Looking Back: Remembering High School

by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society


This week I am asking you, the readers of this column, to do the work! I’m asking you to “look back.” As another school year draws to a close, the Class of 2024 will take with them a ton of memories; some good, some maybe not so good, some happy, some sad and some they might wish to forget!

How about you? What do you remember most about your high school years? Marching band, choir, music contest when we spent the day at CMSU (now UCM); football and basketball  games; the junior and senior plays and speech contest; or perhaps the last day of school when we went to the Kansas City Zoo? I remember those zoo trips. The entire high school fit easily on three school buses!

What are you remembering about those years? Whether in Grain Valley, or wherever you attended high school, the memories are there.

Today, I’m remembering a great teacher. I think there were fewer than fifteen high school teachers when I graduated 60 years ago. Good or bad, there was only one shop teacher, one business teacher, one English teacher; well, you get the picture. There were four history teachers, because there were two coaches and two administrators: Coach Master, football, track and freshman Civics; Mr. Murry, superintendent and World History; Mr. Malone, principal and American History; and Mr. Wiggins, basketball and science & mathematics.

Of all my high school teachers, I learned the most from Mr. Wiggins. Perhaps, that was because I needed to learn the most in math, chemistry and physics. My limited knowledge of science is how I was able to understand what people meant when they said, “It’s all Greek to me.” But Mr. Wiggins made you want to learn what a trinomial was and the importance of learning the periodic table in chemistry class.

He made it both interesting and fun, especially when we had labs. And he didn’t hold it against me when I nearly burned down our lab. I struck a match, lighted my Bunsen Burner, blew out the match and threw it in the trash can. Little did I know the trash can contained sulfur powder remains from the previous day. Flames leaped at least two or three feet into the air and while they immediately went out, it scared the entire class for just a second or two. Over the years, Mr. Wiggins remined me of the event many times! Always with a laugh and a smile…

Some teachers believed a textbook should be chosen by the number of chapters in the book. Thirty-four seemed to be the perfect number; one for every week of the school year, less the week before Christmas break and the last week of the year. But I remember that when Mr. Wiggins passed out our chemistry books he told us he didn’t care how many chapters we would cover, but he did care that every student understood the chapter; all nine of us.

He would get us through the important chapters first, and the others after we had ALL conquered those. Back “in the day” we learned algebra using slide rules and we learned about acceleration from ticker tape experiments. And we knew about Archimedes principle. Years later I taught my own students in my FACS class (Family and Consumer Sciences) to measure shortening by water displacement! And I explained about acids and bases when we made biscuits from scratch!

Ironically, when I got my first teaching job in Oak Grove, Randol Wiggins was my principal. He just kept on teaching me. I hope I followed at least some of his good examples. He was one of the great ones!

GVHS Chemistry Class, 1963. Photo credit Grain Valley Historical Society
 
Visit the Grain Valley Historical Society, open on Wednesdays from 10 AM to 3 PM or by appointment. You can see the 1959 slide rule I inherited from my brother, along with a protractor and compass used in Mr. Wiggin’s algebra classes.