Rachel Norris is a lover of science and one of the Biology teacher’s at our school. She is the sponsor of the science quiz bowl.

As someone who loves to teach and spread her love of science to young people, she didn’t always know she was going to teach. She was headed for med-school, working in a emergency room and clinic, took the MCAT, and realized she wasn’t happy with that path. Because she loved science, she originally thought the best thing for her to do was to become a doctor. However, she decided to do City Year. City Year is an Americorp program which gives scholarships and help to students who teach other younger students who aren’t performing well on standardized test.

“I distinctly remember these adorable little second graders walking down the hall towards me ‘holding a bubble’ in their mouth (design to keep them quiet,) and I had an actual lightbulb moment. I felt this was it, this was what my life was suppose to be, being with kids,” she said.

Over Norris’s years of teaching she has to curve her sarcasm and to stop cursing. She also learned she’s a lot goofier than she thought she was, and there’s a lot of systemic problems in education. Her hardest lesson was realizing that people’s lives will never be substantial until society can fix the problems, that face her students today.

Her favorite part about teaching are two things; the kid who struggles a lot then gets it and teaching about how science affects her students when they don’t even realize it.