Mrs. Dozier Wins by Losing.

The place, Irmo High School in Columbia, South Carolina.

What two words best describe my Junior(1985/86) and Senior (1986/87) years at Irmo High School?

Library Pass

A library pass had to be signed by a teacher and could get you out of study hall and into the library. I managed to score 3 Library Passes a day and spent a good portion of my Junior and Senior years in the Irmo High School Library.

Welcome to Library Pass, where I will tell true stories from the Irmo High School Library.


My Junior year at Irmo High School, I had Mrs. Dozier (pictured) for A.P. World History.

Mrs. Dozier was an innovative teacher who tried to trick us into learning with games. Mrs. Dozier had invented a board game called Imperialism and we often split into teams for some world history trivia competition. AP World History was packed with some of the smartest kids in my class. The trivia competition usually involved boys vs girls. The girls outnumbered us, but we held our own because Jeff Deloach knew the answer to every question and because Kevin Markland would throw the girls off by giving them "Ehh!"s and mocking them if they got a wrong answer. This was an especially good tactic against Ellen Reddick.

Mrs. Dozier won National Teacher of The Year. I remember Mrs. Dozier being very excited because she had been selected as one of the finalists, out of 11,500 applicants, to become the first civilian Teacher in Space. Mrs. Dozier was not selected.

I don't know who George Santayana is, but Mrs. Dozier had a George Santayana quote taped to her podium that read,

"Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

This has always seemed a decent validation for history as a school subject. Hitler would not have invaded Russia in the winter if he had taken Mrs. Dozier for world history.

On January 28, 1986 at about 11:30 a.m., Mrs. Dozier took us to the Irmo High School Library where a television was wheeled out so that we could watch the live launch of the space shuttle that she had come so close to getting to ride in.

As we watched with Mrs. Dozier, the Challenger shuttle exploded 73 seconds after lift-off, killing all seven crew members, including Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space.