The fish tanks in Helen Torosian's classroom bubble and hum with life.
Pipefish slink through reeds of grass. Crabs scuttle across pebbly floors. And a pregnant male seahorse bobs in a solitary tank.
Torosian, 58, is responsible for overseeing this veritable aquarium as head of Colonial Forge High School's marine science program.
During her 35 years in Stafford County schools, she's taken students on fishing expeditions to find aquatic specimens. She's planned trips to the Bahamas where students got to snorkel and greet creatures up close. She's up till all hours grading papers and projects.
And in the classroom, she does her best to unlock the mysteries of the watery deep.
"The ocean is like the last frontierWe know more about space than our own oceans," Torosian said, who also teaches biology.
Recently, Torosian was named Stafford County's Teacher of the Year. She was chosen from among 26 schoolwide winners.
She'll advance to compete for Virginia Teacher of the Year.
"It's wonderful. I'm so shocked. I was just thrilled to be Teacher of the Year here in my school," she said.
It's rare for a high school teacher in a core academic subject to be chosen as Teacher of the Year, said Andrea Bengier, assistant superintendent for instruction in Stafford schools.
That's because elementary teachers usually have a wider pool of pictures to draw from when they compile a portfolio, which is used to select a county winner, she said.
But Torosian has pictures galore. Her walls are covered with snapshots of students. As sponsor of the Student Council Association, she spends lots of time with them after school. She helps officers plan and execute Homecoming every year, along with a slew of other events.
Fellow biology teacher Cindy Trant has worked with Torosian for 28 years and said she "never runs out of energy."
"She never complains about anything she's asked to do. She's just a real team playerShe does things because they need to be done, whether she's enjoying it or not," Trant said.
Torosian's classroom is as colorful as a coral reef. Gelatinous mobiles of sea creatures dangle from the ceiling. A former student painted a seahorse mural.
Torosian was heartbroken to leave her last classroom at North Stafford High School, where she taught from 1981 to 1999. Her walls were covered by murals of sea life.
Before that, she worked at Stafford High School and Gayle Junior High School.
She began working in Stafford in 1970, immediately after graduating from Madison College--now James Madison University--with a degree in biology.
"I hadn't planned to go into teaching. I was going to go into cancer research and find the cure for cancer," she said.
But she couldn't get an interview at a lab. So she accepted a job at Gayle Junior High and found an alternate calling.
"I got into it and loved it and liked working with the young people," she said.
Several decades later, she's still at it.
She's expanded her skills by attending summer classes for educators at the Virginia Institute for Marine Science at the College of William & Mary. She also participated in Teachers on the Bay at St. Margaret's School.
Torosian also is helping to train the next generation of teachers. She is a clinical faculty member in the University of Mary Washington's education department.
When she's not teaching, she enjoys reading, gardening and observing wilderness.
Trant said Torosian's an avid watcher of the Discovery Channel, too.
"She's always trying to keep up with the latest information," Trant said.
Torosian lives in Stafford with her husband, Michael, a senior vice president with Union Bank & Trust in Fredericksburg. Her only son, Reid, 27, a Stafford High School graduate, lives in San Antonio.
She spends weekends at the couple's home in Northumberland County, along the Chesapeake Bay.
Surprisingly, Torosian is allergic to two substances teachers handle every day: paper and chalk dust.
But she's endured it for her students.
"Teaching is sort of like gardening because you plant the seeds--seeds as ideas--and you nurture them and watch them grow and flower," Torosian said.
To reach KELLY HANNON: 540/374-5436 khannon@freelancestar.com