Boulevard Elementary School Building Assistant Mike Bernosky may have selected some fairly dated decor to fill the empty display case in the school’s main hallway, but his arrangement is turning heads. Mr. Bernosky, a fossil enthusiast, stocked the cabinet with items from his personal collection of fossils—trilobites, prehistoric snails and fish and more—to commemorate National Fossil Day on October 18. Even better, he’ll make the items come to life when he shares the knowledge he’s gained as a fossil hunter with groups of Boulevard students in the coming months. 

“To me what’s interesting is about hunting for fossils is that I don’t know what I’m going to find when I head out,” Mr. Bernosky says. “It’s like a giant treasure hunt. And I always learn something new every time I go.”  

For the past 15 years, Mr. Bernosky’s passion for fossils has led him to quarries and mines all over the country where he spends hours at a time digging through the earth and breaking chunks of rock in search of prehistoric leftovers buried beneath our modern world. Occasionally, his wife, who teaches science at Cleveland Metropolitan Schools, and his 10-year-old daughter accompany him. Each one of his pieces has a story: there’s the mammoth tooth that he won in a raffle, there’s the Edmontosaurus femur he found at a site in Montana, and the colorful chunk of petrified wood his daughter stumbled upon in Arizona. 

Over the years, Mr. Bernosky has shared the stories of his collections with classrooms throughout Northeast Ohio. He’s encouraged that what used to be considered a boy’s hobby (looking at fossils and dinosaur bones) is now something that all children seem to find fascinating. “To the extent that I can, my goal is to encourage kids to just go out and explore the world around them,” he says. “Maybe they won’t be interested in paleontology, but perhaps they’ll be interested enough in science that they could do something else in research or become a doctor.” 

He’s learned so much about fossils and early life on Earth, but his hobby has also given him a valuable lesson in kindness. “From the beginning, I’ve had people who were willing to mentor me and then I’ve been able to mentor other people,” he says. “And then time goes by and the people that I’ve mentored find me and offer to help me out. It’s a nice community that way.”

Hunting for fossils also gives Mr. Bernosky a sense of accomplishment. “When I first started out, I was the one asking all the questions. And what’s really neat now is that is that I’ve learned enough where I can answer other people’s questions. That’s a really good feeling,” he says, adding, “But I still ask questions because you never know what you’re going to find or learn.