After 20 years of teaching, Mr. Silvestre White Eagle is ready to retire.

He spent time at IBM and as a teacher’s administrative assistant, Mr. Silvestre White Eagle was ready to take on high school students. Teaching, however, was not his initial plan.

“[Mr. Rouse] got me to get into teaching and so forth, so I started teaching,” White Eagle said. “He gave me a position as a biology teacher.”

White Eagle met Rouse at New Hope Baptist Church at a new members get together.

“He got a piece of paper, a pencil, and told me, ‘here, contact this person,'” White Eagle said. “So I started subbing, and at the same time he gave me this job as his administrative assistant.”

He was soon met with the chance to teach full time. However, he needed his teaching certificate.

“He gave me a name and number, it was a person in district 13, and I got accepted into the alternative certification program,” White Eagle said. “One of the conditions to get into that class, you had to have a job. I talked to Mr. Rouse and he told me, ‘hey, you’ve got a job.'”

With a Bachelor’s Major in Biology and a minor in chemistry and a Master’s in information resource management, White Eagle taught Biology, Environmental systems, and Medical Microbiology. He has, however, kept the mad scientist idea going.

“Whatever year Austin Powers first came out, I had a group of students in my biology class and they said that I was mean like Doctor Evil, so they were gonna start calling me Doctor Evil,” White Eagle said. “Since then, it has stuck. And even the teachers knew me as Doctor Evil.”

This year, White Eagle decided that it was time for him to move on.

“I’m going to miss my students, I love interfacing with my students,” White Eagle said. “I have a side business (embroidery) and I’m going to build that up just a little bit, and just take it easy. Travel and so forth.”

He hopes to travel to Spain.

“It’s been on my mind. Maybe not this summer, again it all depends on their seasons,” White Eagle said.

White Eagle hopes to leave behind a good study habit for his students.

“I push that a lot, for my students to study,” White Eagle said. “I’ve had quite a few students contact me that have already graduated, and they always tell me that they’re glad that I pushed them to study. [I hope to leave behind the legacy on the school that] in my sternness that I was very fair with all of my students.”