By Alisha Fields
There are so many classes you can take as a senior, but none of the classes require students to make milkshakes. However, this is one reason why English teacher Mrs. Suzy Fox remembers her senior year at Delta High School, back in 1991, to be the best.
As part of her advanced marketing class, a class we no longer offer, she and her classmates helped run a shake shop. Mrs. Fox says she remembers selling milkshakes, cookies, chips and other snacks.
She was also part of a competitive marketing group called DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) that prepares students for careers in marketing, finance and management.
She, along with so many other teachers at Delta, have stories of their high school experiences. People say you never forget your high school days, and the teachers prove it, sharing the highs and lows of their experiences and how it affects how they teach today.
Mrs. Fox said her high school experience has greatly affected how she teaches her own students.
“It makes me mindful of how I want to treat my students, and the relationships I want to have with my students,” she said.
Mrs. Fox went to Delta when it was an open concept school, meaning the building didn’t have many interior walls. She said it was a completely different environment than what it is now.
She said that there would always be one teacher from across the school yell “Delta!” and another teacher from the other side would yell back “Eagles!”
Mrs. Fox is also one of few to marry their high school sweethearts. She and her husband started dating when she was 15 and in the second semester of her freshman year. Even though he was a junior at the time, they still dated all throughout high school. She said she was lucky because she got to go to prom all four years.
Art teacher Mrs. Helen Zacek also went to Delta, graduating in 1997. Her love for drawing and ceramics runs back to her high school days.
“I knew I wanted to be an art teacher while I was in high school,” Zacek said.
However, art wasn’t her only hobby. She also loved playing tennis for Coach Cleland.
Even with her enjoyment of tennis, art was always her passion.
“My senior year I had like four art classes. I took everything multiple times,” Zacek said. She said her favorite art class was always ceramics. “I loved being covered in clay,” she said.
Of course not all teachers went to Delta. Mr. Todd Trehearne graduated from Cowan High School in 1978, with a graduating class of 60 students.
He said his favorite high school memory was “probably the sectional win of ’76. It was the first Cowan basketball team to win a sectional.”
Like Mrs. Fox, Mr. Trehearne also married his high school sweetheart. He said that it was the most important thing he took away from high school, even though he didn’t know it at the time.
“I had a good high school experience, even though it was small and everyone knew everybody’s business,” he said. “The teachers were great and I came out of there with a solid foundation that did me well when it came to college.”
Mrs. Holly Hopkins graduated in 1990 from Lisle Senior High School, located in Lisle, Ill.
She said her favorite year “would be my senior year, mainly because I could drive to school. Not riding the bus was priceless,” Hopkins said.
She said her experience as a student greatly impacted how she teaches.
“Showing kindness to my students is very important to me,” she said. “I will not raise my voice or yell in class. I don’t know what goes on with students at home, so I want to create a very safe space within my classroom.”
She said she loved being on the track team because for birthdays “we would go to whoever was having the birthday and ‘kidnap’ them. By that I mean we would blindfold them and not tell them where we were going. It always ended up being a night of surprise adventures.”
Her worst memory from high school was when she got in a car accident and was sued for $250,000. Luckily, she won the case and did not have to pay any money. She said that the lady that she got into the collision with set up accidents for a living.
Memories are some of the best keepsakes of our lives. You never forget the memories you make in high school.
You may think you are just having fun now, but you are making memories for the future.
