Mrs. Taylor Deserved Teacher of the Year 1977-78

I can't even remember her first name. What I do remember is that for nine months, I learned more in her biology class than I'd learned in all the other science classes I'd taken combined. What was so different about her class, you ask?

Mrs. Taylor taught that class with a loving, yet authoritative air about herself. She was enthusiastic. She made the biology terms and formulas and experiments pop like popcorn and served them up like a movie theater showing a suspense thriller double feature. Ice cold drinks included.

One may wonder what brought this memory of Mrs. Taylor on. Well, hubby and I were riding in the car together the other day. We were talking about our high school teachers. Our teachers were people who taught throughout the 70s and 80s. We talked about how boring some of the classes were. We talked about how some teachers didn't care, and you could tell by the way they taught. We talked about the subjects we dreaded, and the subjects we loved. I tended to lean toward anything and everything language. I've loved words for so long I think I'm cheating on them with my husband of 27 years. So, I took the regular and advanced English classes, the creative writing classes.

Unfortunately, as much as I loved English, speaking and writing classes, I couldn't graduate without some science, math and social studies. Every tenth grader at Keith High School had to take Mrs. Taylor's biology class. Our class had heard the rumors. That she was a hard teacher. That she made you do horrible things, like dissect frogs, memorize the parts of a cell and recite it before the class, learn the different classifications of mammals and so on. And if you didn't memorize all the classifications and dissect a frog and recite the parts of the cell correctly, she'd flunk you. She had no heart. She was cruel.

By the time we actually took Mrs. Taylor's biology class, we were pretty scared. The first day, instead of letting us just get acquainted, she gave us work, and reading. We had class discussions. By the time the class period was over, all we could say was "wow!" By the end of the year, most of us had A's, a few had B's. There weren't many C's. Man, I still remember some of the things she taught.

Never before or even after did I have a teacher quite like Mrs. Taylor. Not only did she give biology a literal life for us, she worked with all her students to make sure that they were learning. If I'd had a chance, I would have taken her class a second time. Unfortunately, I didn't flunk, so I couldn't take the class over again.

I don't know if Mrs. Taylor was ever nominated or won teacher of the year. She deserved that honor and designation. I've had no contact with her since I left high school. I don't know if she's still alive. I still want to give her her props. Mrs. Taylor was unforgettable.