Everybody who knows Tracie Chapo knows this much: She loves critters of all kinds.

They're scattered about her classroom at North Star High School -- the real, the stuffed and the plastic blow-ups hanging from the ceiling.

Her students certainly know it. The Chapo family dog, Roswell, has been her classroom assistant for most of the six years she's taught biology at North Star.

Even the custodians know it, which is why occasionally they'll find a spider and leave it for her in a container where she keeps other arachnoids.

She also loves students -- and both those passions led a panel of biologists and educators to name her 2009 Outstanding Biology Teacher for Nebraska.

The annual award is given to one teacher in the state as part of a national program run by the National Association of Biology Teachers.

TJ Bliss, director of the awards program in Nebraska, said Chapo's compassion for her students and her love of biology stood out to the committee.

"She cares so much about her students, they want to learn biology," he said.

Chapo's passion for the environment and animals goes back to her childhood, when her dad worked for the National Park Service and she lived in national parks around the country.

She earned an associate degree in exotic animal training and management after high school, traveling to a college in California because it was the only place she could get such a degree.

In 1983, she started working at the Children's Zoo in Lincoln, and as head zookeeper hung out with -- and cared for -- the bears, camels and other outdoor animals.

At the same time, she worked on her bachelor's degree in education with an endorsement in the natural sciences.

The head zookeeper also married the zoo's director and in 1991 quit her job when their first son was born about six weeks after she got her bachelor's degree. She spent the next nine years raising their three sons.

In 2000, she took her first teaching job at Fredstrom Elementary, and came to North Star when it opened in 2003-04.

"I love my job," she said. "It's a lot like zookeeping."

Clarification: By this, she means every day is different. Like every animal, every kid is different. And each day with them plays out differently.

She loves biology, a subject that explained all the things she'd grown up with in the national parks.

"It's how I grew up," she said. "For me taking biology in high school was getting answers to everything, which was amazingly cool."

Her students pick up on that, she figures.

"I'm pretty enthused and I think they know it."

From the day she walked into North Star, she began taking her students to the wetlands just north of the school.

There, they identify plants and aquatic life in the pond, how they change and relate to each other.

"It's just a nice place to show them all the concepts we're teaching," she said.

She coordinates with the Saline Wetlands Conservation Partnership, which provides different scientists to work with a group of Chapo's students.

The best part of teaching? The lightbulb phenomenon with her students.

"Watching them get it," she said. "Or figuring out how to get them to get it is a lot of fun."

So fun, in fact, nobody in her family bothers to ask if she had a good day. Because the answer is always the same.

"There is not a day I leave my class where I'm not happy I'm a teacher."

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.