Bonnie Webster

Mrs. Rabb was a true believer in experiential learning. In the two years she taught Bonnie, they grew a school garden, built an unsuccessful turtle pond, held two overnight lock-ins to raise money for the famine in Ethiopia, and took trips to the lake and beach, where Bonnie saw the ocean for the first time. Somehow, Mrs. Rabb managed to do all of this while still setting an incredibly high standard for learning.

That experience shaped everything about how Bonnie teaches today. She provides students with hands-on learning opportunities as often as possible, sets a high standard for their academic work, and never forgets that learning should be fun and that a science classroom needs to be a "get your hands dirty" kind of place.

Bonnie's family moved to Spartanburg when she was fourteen. She graduated from Spartanburg High School and double majored in Spanish and Biology at Converse College. Teaching wasn't part of the original plan. She was in the pre-med program, but when she was waitlisted for medical school, her advisor suggested graduate school. Needing a way to pay for it, Bonnie took a part-time teaching job in the science department at Porter-Gaud. That's where everything changed. She fell in love with teaching high school students, their energy and their outlook on the world. She knew the high school classroom was where she wanted to be.

Today, Bonnie is married to Thomas, her high school sweetheart, and they have three pretty amazing adult children, all SDS graduates. In her free time, she loves to cook, spend time with her family, listen to music, travel, and spend time outdoors with her dog, Jennie.

This is Bonnie's nineteenth year at SDS! During her time here, she taught chemistry for 12 years, served as a part-time college counselor for seven years, coached the Envirothon team for 14 years, and now teaches biology and environmental science.

One of her favorite parts of teaching AP Environmental Science is the annual stream study on Lawson Fork Creek in the early fall. As part of their study of aquatic biomes, students learn about using macroinvertebrates as indicators of water quality, and then try their hand at catching and identifying them in the creek. It's experiential learning at its finest, the kind of hands-on discovery that first captivated Bonnie all those years ago in Mrs. Rabb's classroom.