David Edwards:
CLASS OF 1975
Bonnabel High SchoolClass of 1975
Kenner, LA
Southwestern Assemblies of God UniversityClass of 1984
Waxahachie, TX
Grace King High SchoolClass of 1975
Metairie, LA
David's Story
Life
Well what can I say about my life at this point. I am doing what I love to do and that is teaching and educating young people. I presently teach high school physics and chemistry in Irving ISD, TX in Irving, TX. I teach at a great school for careers called The Jack E. Singley Academy High School. It is a school driven by technology. All of our students are issued top of the line Compaq laptop computers at the start of their freshman year. 50% to 65% of all their classwork is done on a program called Blackboard on their laptop. Our school has been recognized as one of TX leading innovators in secondary education. We just received an award from World News Report that listed our campus as one of the top 30 connected schools in the nation - our one to one ratio of computers to students plus all of the other electronic devices available on our campus to both students and teachers make it a fascinating place to teach. You can learn more about it by going to the Irving ISD website. I have the privelege teaching students who are preparing for careers in the culinary arts, hospitality & management, animation, graphic design and fine arts, medical, legal, criminal justice, engineering, computer maintenance, auto cad, webmastering & robotics. This will be my 28th year to teach starting in the fall of 2011 and I have a wide range of experience - all the way from 2 years teaching 4th grade math and science to many years of teaching earth, life, environmental and physical science in junior high as well as teaching biology in high school. I have split my teaching career between several public schools in Spring ISD as well as Aldine ISD and private Christian schools in Cedar Hill and Conroe, TX, Tulsa, OK. Mr. J.R. Ates and Mr. Dan Meyers - both infamous physical science teachers at East Jefferson and Bonnabel would be proud of me I'm sure.
I've had several other career paths that ran simultaneously along with my teaching career - namely in Christian ministry - I've been a licensed minister with the Assemblies of God as a youth pastor and children's pastor and counselor for a drug rehabilitation center. I've also worked for the Coca-Cola Company, Home Depot and Republic Steel. Like many teachers I've had to work part time jobs to make ends meet and I've done such interesting things as rebuild school lockers, high dollar landscaping, tutor math and reading and construction.
God has blessed me with a great wife who hails from the great state of South Dakota. Her name is Verlene Hope. We met when I finished my first bachelor's degree. She is a farm girl raised on a 1,000 acre wheat farm near Huron, SD. She is also a school teacher who has primarily taught kindergarten, first and second grade. God has been good to us both. Verlene has battled cancer three times now in the last 8 years but has come through all 3 episodes stronger than ever. She is presently taking a sabattical from teaching and enjoying a year at home - regaining her strength and deciding how she wants to spend the rest of her working career. We've been married for over 28 years. We have 2 sons Joshua who just turned 23 in July and Jordan who just turned 20 in August. Slowly but surely both of them are finding their way in this world, picking a career path and maturing. Joshua enjoys computer gaming, hiking and science fiction TV and movies. He just completed an AA in General Studies at Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie, TX - a 30 mile trip from our home here in Mansfield. This past August Joshua transfered to Montreat University just oustide of Ashville, NC. He has declared a major in Outdoor Education and Christian Camping. Jordan is into weightlifting and physical fitness - he still occasionally plays his guitar. He finished his senior year of high school in June 2010 and joined the Marine Reserves. He finished boot camp in San Diego, CA in Feb of 2011, completed Combat Infantry School in late March, 2011 and completed his MOS training as a Field Radio Operator that will be embedded with an infrantry unit should he ever be deployed overseas. After all of his training, he reports for duty once a month and two weeks in the summer. Sometime in the spring of 2012 he will travel to Morocco, North Africa for desert warfare training and then later in the summer he will travel to South Korea for a joint simulated warfare training with the South Korean Marines stationed on the DMZ with North Korea. Right now he works at UPS loading airplanes. In January 2012 he will start firefighter, EMT and paramedic school over in Sulphur Springs, TX. I lost my Dad to cancer in December 2010 and my older brother Jan Robert just 6 months earlier. I miss them both. My step-mother Rosalie still lives in Kenner.
School
Westgate Elementary, T.H. Harris Junior High, East Jefferson High School and then of course A.T. Bonnabel High School. What memories. Mrs. Muntz in 1st grade, Mrs. Clancy in 2nd grade, Mrs. Starnes in 3rd, Miss Mulligan in 5th and Miss Pomfret for 6th grade. It is amazing I can remember those names but being a teacher I remember them well and can still see their faces and many of the kids I went to school with...Expand for more
at Westgate Elementary School with. In 1963 when I started first grade, I still remember the teacher leading us in prayer at the start of each day - the Lord's Prayer. My how times have changed. Teachers had a lot more leeway in discipline as well. Henry Chenault being told by Mrs. Clancy to hang upside down for 15 minutes in the broom closet and act like a monkey because he had been making monkey sounds in the classroom and everyone had been laughing so hard, the poor teacher could not teach. Do that today and you will probably have a lawsuit on your hands. Or Harold Milan being paddled in the hallway by Mrs. Starnes for being disrespectful and talking back to her. I can still hear the crack of that board coming down on Harold's backside. He never forgave Mrs. Starnes for that and conned me into getting even with her at the end of the school year by the both of us trying to flatten her tires. Miss Mulligan was a wonderful teacher who really cared about whether a student learned what she had to teach - she was the only elementary teacher who would play touch football with the boys and play kickball with the whole class. Sixth grade - what a flood of memories. My best friend Michael Lankford standing up for me after school on the playground when Scott Brewster was ready to whip me after school on the playground. Michael Lankford had been my best friend for 3 years - we were exact opposties - he was funny - the class clown - made friends easily and never took anything too seriously. He had a crush on Beverly Kiefer & we both attended her birthday party. Beverly danced several dances with the class hoodlum Karl Von Buren which of course made Micheal extremely mad. Karl was the toughest kid in the class & I avoided him because he always wanted my homework and answers to test questions. We decided to get even with a very ingenous plan. We snuck out of the playground to the teacher parking lot which was paved with cracked oyster shells - found 2 pair of shells which were in perfect condition & snuck back onto the school property. We proceeded to catch 2 honeybees each in our oyster shells, put rubber bands around the shells, sneek back into our portable classroom, remove the rubber bands & gently place the shells on top of the spelling books under the desks of both Beverly & Karl. Spelling was right after lunch & when both students reached under their desk to get them, the shells loosened just enough for the bees to get in their face & create a general uproar. That was a classic which caused no small amount of satisfaction on our part. My years at T.H. Harris were a blur. I got rid of my glasses for almost 3 years because I was tired of being called the smart kid who liked school. I tried so hard not to let people know I actually enjoyed school & making good grades. I was jealous of all the tall muscular athletes & steered clear of the potheads who were already trying to turn on the whole school to weed. During my 7th grade year, we had 21 fire alarms go off that caused us to miss about 15 hours of class time - usually after lunch. The only junior high teacher I remember much about was my 7th & 8th grade history teacher - Mrs. Thompson - she was a no nonsense, take care of business teacher whom I sort of pattern some of my teaching style after. I will continue this part of my bio at a later time and perhaps talk about high school.
College
Well, like so many of my fellow graduate from Bonnabel, I started out at LSU in Baton Rouge as an engineering major although I had a strong notion that I really wanted to be a school teacher even back in high school. LSU was a eye opener even for someone like me who attended one of the largest public schools in the south. I had studied hard in high school & that work ethic helped me hold my own but it was so competetive that I always felt behind. Kenneth Bradley, another one of my long time classmates from Westgate Elementary, TH Harris JH & Bonnabel was my roommate. After one year I transferred back to UNO where I attended both full and part time for the next 2 and 1/2 years. At UNO I was an elementary education major. I spent a lot of my spare time volunteering as a teachers aide back at my old junior high school as well as an elementary school in Driftwood subdivision in Kenner. Helping those kids who were struggling really cemented my notion that I had been given a gift to teach & that teaching was my calling. Some major events took place in my life in late 1978 and I decided to drop out of UNO in the middle of my senior year. I worked for Coca-Cola for the next 2 and 1/2 years which was a very interesting experience. Eventually I knew I needed to finish my degree and I headed off to TX at Southwestern A/G College where I continued to minor in education and major in Religous education, Bible and Theology. I graduated from there in May of 1984. Between 1988 and 1992, I went back to the University of TX at Arlington and Sam Houston State University in Huntsville and finished my first bachelors degree in education - Secondary Science with an emphasis on geology, meterology, astronomy. I never did go for my masters degree but it is never too late.
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