The TV at the front of the science room airplays a slide that shows students what the work for the day is: work on a packet and review a quiz. Later, teacher Jess Hiltbrand shows a diagram explaining lactose and lactase. But this is not always what the students do in class. Hiltbrand loves to have them do labs with Homer Simpson, yeast, Chipotle and Smarties. These labs are not a rare occurrence in the biology class. Despite not seeming to have anything to do with the subject material that Hiltbrand has dedicated herself to, they are, in fact, rooted in teaching biology, a topic Hiltbrand knows quite well.
Revere High School (RHS) welcomed a new biology teacher in the 2025-2026 school year, Jess Hiltbrand. Her love of biology fuels her lessons and has made impacts among the RHS community.
Hiltbrand has expressed passion for biology specifically, which led her to want to teach high school science.
“I really like the content area. I really like science. I just thought that high school is the best place to be able to dive into those concepts while still being able to have fun with the content. . . . [Biology] was my favorite topic that I covered in all my science classes that I took in college,” Hiltbrand said.
Science is a broad field, with physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology and many more branches that all interconnect and have their respective subtopics. There are so many topics to explore within the realm of biology, and Hiltbrand has her favorites.
“I really have a passion for genetics. . . . I think it’s so interesting how much our body does that we don’t really know it is happening. . . . We’re just kind of starting to get into the research about genetics. It’s still a really growing field,” she said.
Hiltbrand did not originally set out to be a teacher, yet with her previous career path, nursing, she still was learning and using biology.
“I used to study nursing, so I had experience with understanding more about the actual human biology, and then that followed me when I switched career paths and went into teaching,” Hiltbrand said.
RHS Principal Doug Faris felt that her career switch and the challenges that came with that spoke strongly to Hiltbrand’s character.
“[Hiltbrand] had to completely pivot and almost start back at square one, . . . so I think that the Vision of a Minuteman characteristic for her would be persevering and adapting,” Faris said.
When it comes to the teaching part of her job, Hiltbrand is just as dedicated. She loves being able to make biology interesting to her students. Though science can be a difficult field, she enjoys how biology is able to connect with fun activities.
“I really try to make it as fun as possible. I know science in particular can be a very challenging subject for some people. . . . Because [biology] is so conceptual, I think it gives way to a lot more fun activities. . . . [With] biology, you can bridge the gap between a lot more creative labs that don’t necessarily seem like they’re about science on the surface, but then underlying they have a lot more going on with science than you realize,” Hiltbrand said.
With biology, Hiltbrand has been able to do a variety of creative labs that are able to incorporate things the students understand more, and then they learn more complex ideas along the way.
“We have done a Homer Simpson lab to simulate homeostasis and maintain all the different things that we do in our body. . . . We did a yeast lab where we determined if yeast was alive whether or not it produced carbon dioxide. . . . We did a Chipotle lab where we looked at our Chipotle orders to see what kind of macromolecules they [were] made up of. . . . We are going to do a Smarties lab this week where you basically eat Smarties and see how quickly they dissolve in your mouth compared to just a cup of water without all the enzymes that we have in our body,” Hiltbrand said.
The science department chair Jeff Shane felt that Hiltbrand has been excellent at adjusting to her new job and becoming a part of the Revere faculty and community.
“From the science department’s point of view she just . . . fit right in and there was no adjustment period,”Shane said.
Shane felt grateful for this adaptability and felt that this allowed her to fit in with her new co-workers. Her presence has contributed to an overall more positive environment.
“With the faculty, she’s very easy to talk to and fun to talk with,” Shane said.
Of course, her impact reaches beyond the staff and to the students she teaches everyday. She interacts with them not only during school but also after school every Wednesday where she hosts Stitch Club meetings in her room.
Shane said, “I hear good things from some of the kids about how she teaches.”
Through her creative labs that mirror her passion for biology, science, and teaching, RHS’s new biology teacher Hiltbrand has made contributions to the RHS community.
