How to Teach Biology

Room 455 at Hoover High School in Glendale, Calif, contains a red-tailed hawk that eats horsemeat, a sinister 8-ft. anaconda, hordes of white rats, a map of every ant colony in the vicinity and George Cassell, 28, an exuberant young man who grew up at the foot of Mt. Shasta with a trout rod in his hand, football on his mind and no thought of study. As it turned, out, he was destined to make Room 455 just about the most popular teen-age hangout in Glendale. Since he teaches biology--one of the deadlier subjects in U.S. high schools--this is going some.

The cause of Hoover High's good fortune is the head injury that George Cassell got while playing football at the University of California at Los Angeles. He lost his fullback's job and his athletic scholarship, transferred to a state college --and discovered the joys of learning.

Two years ago. he began teaching at Hoover High, which then had a clutch of reluctant biology students. Cassell changed that: his love for wild animals attracted live students. Every weekend, he took his students into the desert and mountains to camp, trap and study. Entire classes soon went along at their own expense. Cassell's students began winning top rank at science fairs for inventing insecticides, studying cholesterol and other such matters.

This year Hoover High has nine biology classes.

Last spring Teacher Cassell sent 21 sophomores out to survey Glendale on the premise that "a community is composed of a group of organisms living together in dynamic equilibrium with the environment." They discovered that the chaparral on the nearby Verdugo Mountains is all that keeps Glendale from being washed away by flood. Studying plants, they found those that best sustain this growth, e.g., black mustard. They analyzed the city water supply, found it pure but dwindling. Armed with petri dishes, they made bacteria counts in restaurants, groceries, the city jail, restrooms and hospitals. They measured noise, nutrition, recreation, garbage disposal--literally everything that helps or hinders man in Glendale.

What emerged was a in-page report that tells more about Glendale than Glendale has ever known about itself. The city council wanted copies. "We're very proud of you," Councilwoman Zelma Bogue, onetime Glendale mayor, told Cassell. Proud as he was too, Teacher Cassell noted that his students "just barely scratched the surface."

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