Gallaudet grad who wrangles pythons and breeds chameleons is one of America’s favorite teachers

If you ever go to a class taught by Brandon Call, ‘16, prepare for things to get wild. Call, the 6th and 7th grade science teacher at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind (FSDB), likes to give his students hands-on experiences to get them as excited about nature as he is.

And sometimes they get to experience even more than expected, like when one of the chameleons Call raises in his classroom laid eggs in a plant pot without anyone noticing. “We had to figure out where all the little babies were coming from six months later,” he says. For another lesson, he hauled in an old 200-gallon aquarium that he filled with all kinds of saltwater fish, including an eel and a shark egg. Then it broke, which led to “the great flood in my classroom,” Call recalls.

Turning academics into grand adventures inspires his students. “When students touch and see why everything matters, they understand and appreciate science a whole lot better,” says Call, whose philosophy has guided him in a quest to be named America’s Favorite Teacher. So far, he has made it through four rounds of voting in the annual contest, which promises the winner $25,000, a feature in Reader’s Digest, a trip to Hawaii, and a school assembly with renowned science educator Bill Nye. (Vote for Call here to keep him in the running!)

A win would help Call reach out to even more students through his educational video series “Wild Saga,” which is in American Sign Language. The project began with a few friends from Gallaudet right after his graduation in 2016. “I wanted to educate the deaf community about why nature is precious to us,” Call says. “Also, I think it’s important for deaf kids to see sign language being used in science beyond school too.”

The videos take viewers on field trips with Call to learn about various creatures, including manatees, cherry-headed conures, and red widow spiders. He shares fun facts (did you know that elephant mosquitoes don’t bite?) while getting up close and personal with animals. One of his favorites features the American alligator because he filmed it underwater while diving with one. “It showed a lot of people that ASL can be easily used underwater and offered a unique perspective as alligators are quite misunderstood creatures,” he says. “I want to educate the ASL community with my content and I dream of hosting a National Geographic show about wildlife someday.”

Call has been on this path since childhood. Growing up in the Bay area in California, he would ride his bike to a nearby nature preserve to look for coyotes and other animals. “I enjoyed flipping logs to see what critters may be hiding underneath such as salamanders or snakes,” Call says. “Whenever I found a cool critter, I’d stuff ’em in my pocket and bring them home to observe for a couple of days before returning them to the wild.”

He was especially drawn to reptiles, and he got a pet gecko when he was 5. “I was fascinated by how certain reptiles communicated without depending on sound,” Call says. “Chameleons lack external ears and do not hear very well and yet, they communicate with each other perfectly. They’ll use their changing skin colors to tell each other how they’re feeling! Ain’t that just plain awesome?”

When he was in elementary school, Call asked his parents why his favorite show — “The Crocodile Hunter,” starring Steve Irwin, the Australian wildlife expert — didn’t have captions. They suggested writing to Irwin about it. “So, I wrote him a letter explaining that I wanted to learn from him and that I needed captions to understand him,” says Call, who was amazed to receive a response and get the captions he requested.

“As a kid, I was empowered by that letter and understood that my actions can have an impact on the community,” Call says. “Today, I still tell that story to my students to teach them that anybody can make an impact if they try regardless of their age.”

Like his mother, father, aunt, uncle, and sister, Call decided to attend Gallaudet for college. “Gallaudet offered some courses in zoology so I went for it!,” Call says. He enjoyed working with many professors, but the one that stands out for him was Dr. Caroline Solomon, who is now Dean of the Faculty, because of her hands-on approach to teaching biology. “For example, we went on a trip to a nearby wetland conservation park to collect water samples, and we ran those samples in the lab,” Call says. He also interned for Solomon, which involved going on morning data collections at different points along the Anacostia River to analyze the water quality.

These experiences and background knowledge shape what he does every day at FSDB. “I still teach my students how to write organized lab reports just like I learned during my GU days,” Call says.

Call started working at FSDB in 2018 after completing a six-month research internship in the Ecuadorian jungle, and soon learned his students look forward to his stories of venturing out into the wild. So he has continued to explore and tie his experiences into what they’re learning in the classroom. Most notably, in 2021, Call signed up for Florida’s Python Challenge, an event designed to combat the invasive species. “I explored the Everglades at night and managed to wrangle a nearly 16-foot-long invasive Burmese python,” Call says. “I use this story to teach my students about the dangers of introducing non-native species into ecosystems.”

Bouncing between the outdoors and the classroom is right where Call belongs, and he is excited to continue to encourage young people to get interested in these issues. “Deaf role models are always great to have in the deaf community to set examples of what can be accomplished,” he says. “And science is an important topic as our survival depends on our understanding of the world.”