Students carefully poured liquid from one test tube to another and to another on Wednesday.

The seventh-graders were learning about infectious disease and how it spreads. Teacher Dawn Richards asked the students to imagine they were inflicted with the Ebola virus.

"I like to use the Ebola disease as our example because it is extremely unlikely that any of them would be impacted by this disease, but the mode of transmission is very common," she said.

Richards, a life science teacher at Chestatee Academy of Inquiry and Talent Development, has made it a mission to teach science with a unique spin and use hands-on examples. It has endeared her to students.

It has also helped win her the Teacher of the Year award for 2011-2012.

Richards was one of 33 teachers who competed for the chance to represent the Hall County school system.

She'll go on to the statewide contest in February.

Richards began teaching at Chestatee 12 years ago and also spent three years at North Hall Middle School.

Throughout her career, she's exclusively taught seventh-graders.

"They're funny; they get your jokes. They make jokes and they're smart," she said. "They ask intelligent questions."

While teaching appears to be a natural fit for Richards, it wasn't something she knew she was destined for from the start.

She considered becoming a veterinarian or joining the newspaper business when she was young. Her father was a publisher and newspaper editor.

"I really couldn't decide what I wanted to do," Richards said. "I worked in a newspaper office for several years, had my children and when I was about 30, I decided to go back to college and get my teaching certificate."

Richards earned her associate degree from Gainesville College and transferred to Brenau University where she earned her master's degree; she graduated with a 4.0 GPA in 1997.

Balancing school, a full-time job and pursuing a second career was a challenge for Richards, but she said she was driven by a lifelong passion for learning and science.

"I always loved school as a young person," Richards said. "I found that teaching life science gives me a lot of what I thought I would love about being a vet."

Richards said her classes are fun, but the students also understand learning is serious business.

She tries to keep them engaged with unique labs. In one lesson, students dissect owl pellets, which contain bones, fur and feathers the owl could not digest.

"We identify the bones and then reassembled the skeleton of the animal it has eaten," she said. "I like for them to compare a skeleton of say a mouse to what we have learned about the human skeleton."

Richards' enthusiasm isn't lost on her students.

"She has an amazing way of teaching and she teaches it in a way that makes it stick," seventh-grader Heather White said.

Richards said she hopes students will come to appreciate science.

"I hope they gain a love of life sciences as I do and that they're at least thinking of what they want to do after high school," Richards said.

"One of my kids said, when we were talking about what we were interested in as a career, she said ‘You have to love what you do.' And I agree," she said.