For 21 years, students at Dee-Mack High School have walked into Mrs. McLemore’s room and been greeted with passion, energy, and a love for science. Teaching Biology 1, Biology 2, and AP Bio, Mrs. Mac has spent over two decades helping students develop a passion for science, in every subject from basic cell structures to complex human anatomy. Beyond her lectures and labs, Mrs. Mac has become known for the impact she leaves behind on students. In addition to teaching biology classes, she is also the sponsor for the National Honors Society here at Dee-Mack. I sat down with Mrs. Mac and asked her a few questions to get to know our beloved biology teacher a little better!
How long have you been teaching? When and why did you decide to become a teacher?
K. McLemore: “This was my 30th year, my 21st year here and my 30th year total. I’ve got a few more to do until I can retire. When I went to college I thought I wanted to become a genetic engineer, but I didn’t know what that meant. It just sounded fancy and I thought since it was engineering I’d make money. When I got to college and I had to take an engineering class, my very first one, I was so lost. It was basically a drafting class, so I always tell everyone if they say they wanna become an engineer to take drafting in highschool, because I was totally lost. I cried a lot doing homework, lots of tears, and it was the same semester that I was taking calculus 2 or 3 and there were a lot of tears there as well. So I decided maybe engineering was not for me and then I was just a biology major for a while. I always loved biology in high school. I took a year of human anatomy in high school, loved that, but I never wanted to be a doctor or a nurse. I had a cousin that was a physical therapist and that sounded cool so I looked into that. So then I was a Pre-Physical Therapy major which is basically getting a biology degree and then going to PT school, but it was very competitive to get into. So I was doing all of my job shadows, I was taking all the classes, and I was probably finishing up my sophomore year of college when I took my second physics class. I made a C, and it was the first C I’d ever made in my life. I was real happy with my C because the class kicked my butt, but when I went to meet with my academic advisor after that report card, he was like “What have you done, like you’re never gonna get into PT school, that one C is gonna kill your GPA.” I was like “Okay, like, I have a 3.7.” and he said “It’s not good enough.” He told me I was going to switch my major and be a nurse, nurse for five years, and then come back and apply for PT school. And I said, “But I don’t wanna be a nurse. I have a sister who’s a nurse, I hear her stories. I don’t wanna be a nurse, I don’t wanna be a doctor. I just don’t know what I want to do.” So I went back to just being a biology major, and I was in one of my bio classes and there was a girl sitting beside me and she was… confused most of the time. She noticed that I was getting good grades when I would get papers back, and I was answering questions, and she said “Hey would you tutor me?” So I would meet with her at the library a couple times a week, and something just clicked. I was like “Oh, this I can do, I’m good at this.” So that’s what happened. I was at Valdosta State in Valdosta, Georgia, and so my degree is in secondary education, certified 6-12 with a concentration in biology, and a minor concentration in chemistry and physics. So a lot of people now when they become teachers, their degree is in something else and then they go back to school and add on their education certificate. Like, Mr. Reiman’s got a degree in math, and Mr. Vlastnik has a degree in history, Mr. Mac has a degree in English and art, they get those degrees and then they add on the teaching. There’s very few of us that have a teaching degree. I took all the teaching classes and then I would take the content classes in what I was going to teach but not as much as someone who got a degree in just that. So whenever you start teaching it, okay I’m qualified to teach any of the sciences you wanna throw at me. So I took two physics classes in college, but if you want me to teach physics, I can do that, I’m allowed to do that, but I’m gonna study. I’m gonna be studying every night, right along with you. I taught physics 22 years ago, I taught chemistry 23 years ago, like I’ve done it, it’s just been a really long time. So, you know, the possibility is always there that they can say, “Okay we’ve got an extra one of these classes, and we need you to do it.” Like, “Okay!” and I just know I have to study. I mean, I’ve studied a lot for AP Bio, when that came along it was a lot more in-depth than what I’d been teaching for Bio 1, and so I just had to study.”
Who inspires you? What makes this person so influential to you?
K. McLemore: “Presently who inspires me? Yeah there’s– in different ways. Like, and it’s not gonna be anybody like famous necessarily, like, Mr. Mac inspires me because he’s getting more education, he’s always taking classes and learning more. My daughters inspire me because they’re not getting their education in the traditional path. So, they are very brave to me. I’ve got one daughter, she got her bachelor’s in political science, and then she took a year to go work as an au pair in Paris– just moved over there not knowing a soul, and not being able to speak a lick of French, and just did it for a year. Then she came back and she’s working as a paralegal in Chicago, but now she’s decided she wants to be a vet, but she didn’t take science classes for a political science degree. So she’s getting prerequisites of her sciences so she can go to vet school. And so she inspires me because she’s just brave enough to go off and travel across the world not knowing anybody and to say “Okay this is what I wanna do,” and put the plan in motion to do it. My younger daughter, she started out at ISU, and then she took a year off, and now she’s finishing up classes at Heartland, then transferring back to ISU in the fall to get an education degree to teach elementary. And again, it inspires me just that she figured it out, she’s got the courage to see the plan through, and I told both of them it’s not the plan I had, it’s not the plan I would’ve chosen for you, but that’s the plan you took and it’s working out and it will work out. So it inspires me that people can kind of figure it out and not necessarily feel like they have to do it the traditional way. I don’t know if there’s a specific person, but I would say I’m inspired by anybody that has courage that I don’t feel like I have– and maybe I do but I just don’t feel like I do. So those examples I just gave you, but then also in the grand scheme of things, people that have the courage to speak out their politics or about, you know, civil rights. So it’s not a specific person, but just in general people that can stand up for themselves and for other people in that way that I feel like I’m scared to.”
What’s your favorite memory from teaching so far?
K. McLemore: “Oh God. That’s a very broad question. I’m trying to think back over all these years. It’s hard for me to pinpoint something specific, I can just kind of give you general things. I love it when I can see the lightbulb, when that Aha! moment happens, and something clicks. I love that, and you can see it sometimes when the student is just like “Now it makes sense.” I love that. I love any of the interactive stuff, I love the labs, anything where students are interacting and not just me lecturing. I love the silly things that happen, especially in a biology class, sometimes silly things happen with vocabulary words. Sometimes stuff happens. I love whenever I found out that someone enjoyed the class, especially when it’s someone I didn’t have any idea really enjoyed it. They were just like a regular kid, like they didn’t seem like they hated it but they just didn’t seem totally impressed or anything. And then to find out later how much they liked it, or you get a thank you note or something and they tell you. I love getting emails from students that have graduated like “Oh I just had this in my genetics class and I was the only one that knew such and such about the fruit flies.” Just little things like that, or “I just took a test and made a 100 on it.” I love those and it’s validating, because sometimes teaching can feel like you’re drowning. So, it’s validating to have those Aha! moments, like okay this is why I do it, and to hear back from the graduates, and like to know you made a difference.”
What’s something you wish your students knew?
K. McLemore: “Let’s see. It depends on the class, but I wish some of them knew that it was okay to mess up. I wish some of them knew it was okay to make a mistake, you don’t have to do it perfect the first time out of the gate. The biggest hurdle is just getting started and trying it, and you might mess up, but it’s okay. We can revise it and we can make it better. I wish that some of them knew that I can laugh, that I can make it fun, I can be fun. There’s some classes where it’s really hard, like if you have a class that, you know you have several that cause discipline problems, then I can’t be my true self because I’m gonna have to be stricter to hold it together. And then other classes, they can behave and they can snap back when they need to and pay attention, so then I can relax more and I can have more fun with it. So I wish that some of them that were in those other classes knew that that was a side of me, because I feel like some students don’t see that side of me. I feel like sometimes with freshmen specifically sometimes you have to be a little stricter with them just to hold it together. So, I wish some of them knew that I’m not always strict and I’m not always hard.”
What were you like as a student? Has much of that changed since?
K. McLemore: “I am a very concrete learner and I like things to be linear. I don’t like things to be abstract. So, I would be the kind of student that I want my notes to be very organized, I might color code them, I’m gonna have about three writing utensils with me at all times. I hate a concept map. I hate that. I understand why it helps some people, and I understand it, but I don’t need that. I was always very studious. I made straight As in high school and then my first B in college and then I made my first C in college, my only C. I had parents who were strict, but they didn’t really have to be because I just kind of put it on myself. I’ve got four older sisters and one of them– and they were all smart in different ways– but one of them was, she was second in her class, she had the highest SAT score at the school, and so I knew that growing up and I kind of grew up thinking “I’m gonna top that,” I was valedictorian, but I didn’t have the highest SAT score, so she she still got me on that one. But, I just kind of was always very intrinsically motivated. I didn’t have to be bribed to do well at school, I didn’t have to be threatened that I’m gonna be punished, it was just something I put on myself. I learned to study in the ninth grade, I had a very hard world history class, and that set the tone for how I study. If I was the student now, I would probably be very similar, but I get distracted a lot more than I used to. When I was in high school, if I studied, I would study while I watched TV or while I listened to music. I can’t do that now. Now it has to be complete silence because I’m a lot more distracted now, and I don’t know how much that has to do with age and how much it has to do with dependence on having a phone all the time. I’m very distracted by my phone. I can’t take anything else, only silence now. But other than that, I would probably have like, the same method of attack in terms of how to study something.”
What are you like outside of school? What do you spend your time doing?
K. McLemore: “I’m probably not as serious as people think I am, I’m kind of just, I don’t know, I can be just goofy. Some people tell me that I’m funny, and I will say everytime, usually I’m not trying to be, and they will say that’s why it’s funny. I like to go walking on trails. This past weekend I was like, “Oh there’s wildflowers blooming at Starved Rock,” So, I got in the car and said to Mr. Mac, “Okay, I’m going to see the bluebells that are blooming at Illinois Canyon,” I was walking like, ankle deep in muddy water to get to these bluebells. I was like, well I wasn’t expecting quite that, I thought it was a muddy trail but I didn’t know it was gonna be that. But I was like, well I’m in it now I may as well. So, I saw those flowers. Over spring break I was scrambling rocks to get to these waterfalls. I mean, so I do that kind of stuff. I like to find stuff that I haven’t done before or I haven’t done in a really long time, and make plans that that’s what I’m gonna do. A few years ago, because I’m 52, when I turned 50 I made a list of 50 things that I wanted to accomplish during that year. It was stuff that either I hadn’t done before or I hadn’t done in a really long time. I did like all but two of them, so I found two other things to do to make it 50. But it was stuff like, I did a zipline, I rode an alpine coaster, we went up in a hot air balloon, so it was stuff like that, but it was also stuff like leave a note with words of encouragement on a stranger’s windshield. It was just all kinds of stuff, I learned how to play a new song on the piano, I had not played piano in like 20 years. So, I mean, I do stuff like that. I like to travel. We’re going to Egypt the day after Memorial Day. When my daughter took a year in Paris, the four of us flew to London. You can take a train that goes under the English Channel in between London and Paris. So she met us over there, we did a few days in London and then we went to Paris and we picked up all her stuff, did a few days in Paris, got on a plane to Munich, Germany, did a few days there, and then we flew home.”
What is your favorite lab to do overall in your classes?
K. McLemore: “I really like the fetal pig dissection. Again, because it’s anatomy and I enjoy that and the pig anatomy is so similar to human anatomy. I like dissections in general but that’s my favorite of the dissections. I like the fruit fly labs, those are fun because you get to deal with something alive and that just adds a different element to it. I just did the lab in Bio 2 where they have to make the model of the lungs and they have to figure out how to make them work. That one’s fun just because they have to figure it out; I just give them all the parts and tell them what it has to accomplish, and so it’s like there’s an engineering component to it. So that’s fun.”
What makes a student stand out to you?
K. McLemore: “To me they stand out if they volunteer a lot. Not just when they know they have the right answer, but when they’re trying and it’s not like a wild guess it’s a really thoughtful guess, and they stand out then when they ask questions that make me think. When it’s something that I haven’t considered before, sometimes it’s just something that I’m kind of– it’ll be a fact I know but I have never really thought about why it is the way it is. Then I have to think about “well, why is it that way?” Then I have to go look it up, and I just have to say “You know, I don’t know. I think maybe it’s this or this, but I don’t know I’ve gotta look that up and then get back to you.” So to me that makes the student stand out because they are being so insightful and inquisitive and making connections.”
What is the most rewarding part of teaching here at Dee-Mack?
K. McLemore: “I think teaching in a small school, in a small community is rewarding to me because it reminds me of the kind of community I grew up in. I’m from a small town, I went to a small school, and so it kind of feels like home. Going back to what I said before, it’s rewarding having those moments with students that appreciate it. I feel like for the most part that is what I feel. I don’t have the experience that some teachers have at different places, we’re pretty sheltered here. I know we have our stuff, but it’s just not the same everywhere. So yeah I think for the most part being able to have classes where students are respectful and for the most part appreciative, and for the most part try– and I know you can’t say that about every class in this school, not every student is that way, but that’s my experience.”
I thank Mrs. Mac greatly for her time and this opportunity to learn more about her! I reached out to a few other students about her impact on their lives not only as a student, but as a person as well. These students were given the option to keep their responses anonymous, and here are some of the things Dee-Mack students had to say:
“She makes me want to stay at school.”
“Mrs. Mac is definitely one of the best teachers. Throughout the school year no matter what she always challenges people to work harder and really gets you interested in a topic. I can say without a doubt that Mrs. Mac has made me a better person and made me want to learn more on my own. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to go and continue learning a topic in any other classes except for Mrs. Mac’s biology class. Because of Mrs. Mac I got extremely interested in biology and the human body and its made me want to possibly become apart of the medical field.”
Drayson Bowling: “Mrs. Mac has given me so much help in the way of what classes to take for college, what fields to research based on my interests, and where to take my life after high school in general, not to mention all of the stupid science-related questions I’ve asked her after school for personal projects or purely out of curiosity. She has been a great help and I’ve learned so much from her both in and out of class.”
“Mrs. Mac has meant so much to my growth at Dee-Mack. She taught me so much about how to challenge myself in the classroom and to always be willing to ask questions. We learned how fun it can be to learn about things you’re passionate about, and how to work through challenging content. As a person she showed us how to live and work with respect for everyone and the thing I remember most is how she illustrated just how much of an impact you can have just by being involved and caring about the people you are around.”
Emily Stauffer: “Mrs. Mac has impacted me greatly as both a student and a person. When I first came into high school, I had a love for science. Mrs. Mac emphasized that love and turned it into a passion by showing her own enthusiasm for science. Whenever I had trouble, she offered feedback that helped me to improve some of my skills and writing. She also cared about me, not just as a student. Because of her, I learned how to be confident in myself, that effort is worth it, and patience is key.”
“Mrs. Mac has impacted me as a person by showing me not everything is as it seems. A lot of students (specifically underclassmen) say Mrs. Mac is scary and strict and I can see what they mean when you first interact with her as a freshman or sophomore her presence is intimidating. However, Mrs. Mac is just a no-nonsense kind of person and takes teaching seriously and with the greatest care. I think how she handles her classroom is what makes learning in her class fun. No distractions, just a desire to teach. I appreciate her showing me it’s okay to take subjects we are passionate about and be serious about them and still have fun.”
Meesha Zeller: “Mrs. Mac has made me a better student on pushing me to be my best at all times. She is so funny and kind and has a warm spirit that draws you to love her. She has made me a kinder and smarter person. Getting to have her as my teacher is amazing and I’m so thankful to have had her to make my favorite subject that much better. Thank you Mrs. Mac for believing in me.”
It was such a privilege being able to gain insight from the perspective of other students on their experiences both externally and internally with Mrs. Mac. I chose to write about Mrs. Mac because she has made such a huge impact on not only my life here at Dee-Mack, but my life moving forward as well. I took all three biology classes she offers, and through them I discovered a passion for human anatomy and the medical field overall. Mrs. Mac’s science class is the only one that has ever truly immersed me in the content, I was always truly interested in what we were learning about- and AP Biology took that to a new level. AP Biology is undoubtedly a challenging class, but it is also so interesting that it makes it worth it. I wholeheartedly believe that if Mrs. Mac was not my AP Biology teacher I would not have been able to achieve as high of a score as I did on the AP Exam. One of the things I most appreciated about her classes is that Mrs. Mac always took the time to answer my questions and help me when I was struggling no matter the circumstances. Not only is she an amazing teacher, but she is also such a kind person. All four of my years here I have always felt welcomed by her and she makes it such a priority to interact with students outside of the classroom as well. In addition to gaining student insight, I asked a few other teachers here at Dee-Mack about how Mrs. Mac has made a difference to them, and what they had to say about her overall.
Mrs. Smallwood: “Mrs. Mac sets a high standard of excellence as an educator and consistently performs at the top of her game. She holds her students to high expectations, and when they rise to meet them, it fosters a lasting sense of confidence and pride. She is one of the most organized individuals I know, and I truly appreciate her clear and consistent communication with both students and staff. Mrs. Mac is one of the finest educators I have had the privilege to know.”
Mr. Rutan: “Mrs. Mac has been a great source of stability and inspiration for me in my first year at Dee-Mack High. The transition into this position was a little bit shaky as I tried to figure out standards based grading, and how to build a course based around SBG. Any time I needed help, Mrs. Mac always would put down whatever she was working on to assist me. When I was overwhelmed, she was a source of calm reassurance and was always there with a friendly suggestion. Overall, Mrs. Mac is a wonderful person and a great teacher, and I’m happy that I get to hang out with her in passing periods!”
It has been a pleasure to learn more about Mrs. Mac and gain some insight from both student and teacher perspectives on the kind of impact she has made in many different ways. Mrs. Mac is such a staple in our community here at Dee-Mack and her friendly energy as well as her passion for what she teaches make her classroom a favorite amongst many. Teacher Appreciation Week is Monday May 4 through Friday May 8, if you see Mrs. Mac please be sure to say thank you!
