Libby teacher brings science to life

The classroom of Libby High School science teacher Gene Reckin isn’t just for teaching lessons about the natural world. It is a place of inspiration.

“There’s nothing more I enjoy than helping kids understand the natural world around them,” Reckin said.

Reckin, 59, has motivated students to reach their potential throughout his 34-year career at the high school. Reckin talks about his students with pride as if they were his own children.

“Libby has had a lot of tough times,” Reckin said noting that some students will be the first college graduates in their families. First, they have to learn college is achievable, he added.

“Someone has to put a vision in their mind that they can make a living doing something cool in science,” Reckin said.

During the process of enrolling his youngest child in college, Reckin and his wife, Nora, began writing down the information they learned about the process. In 2005, they started holding workshops on applying for college and financial aid. Nora also teaches in Libby School District as a gifted-and-talented-program coordinator and reading specialist.

“We wanted to see if we could encourage kids where college wasn’t even on their radar,” Reckin said.

Reckin thought often how he could give students growing up in rural America the confidence they qualified for college and careers in science. Several years later he was struck with an idea to create a “Wall of Fame” in his classroom showcasing the academic feats of Libby graduates.

“In public school settings those kids who excel academically don’t get recognition like those in sporting activities. I needed somewhere to recognize Libby graduates who have done great things,” Reckin said. “So I started calling these kids up.”

He purchased 30 frames to hang portraits of notable graduates. Now, 50 portraits and biographies of Libby High School graduates who have made their mark in the scientific world deck the Wall of Fame.

Students who make Reckin’s Wall of Fame have two things in common — a Libby High School diploma and a master’s degree in a science-related field.

Among them are Dr. Willy Kemp, a state medical examiner; Tamara Darsow, the American Diabetes Association’s vice president of research programs; and Jeff Faris, director of global medical affairs at Janssen Global Services, a pharmaceutical company of Johnson & Johnson.

“At the end of the school year when the senior kids who are walking out of my room for the last time — they say ‘Mr. Reckin save me a place on that wall’ — to me that means I’m doing something and getting through to these characters,” Reckin said.

Wall of Famer Anna Knisely is now finishing medical school at the University of Pittsburgh. Reckin encouraged her to apply for an ecology course in Belize he had attended in 1996.

“I had never been to the tropics before. I was in hog heaven, like a little kid all over again,” Reckin said. “I came back and got on these kids’ cases. ‘You have to try this.’”

The following year, he said Knisely was fired up to apply and was selected from an applicant pool covering seven western states.

Reckin has been into science his entire life, and that passion for science runs in the family. His daughter Rachel, 26, is an archeaologist with the U.S. Forest Service. His other daughter, Kara, 28, went a different direction and is a director of youth ministry at a Lutheran church in Minneapolis.

There were three key influences in Reckin’s life growing up in San Diego.

Reckin’s father, Jerry, had a career as a teacher and high school principal, instilling in him the power and value of a quality education. Since his father was also a seasonal ranger at Yosemite National Park, Reckin spent eight summers hiking through the park. There he met Carl Sharsmith.

Sharsmith was a Yosemite Park ranger, naturalist and college botany professor who opened up the world of biology for Reckin.

“[Sharsmith] would take us on hikes all over and get us 6-year-olds fired up about sharing the natural world with other people — just the joy, the intrigue he would bring,” Reckin said.

Joy is something Reckin hopes he translates into his own teaching.

When he attended the University of Montana to study wildlife biology and botany, it was professor Philip Wright who turned him on to ornithology.

“He was legendary,” Reckin said. “When I took his class he had been teaching ornithology at Missoula for 44 years. He knew everything about every bird that thought about flying over North America.”

In his own right, Reckin has been recognized for his teaching talent. In 1996, the National Association of Biology Teachers named him the Outstanding Biology Teacher for Montana. He was given the Montana Science Teacher Association award for Superior Achievement in Science Education in 2007. In 2010, he received a Gold Star award for Excellence in Education from KCFW television.

Reckin has also been actively involved in his community as member of the board of directors for the Center for Asbestos Related Diseases, facilitated the Libby Lecture series in 2012 and this year was given a Rotary Citizen of the Month award.

“For me, the highlight of my life is doing things for kids,” Reckin said.