Pacing across his East Oakland classroom while pupils hover over their worksheet on genetics, Caleb Cheung keeps an eye on the time, like a track coach at a meet.

"Keep going, keep going," he tells the children, flashing a thumbs-up to one table after he checks their work. "Quick."

It is just another day at Frick Middle School, but in Cheung's science class there's a degree of urgency. It is as if he is trying to wring as much learning out of the class period as possible so his pupils spill onto the bleak streets around the school with a love, or at least an understanding, of science.

People are taking notice —parents, the principal and, yes, President Bush. He gave Cheung the prestigious 2005 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching earlier this month.

Cheung is one of 100 American educators to be honored with the accolade, given annually to one math and one science teacher from each state.

In a citation, Bush praised Cheung "for embodying excellence in teaching, for devotion to the learning needs of the students and for upholding the high standards that exemplify American education at its finest."

The framed award now leans against the white board in his classroom, just behind his stained desk chair.

Bush met the award winners for a few minutes during their weeklong visit to Washington, D.C., in early May. The White House took group photographs, and the president thanked the teachers for their work.

"I was definitely taken aback by his presence," Cheung said. "Here I am with the president of the United States."

Cheung began his teaching career 10 years ago, at age 24. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor's degree in integrated biology and landed a job at a growing technology company.

The company's stock value doubled every few months, and employees could play pool or use the office gym during work.

"If I had stayed there, I could have been a millionaire by the time I was 30," Cheung said. "But I was bored."

As a college student, Cheung spent his summers abroad, teaching Mayan youth in Mexico, university students in Bulgaria and rural students in a village in Myanmar. In the fall of 1996 he began his teaching career at Lowell Middle School in Oakland. To earn his credential, he attended night classes.

His first year in the classroom was grueling, he said, but things soon improved. After two years of teaching, Cheung moved to the now-closed Carter Middle School, where he helped train and support new teachers.

Teacher education remains one of his passions and he's considered leaving the classroom to work with other teachers full-time. He said his plans for next year are still unclear.

To win the presidential award and the $10,000 prize money, Cheung submitted an unedited film of a science lesson in his classroom. Just before the award deadline last year, he was in the middle of a five-week unit on evolution and taped a popular lesson, Survivor Elephant Island, based loosely on the television show Survivor.

He told his class that mutant elephants with various traits had landed on an island. The children then determined which elephants could survive and had to explain what would happen over time to the elephant population.

Cheung said his evolution lesson was not meant to be a political statement combating attacks on the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Evolution "is undeniably true," he said. "While people disagree with it because of their personal beliefs, there needs to be an understanding of the issue."

Frick Principal Jerome Gourdine said Cheung is an exemplary teacher, whose influence on campus reaches beyond the classroom. Cheung's Family Science Night attracts hundreds of parents and students and this fall it netted more visitors than the school's Back To School event, when parents meet their children's teachers.

"The kids have tremendous respect for him and they like him," Gourdine said. "That's a rare combination."

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