Editor’s note, Feb. 12: North Tahoe alum’s name has been corrected.
In Dr. David Steakley’s classroom at North Tahoe High School, you’ll find a few things that let you know this is not an ordinary biology class. There is the large banner that reads “Curiously observe, carefully analyze and clearly communicate,” a daily reminder to students about the scientific process. There are the stickers of his chihuahua-cocker-spaniel mix, Charlie Darwin, with the dog’s Instagram handle — 22,000 followers — that he hands out to students.
And there is the No Bell — a bell that Steakley rings every time he discusses a Nobel Prize winner.
“[Ringing No Bell] venerates the science profession and the values of hard work and sticking to it and immersing yourself in the life of the mind and knowledge,” he said.
Steakley’s freshman biology and AP bio classes are known for being some of the hardest classes at North Tahoe. But despite the reputation, or perhaps because of it, Steakley is a popular teacher who doesn’t shy away from pushing kids to do hard work and real science. As a result, he has inspired countless students to pursue science in college and beyond — an endeavor he encourages with a special promise.
Steakley, who grew up in Boston, studied botany at the University of Vermont before attending graduate school at UC Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in molecular and cell biology with a focus on gene expression and epigenetics. He originally thought he wanted to be a university professor, but teaching at the university level requires investing time in doing research; Steakley realized how much he enjoyed teaching kids and wanted that to be his sole focus.
Steakley also loves to be outdoors, and so after teaching for two years in Oakland, he applied to every high school in the Tahoe Basin. North Tahoe principal Joanna Mitchell called him seven minutes after receiving his résumé, Steakley said.
“The scholarly nature of his résumé is really impressive,” said Mitchell, who noted that it’s rare for high school teachers to have a PhD. “I knew his academics were strong, but he was also a Teach for America alumni, like myself. That speaks to his ability to work in challenging, under-resourced areas and connect with kids, putting kids as high as academics.”
Steakley’s first year at North Tahoe was the 2015/16 school year. As the freshman biology teacher, he instructs every ninth grader except for those in Ski Academy, who take an independent study biology course.
“I really enjoy high school kids,” Steakley said. “It’s a really fun time of transition between being little kids and figuring out what life is going to be like as an adult. I get to teach some kids [for whom] this will be their last biology class, and I also get to teach kids who are really interested in sciences and are going to go on to a career in biology and really value the education I provide.”
Steakley knows his classes are challenging. “I don’t apologize for that,” he said. “Doing hard work is valuable. A lot of kids recognize this is more difficult, but you are going to get something out of it.”
One thing students get from his class is an introduction to the scientific method; Steakley describes his teaching style as “putting interesting, unexplained phenomen[a] in front of students — things that don’t make sense at first pass — and asking them to collaborate to solve those difficult problems.”
That’s why he fell in love with science: he likes the process of discovery. “The most fun part for me when learning science,” he said, “is when data is put in front of me and I draw a conclusion myself before being told the answer. That’s my goal: give [students] the chance to make a discovery before I tell them the answer.”
And he does real science with his students. In the spring after the AP bio exam, he brings in a North Tahoe alum, Joel Sharbrough, an evolutionary biology professor at UC Santa Barbara. Together with his students, they carry out DNA sequencing of the snowflower, which draws its energy from pine trees instead of the sun, to understand how a genome — in this case, chloroplast — becomes vestigial (no longer used). Sharbrough has presented their findings to a national botany research conference, and Steakley hopes their discoveries will eventually be published in a scientific journal.
“This is legit, useful work – we are generating new information,” said Steakley. “No one knows the answer to this, no one has figured it out. It’s really a cool feeling to have as high school kids.”
This year, his class will sequence the pine drop, a relative of the snowflower.
Steakley’s passion for biology and his hands-on learning style have inspired students to follow in his footsteps. Taylor Brook, who graduated in 2022, is now a nursing student at the University of Wisconsin after studying biology at San Diego State. She said that AP bio was the most interesting class she took in high school, and “a big influence on my career choice … He is the reason I chose biology as my major at SDSU.”
Brook points to the real-world applications for some of the labs they did in class. During freshmen year biology, they burned a Dorito to show how calories work and how you can discover how many are in a certain food.
Steakley is so passionate about encouraging his students to pursue the sciences that he has made a promise: if a student obtains their PhD in a science, he will put their framed photo in his classroom. (Why? “Because I love a goofy rule,” he said, “and doing science is hard.”)
Though so far Steakley has only one photo — a student he supervised while a grad student at Berkeley — the teacher may get his wish in the next few years. Kyla Pierce, a 2017 NTHS graduate, is a PhD candidate in mathematical, computational, and systems biology at UC Irvine. She took AP chemistry from Steakley his first year at NTHS and credits that class with her career direction.
“I thought I would major in English,” said Pierce, who worked on the school newspaper. But when she took Steakley’s class, she “really appreciated that more than focusing on the right answers, we focused on curiosity and problem solving. That really clicked with me. I also appreciated how involved the class was. We did different labs; it was really hands-on.”
Steakley’s own educational path also showed Pierce professional possibilities that she didn’t know existed.
“Hearing his own experience doing a PhD, I didn’t realize you could have a career where you just answer questions, that doing experiments could be a career,” she said. “It really opened my eyes. I liked the idea of learning something new and pushing the forefront of knowledge.”
By 2029, hopefully Pierce’s photo will be hanging in Steakley’s classroom, the first of his NTHS students to achieve a PhD in science but definitely not the last.
