When Joel Hildenbrand stepped out of his classroom for the final time last spring, he left behind more than just lesson plans. He left a legacy shaped by 31 years of steady, quietly impactful teaching—anchored in curiosity, care, and a lifelong fascination with life itself.

Joel didn’t set out to become a teacher. Raised in rural Illinois, he spent his early years exploring the woods near his home, fishing in the Hennepin Canal, and watching his mom peer into blood samples under a microscope in the hospital lab where she worked. “I’ve just always been drawn to life science,” he says. “It’s how the world works—your food, your oxygen, everything.”

But after high school, teaching wasn’t yet on his radar. Instead, he took a job at Tractor Supply and, at 18, drove solo from Illinois to Alaska to visit his sister. There, he nearly landed a job with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game—except he didn’t yet have the required associate’s degree. That moment changed everything.

“It planted the seed,” he says. “I realized I needed to go back to school.”

Eventually, he enrolled at Illinois Valley Community College, then transferred to Western Illinois University to major in biology education. He worked through grad school, supported a young family, and completed a master’s thesis on cage culture aquaculture—research that merged his upbringing with his scientific curiosity.

His path to Macomb Schools wasn’t exactly scripted. “I wasn’t looking for it,” he says. “The job kind of found me.”

It stuck. Three decades later, Joel has taught everything from biology and geology to dual-credit college science courses in partnership with Spoon River College. He’s influenced thousands of students, many of whom have gone on to study science, enter medical fields, or simply carry a better understanding of the world with them.

What’s made his teaching so effective isn’t flash or performance. It’s connection.

“I didn’t love high school when I was a kid,” he says. “We moved, and I felt kind of lost in the shuffle. So I understand the students who feel that way. I get them.”

That empathy has become a cornerstone of his work. Joel doesn’t sugarcoat the effort required to succeed—but he also doesn’t underestimate his students. “If they’re willing to work,” he says, “they can do it.”

He’s also quick to credit the people around him. “The best part of this job has been the people,” he says. “The other teachers, the students. You’ll always have some tough situations, but you focus on the kids who want to learn and the colleagues who support them.”

Over the years, Joel’s seen changes in student demographics, technology, and social needs. “There’s more chaos in some kids’ lives now,” he says. “Split households, economic hardship, instability. But they still show up. They still try.”

And when they do, Joel is there. With patience. With curiosity. With that same quiet steadiness that’s defined his career.

His love of the outdoors never left him, and it shows in how he teaches. When a student says they’re interested in biology, he knows just what to do. “You help them see how it applies to real life,” he says. “Not just textbooks—real-world things.”

He’s heard from former students who now work in labs, study science, or pursue medical degrees—many of them crediting his class as the start. “I ran into one of them at Aldi’s,” he says with a smile. “She told me she’s going into biology because of my class. That’s pretty humbling.”

Joel never wanted the spotlight. But what he’s given Macomb Schools is something immeasurable: a teacher who believed in kids before they believed in themselves. A mentor who never asked for recognition but earned it daily. A scientist who never stopped learning—and never stopped sharing what he found.

The pinhooked fishing lines of his childhood might be long gone. But the lessons from that creek—resourcefulness, patience, wonder—still echo through his classroom.

And for every student who sat in those seats over the past 31 years, the current runs on.