Do you remember the first time you really looked at a mud dauber's nest? A baby's hand? A glass of water? Do you remember the first time you really heard the wood thrush singing amidst all the lovely sights and sounds of a forest at sunset? Do you remember the first time you really looked at a dandelionor is that a thrill still due you? Do you remember the first time you were struck by the aesthetic beauty of the idea of industrial melanism or DNA coding? Were these discoveries recent enough so that they have not been formalized, squeezed, and packaged into a teaching technology? Do you still feel the excitement and joy of that moment? One of the saddest facts of life is that as we grow up, we so often lose that innocent wonder of childhood. Familiarity and daily exposure rob us of the fresh joy of discovery. It is too bad, for without wonder, life is dull stuff indeed. The biology teacher who still cherishes a sense of wonder at the world and is still anxious to probe each new mystery is fortunate. This precious gift must be protected and nourished if teachers are not to destroy their own awed excitement and having lost it, destroy it in the students entrusted to them. But many forces threaten it. It is sad to think how much is left out of biology teaching because one cannot test for it and grade it and fail or promote on the basis of the amount of it acquired. It is sad to think how many things are selected to be passed on to students as part of our cultural heritage just because these things lend themselves to suitable test questions. We lose so many opportunities for dealing with the real substance of biology because we cannot test for it, yet tests and grades and this whole dessicating apparatus seem to be a burden we must bearat least until someone finds another way to coerce reluctant students to learn and to reward the student who beats out the others by acquiring more facts. Tests, competition, grades, and other forms of coercion are like a quarrelsome spouse: you can't live with them and you can't live without them. It almost seems as though we have to come to a daily accommodation with them. Still we must salvage what we can of our first joyous rapture. Until we can find better teaching techniques, we will have to do our best to preserve the childlike wonder and, cherishing it ourselves, pass it on afresh to a new generation of students unsated by dull familiarity. Some teachers are able to do this. Students whose teachers still find this world exciting are fortunate indeed. These young people find the world more exciting and seem to recognize the privilege they enjoy. They also benefit by having teachers who recognize how lucky they are to work with young people and to learn from them as they teach. This sharing of discovery and insight is a fountain of youth that surely must be the handsomest fringe benefit of teaching. How many people, trudging from day to day toward retirement, have this chance that teachers enjoy? Not many. Pity the poor biology teacher who has become so jaded with recitation of prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase as to take for granted that the intricate dance of nuclear division is ever accomplished successfully and that in generations of ancestors it has been accomplished with such perfection that we exist at all. Wonder is not always a product of our ignorance; we often lack the knowledge required to wonder. Stripping away each layer of our ignorance, we find that even the most familiar thing-a pinch of soil, an English sparrow, a fallen leafis a thing of staggering beauty and wonder. Perhaps this is one of the biggest responsibilities of the biology teacher: to discover the extraordinary in what we have come to think ordinary, to peel away the dull gray layers, and to give students a look at the exciting stuff inside. We biology teachers must not let the essence escape with the dregs. Without wonder all we have left is the recitation of facts and the assignment of grades. We must find a way to keep our own sense of wonder and to convey to those volatile, troublesome, winsome, promising young people that this world is worth knowing.