On fire!

“I wanted to be a teacher because I always enjoyed learning and I was inspired by both my best teachers in high school and my worst. My best ones I learned so much from. They were so neat. The worst ones were just frustrating. They should have been putting so much more into teaching. And I just kind of fell into chemistry teaching because the only position available that I was interested in was chemistry, so I took it.

I don’t know if this is super crazy but, I always tell this story about this girl in my class when it was held in the 500 wing. This was back when you had to reach across the table to access the Bunsen burners. She reached across the table and set her shirt on fire, but at first she didn’t notice. Later on, I saw this flash of color across the room, so I walked over to where she was. I looked at her sleeve and there was this large area that you could tell had been burned off. We eventually figured out she had unintentionally set her sleeve on fire, and unintentionally put it out. She felt an itchy, stinging sensation on her wrist, so she rubbed her sleeve against her lab apron. It was by sheer luck she stopped the fire.” (Mr. James Mehl, chemistry teacher)