphism and to connect the potential for heart disease to that single base pair difference in a particular gene.

Imagine if every high school had a connection with a company or university, and every student had access to researchers and the industry in general. Bio-link, ISME, LBNL, U.C. Davis/LLNL Edward Teller Education Center, the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute, Amgen, Genentech, and Bio-Rad are just a few of the groups and businesses that are making significant impacts on the quality of materials available for students and on training opportunities for educators. The old adage—that it takes a village—certainly applies. Together, I believe business, industry, and the higher education communities can make a difference in helping teachers continue to make an impact. Not only will we help teachers, we also will help those teachers grow the next generation of scientists.