I am an AACPS:<\/strong> Alum, Andover High School<\/em><\/p>\n In 1974 I entered the eleventh grade at Andover High School.\u00a0 One of my classes was Advanced Placement U. S. History. I knew I was in for something different when my teacher had assigned us a research paper over the previous summer. I was right. This was the hardest class I would take at Andover – and, as it would turn out, in college or law school for that matter. By far.<\/p>\n We had a paper due every two weeks. I was, truth be told, in a panic. I went through the first few weeks before our first exam wondering what I had gotten myself into. Fortunately, I loved history – I would major in it in college.\u00a0 I took the first exam and got a 99. That was a happy result but, on examination of the exam, I found that My teacher had taken a point off on a question for my not noting a fact which, it occurred to me, we had never been told about. That struck me as unfair so I decided to ask him about it.<\/p>\n This was not, I can assure you, my normal behavior. I was, although I hid it well, extremely shy, especially in interactions with teachers. Frankly, they scared the willies out of me. Still, I thought that, in spite of the 99, I had not been treated fairly and off I went, full of fear as I was.<\/p>\n So, I approached him and pointed out that he hadn’t given us the information that he took the point off for. He readily agreed. I was somewhat taken aback and pointed out that wasn’t fair. He readily agreed. And, for one of the very first times I did something which would later become absolutely normal for me in similar situations as I got older and bolder–I stood up for myself and said, what a minute, I’m not going to take that answer.<\/p>\n To which he said Burns, this is Advanced Placement history; no one should ever get a hundred on a test. To which I reacted as I never had with a teacher before–I told him that position was nonsense. For me, it was like another kid picking him up and tossing him out of a window. He just laughed and said don’t worry about it; I can tell already that you are one of the best students I have ever had.<\/p>\n Thus began my friendship with what quickly became the first adult to take me seriously as a peer. For the first time in my life, I could argue with an adult who took me seriously. And it was at Andover that teachers like that history teacher did that for me. Without them, I would not be who I am. I owe them a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Thus began my friendship with what quickly became the first adult to take me seriously as a peer. For the first time in my life, I could argue with an adult who took me seriously. And it was at Andover that teachers like that history teacher did that for me. Without them, I would not be who I am. I owe them a lot.” –Mike Burns<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001013,"featured_media":7399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,130,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-north_county_stories","category-aacps_story","category-alumni_stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7397"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8274,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7397\/revisions\/8274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}