I remember talking with a college friend once about my genetics class. We were both undergrads, she a chemistry major and me pursuing degrees in both journalism and biology. I had never studied genetics before, and I was fascinated by the way our genetic code affects protein structure and function, which affects molecular pathways, which in turn affect everything from our physical appearance to our metabolism, the way our cells communicate, and the way we respond to pathogens.

As I shared my amazement at the interconnectedness of our biology, something I said made my friend give me a strange look.

"Wait, you believe in evolution?" she asked incredulously. Clearly, she had thought I was smart until about two seconds ago.

The look she gave me started to make sense as she explained what she thought evolution meant. After all, the idea that a giraffe could just decide it needed a longer neck to be able to reach those choice leaves at the tops of the trees, actually grow a longer neck, and from then on pass the long neck onto its offspring did seem fairly ludicrous.

I gave my friend a brief lesson in how incremental, random mutations at the molecular level, not high-level giraffe decision-making, played a part in genetic variation, and she was on board.

I realize that not all disagreements over evolution are settled so simply and that not all of those who take issue with evolution misunderstand it in such a fundamental way. Here, though, the point I want to make is not about evolution so much as about genetics education. Clearly, my friend had somehow gotten the wrong idea about one of the most important theories of modern biology.

More recently, I overheard two women talking about genetics at a craft fair. One was a fifth-grade teacher, and apparently genetics is part of the fifth-grade curriculum. She noted that her class was studying eye color.

"We're talking about how blue eyes are usually recessive, and they're only dominant when both parents have blue eyes. But the students just aren't getting it," she lamented.

I really, really wanted to insert myself into this conversation, but I couldn't figure out how to do so in a way that would be well received.

I wanted to explain that her use of dominant and recessive might be part of the problem. These terms don't refer to whether a trait is visible or hidden, and a trait isn't dominant in one context but recessive in another. A dominant trait is, by definition, one that is displayed when an individual has at least one copy of the relevant allele. By contrast, a recessive trait is one that is only apparent when an individual has two copies of the allele for that trait.

So if eye color were really a trait controlled by a single gene, then blue eyes would be recessive all the time—but it's way more complicated than that.

Contrary to one of the most popular myths about genetics, it is possible—although rare—for two parents who each have blue eyes to have children with brown or hazel eyes.

That's because eye color is not determined by a single gene, and therefore it doesn't follow single-gene inheritance patterns. At least ten different genes, affecting everything from the amount of melanin in the eye to where the melanin is located within the eye, are involved.

I wondered why the students were studying eye color when there are so many other traits that actually do follow predictable single-gene inheritance patterns. For example, polydactyly (having an extra digit) would be pretty interesting for a bunch of fifth graders and would be a great way to teach the basics of Mendelian genetics.

Based on this teacher's laments and my college friend's experience, I was becoming a bit concerned about how well kids understand fundamental genetics after graduating from high school. I have only two anecdotal pieces of evidence to suggest that there's cause for concern, and nearly two decades and several states separate the examples, but nonetheless I decided to take matters into my own hands for the fifth grader in my house—and for his next-youngest brother, who is in the third grade.

Upon hearing that genetics was part of the fifth-grade curriculum, I admit that my first reaction was surprise—it seemed a bit advanced for fifth graders. But my kids find it just as fascinating as I did when I was in college. We started out with a video on the basics of inheritance and traits and one on DNA and genes from the University of Utah. My kids loved the block people featured in the videos, and I thought the explanations were easy to follow. We're still exploring the rest of the material on the site, which is put together by the university's Genetic Science Learning Center. Much to my boys' disappointment, not all of the content is in video format, and not all of it involves block people, but it's all interesting and quality material nonetheless.

Next, we visited our library and borrowed a book called Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas. Although I was already familiar with the work of the Austrian monk and his experiments to determine the basis of pea inheritance, I was fascinated to learn how he prevented unwanted crosses by painstakingly tying bags around the pea flowers after hand pollinating them. I also hadn't realized that he died before anyone understood the importance of his work—in fact, it was decades before most scientists even heard about it.

A TED-Ed video titled "How Mendel's Pea Plants Help Us Understand Genetics" reinforced the concepts covered in the book; introduced new vocabulary such as heterozygote, homozygote, and phenotype; and explained how geneticists use a Punnett square to visualize the likelihood of various genetic outcomes. We had to watch the video a second time because the boys were laughing so hard at the dancing heterozygous pea kid (who stars at about 00:01:40) that they missed a lot of the important information.

Next I had to tackle misconceptions about evolution. I noticed that my fifth grader had defined metamorphosis as evolution on a worksheet for a school assignment about finding information through online searches. I thought he must not have understood what metamorphosis is, so together we looked it up on the internet. We discovered that metamorphosis is when an animal undergoes a profound change in form during its lifespan, such as when a tadpole changes into a frog or a caterpillar changes into a butterfly.

"Right. So isn't that evolution?" my son asked, even though I've tried to explain how evolution works several times before. Clearly, we needed more than a verbal explanation from Mom.

I turned to a book called Little Changes by Tiffany Taylor. In the book, a flood divides a population of fictitious creatures called rinkidinks. The rinkidinks who are good at using their long, corkscrew tails for swimming plunge into the flood waters and discover a tasty food source at the bottom. The rinkidinks who have springier tails that allow them to bounce up into the tree tops escape the flood waters that way and find lots of tasty food at the tops of the trees. As time goes on and the two populations remain isolated, they become more and more different. The rhyming text is simplistic and still requires adult explanation—kids might otherwise think that the rinkidinks adapted to their different environments on purpose. But the pictures and storyline provide a good foundation for that explanation.

To apply this new understanding of evolution, we watched another TED-Ed video, this one about how animals develop genetic differences in microenvironments in New York City.

For broader topic coverage, we've started reading The Cartoon Guide to Genetics by Larry Gonick (I've had to gloss over some vague references to certain reproductive facts my boys haven't learned about yet, but really those nuances were all over their heads anyway). We aren't far enough into the book for me to give you a full review, although I can say that my third grader enjoyed The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry by the same author (I suspect that the intended audience for Gonick's Cartoon Guide series is at high-school level or beyond, so definitely check out the books even if the third grade was in your distant past; this series should have been on my list of books that make science fun, but I hadn't discovered it yet. And also I would have had to bump something else off … compiling top-ten lists is so hard).

I hope my concern over the quality of genetics instruction at an elementary and high-school level is ill founded, and it probably is, given the paucity of evidence I've accumulated. Many students will not go on to take genetics courses in college, so their one shot might be during the fifth or maybe the tenth grade, and it seems important in today's society that people have at least a basic understanding of inheritance. Given the questionable foundation on which I've built my concern, though, I'm not ready to throw in the towel on the educational system just yet.

Nonetheless, I've come across some truly high-quality resources, so I'm glad for those and for the moments I've shared learning with my kids. Given the high interest my boys seem to have for genetics, I plan to continue exploring. If you know of any resources we should check out, I'd love to hear from you!