"I really, really love biology."

Originally published on: September 16, 2009

Accepting a recent award, Traci Chapo said, "I really, really love biology. I love it so much, I am secretly amazed every month when I get a paycheck and get reminded that I actually get paid to do something this fun."

There’s a science wing at Lincoln North Star High School (LNS).  It’s lined with rooms that LOOK like science.  But only one has a talking deer head.

Science instructor Tracie Chapo says her students pay more attention to the deer than they would to her … when it runs down THE RULES on the first day of a new semester.  The deer isn’t alone in Chapo’s science environ.

There are more alligators than you can count; at least 2 camels; a penguin, monkey and lion head; a bird with a lovely voice and a fish tank.  (Only the bird and fish are real.)  Chapo has also surrounded herself and her students with water fountains, skulls and fossils, terrariums (snake?), a hanging globe (like Earth suspended in space), and posters/bumper stickers/hand made signs.

All this is a reflection of where Chapo came from, who she is now, why her students focus and learn, and why she was named the 2009 Outstanding Biology Teacher for Nebraska.  One of those hand made signs reads: “Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.”

The Outstanding Biology Teacher Award in Nebraska is part of a nationwide biology teacher award program run by the National Association of Biology Teachers.  Chapo was selected “because of her exemplary career in life science education.”

That career began as a zookeeper and she met her husband, John, at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo where he is the Executive Director.  Two of the Chapo sons attend the Science Focus Program, also known as Zoo School, because it’s located at the Zoo on 27th Street.

While working at the Zoo, Chapo returned to college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) to become a teacher.  She got her start at Fredstrom Elementary School and then transferred to LNS – where she’s taught biology, environmental studies and general science for 10 years.

The daughter of a father who worked in the nation’s national parks, Chapo moved around a lot and comes by her interest in science and biology honestly.  Adjacent to her classroom is an atrium with living plants (one VERY large tree); tubs, containers, science gadgets; hoses, boots, nets, pails and a basin sink, as well as an impressive water fountain.

The atrium brings the outside in – which is something Chapo has done in her classroom as well.  The six lab stations include a living plant in the center.  Her five classes are full (close to 25 students each) and she taps into community resources as much and as often as possible.

Every spring, the Nebraska State Department of Roads sends a botanist to help students identify wetland plants – in the wetland just north of the high school.  UNL sends “scientists to explain difficult concepts and a cultural anthropologist to examine the bigger picture."  A working relationship with the Lower Plate South NRD has purchased resources for Chapo’s classroom and pays for field trips.  Coming up … a trip to the Platte River State Park.

“North Star is the greatest place to teach biology,” said Chapo when she received her award at a recent all school assembly.  “Whenever I ask Dr. Becker if I can try something, she says, ‘If it’s good for kids, then we need to do it.’  If I tell Floyd Doughty, our science chair, that I need 30 pairs of rubber boots to get kids to go outside, he can squeeze them out of the budget somehow.  We have a custodial staff that cleans up every wet, muddy, leafy mess my students make and NEVER complains.  And the very, very, very best thing about teaching biology at North Star is the kids.  Every time somebody tells me high school kids can’t do this, or kids who aren’t in diff can’t do that, my students show them they CAN.”

Since Chapo started at LNS, she has taken and archived nearly 2,000 photos of her students – some in the classroom – but most outside in nature.  From the small water fountain sitting off to one side by student desks  … to a hand made sign that quotes naturalist John Muir … it’s clear that Chapo is connected to the world around her.  And she is the link between that world and her students.

“When we try to pick anything out by itself, we find it hitched … to everything else in the universe.”  John Muir