Are you one of the many science teachers dropping exhausted at your desk the end of the last period wondering, "Is this really worth the effort?" After over fifty years on this earth I can safely say it is, and I'm not a science teacher. This isn't a story about teaching methods, pedagogy, or an engaging activity. More importantly, it's about the results of those. It relates to all levels of instruction and curriculum - interdisciplinary or otherwise. Read on, and get a glimpse of why good science teachers are driven to teach science.

Last night my wife proposed I had mush for brains - which is probably true. While I can't seem to remember daily events, more important life-lessons never vanish. Like having to take every ant-infected, sticky, smelly aluminum can I see home to the recycling tub, and riding my bicycle - even when I can't see the forest for the smoke. It's a classic case of insidious brainwashing during my impressionable youth by a deranged high school biology teacher.

He was so diabolical. We endured field trips to places like North Park basin in north central Colorado -- trapped for a week in a picturesque, 8,800 feet high mountain valley. Mr. Paul Richard was one certifiably crazy dude -- willing to take a bunch of hormone imbalanced high school sophomores camping. I recall, standing on a hillside, listening to the intricate details of rangeland usage relating to U.S. Forest Service grazing policies and thinking, "Is Mary always this sexy or is it just because we're roughing it and she hasn't showered in three days?"

Year after year he led students on fieldtrips, organized recycling efforts, led class discussions on the reproductive tendencies of sidehill gougers, and shared hundreds of anecdotal tales about fascinating ecosystems. While doing so, he always stressed the importance, no, make that the desperate necessity, of caring for the living world around us.

It wasn't so much the daily lesson that did its covert work but the total Mr. Richard theme. His was a persona working like a finely tuned "branding" campaign capable of unleashing the envy of any marketing agency. Why else would his brain washing make getting on a mud encrusted mountain bike for the daily, three-mile commute to work almost beyond my control?

But life was not all fun and games with Mr. Richard. We endured the usual lessons on organisms with a full compliment of gory details you'd expect dealing with growth, responsiveness, and reproduction. Well, maybe not as many details about reproduction as a group of high school guys wanted but, from a clinical standpoint, all that was necessary.

We did the classic "in school" labs you'd expect. Petri dishes, wax dissection trays, and powerful microscopes were all sources of great adventure. Not that we deliberately wanted to screw up the "Penny, what can it grow in a Petri dish?" lab. It was just more entertaining to introduce a few microbes from the locker room.

Dissecting things was also a great way to learn that the illustrations in the textbook were created by Martians who were working with clean frogs. Whereas ours must have lived most of their lives in sewage treatment plants, as once cut open, reveled very few miniscule internal organs but a whole bunch of brown goo. We just copied the illustration out of the book into our lab write-ups.

It seemed we spent an inordinate amount of time studying algae. Possibly it was the fact the school's courtyard pond was stagnant and grew a healthy, almost deadly, crop. Tense times in slide preparation trying to witness, at 10X power, cells that were supposed to be splitting, or possibly looking for protozoa, I really can't recall. Regardless, my lab partner and I saw basically nothing because, having daydreamed during the microscope demonstration, we'd always run the lens into the slide, shattering any possibility of a getting the lab done in time.

It was the outdoor activities that really impressed me. Getting on a bus to head to remote, uncharted destinations to collect water and soil samples, or hunt down the elusive snipes, made biology a blast. I still have vivid memories of about 40 of my fellow classmates, single file, heading down a desolate piece of north-eastern Colorado prairie, with net in hand, hollering "Snipe, snipe, snipe!"

Mr. Richard was the kind of teacher who thought the living world was more than just a one-hour biology class - using unorthodox techniques to reinforce important life lessons. We all hopped on a bus one day and found ourselves at the home of one of the last surviving Colorado homesteads decked out with all the trimmings. No running water, no indoor plumbing, no electricity, and a second generation pioneer who had no recollection of such contrivances. We learned that life could be lived without all the luxuries today's society would have us believe are "necessities."

Then there were the highway trash cleanups, recycling drives, and letters to congressmen that supplemented a very busy "Intro to Biology class." I still have visions of a storeroom filled to the ceiling with newspapers and wandering down a sunny highway that ran past a cattle feedlot where the runoff was potent enough to clear the paint from a Chevy van.

Our "biology" was way before the movie Lion King made the "circle of life" popular. Not that the concept avoided us. Mr. Richard incessantly pounded us about how higher and lower life forms were all essential. To this day I still have doubts about killing a spider crawling across the kitchen counter. My wife, ordering me to kill the blasted thing, does not.

Even now, strange terms like photosynthesis, protoplasm, osmosis, and zygote pop into my aging, not always responsive brain. I have a vague notion what they mean, would have typed fotosinthesis without spell check, and most certainly acknowledge they are essential elements of the biological world. In the big picture it wasn't memorizing those terms that Mr. Richard saw as important because he knew not all students became biologists - but they all became earth-impacting adults.

It wasn't that the class lectures were that fascinating - heck, we were out-of-control high schoolers. You've all witnessed this species. No, what proved the deal clincher was Mr. Richard's passion for what he taught. Maybe passion isn't the right word. It was more an obsession that "everyone needs to understand the importance of the living world around them and I'm going to pass that along to all the students I see."

So, as you prepare for your science classes, remember well that your gift isn't just today's discussion on the heterothermic mammal's circulatory system. It's so much grander. You should be awe struck by the responsibility of planting something relevant in a young mind that will endure the years. What an incredible privilege and challenge.

Back in high school, Mr. Richard seemed as looney as a near-sighted amoeba, but I've come to realize he wasn't. He hailed from the mold of excellent teachers who impact our lives long after we leave their classrooms. Cycling and recycling are a few of his lessons I can't seem to shake -- and I don't want to!

Should you see my old biology teacher out there, tell him he was the greatest! Also mention I wasn't the one who put the snakes in the sleeping bags.