Photo courtesy of Jessica Sutherland
Jessica Sutherland teaches Advanced Placement chemistry at Vestavia Hills High School and coaches the school's Science Olympiad team.
Jessica Sutherland teaches Advanced Placement chemistry at Vestavia Hills High School and is the school’s Science Olympiad coach.
Q: What inspired you to get into teaching?
A: My chemistry teacher in high school. Her name was Ms. [Nancy] Wiggins, and she just made chemistry so exciting, and she was so excited to be there every day. She was my Science Olympiad coach, too, and she really lit my fire for science. It was just awesome to walk into her room every day and know you were going to do something awesome.
Q: What school was that?
A: Prattville High School.
Q: I guess she was your favorite teacher as well?
A: She was. That was a long time ago when you could still go to a chemistry club party at your teacher’s house, and we would ride to our science competitions in the car with her, and she would just tell us stories the whole way there. She was a mentor for all of us and somebody that we looked up to.
Q: What is it that you love about science?
A: So many things. I think I love the objectivity of it — that you never have to guess whether you’ve done things right or wrong. You’ll know based on the results you get in the lab. Did I set it up right? We’re about to find out. It’s just very clear, and for the way my brain works, that’s great for me.
Q: What’s your favorite topic to teach, and why?
A: I really like the periodic table and periodic trends because that was part of what made me fall in love with chemistry, I think. Seeing the order and the organization that scientists could bring to something that seemed to have no order at all.
Q: Were you good at memorizing all that?
A: I was OK at memorizing, but I think I was really drawn to chemistry because there was so much you had to truly understand and apply. It was less of a memorization class and more of an application of what you knew.
Q: What’s something about you that your students might not know?
A: That I recently have started trying to learn how to play the guitar. It has been a very long time since I tried to learn to do anything new, so I wanted to challenge myself a little bit.
Q: Besides learning to play the guitar, what do you like to do outside of work?
A: I love to cook and try new recipes, and I love to travel.
Q: What’s your favorite thing to cook?
A: I love to do a good shrimp boil.
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go, and why?
A: Probably back to Greece. That was just a fascinating place to see so much of ancient civilization that still remained and where the foundations of a lot of mathematical and scientific and democratic ideas were really born. It was awe-inspiring to go, and I would love to go back.
Q: Have you just been the one time?
A: I’ve been once. I think it was about two years ago we went over Christmas break. The people were so wonderful. The food was excellent. It was a great trip.
Q: Do you have any guilty pleasures?
A: I love a good cookie, especially the ones from Crumbl Cookies that are not quite done in the middle. Those are my guilty pleasure, I guess.
Q: Favorite flavor?
A: Chocolate chip.
