Remember an Event

What was it like having your first teacher of the day, as your homeroom teacher? What was it like being a student in Mrs. Burtis- Taylor’s Honors Biology class? Stepping into Mrs. “BT’s Zone”, as she would sometimes call it, had its good days and bad. Back then, it seemed like the bad outweighed the good. I learned a lot from Mrs. Burtis-Taylor even though I was acting hard-headed most of the time in class. She always said “From the time you walk in the door until the time the bell rings, I am going to teach you all”. It was Mrs. Burtis-Taylor’s favorite phrase, and she meant every word she said too. At the end of class, as her students were walking out the door she would continue to ask them questions like; “What is mRNA, how can you describe what a phospholipid bi-layer looks like?” She made sure her students got a full day of teaching from her.
Mrs. Burtis-Taylor taught 10th grade Biology for many years. In fact, she taught for so long that she even taught my older sister who has not been in high school in over 20 years. That is a very long time to spend your whole life teaching at a dump of a place that was referred to as a high school.   She made sure she knew all her students on a professional level and some even on a personal level, including me. “Reginald, I’m pretty sure your mother and aunts would not like that attitude of you are giving me” she said to me a few times. Mrs. Burtis-Taylor knew she could get students to do anything just by threating to tell on them.
I never knew how hard learning about DNA and carbohydrates could be until my mother requested me to be enrolled in Mrs. Burtis- Taylor’s 5th block class.   The fact that she was homeroom also my homeroom teacher made being her class even worse. When the bells would ring, all my friends would leave and go to their next class while I was stuck in the same room for another hour and thirty minutes. Mrs. Burtis-Taylor would always try to make me study in homeroom before her class started, but I...