JULIE MCMILLIN

Speech teacher

Bishop Lynch High School, class of 1968

WHEN IT WAS GRASS: McMillin recalls being in fifth or sixth grade and driving with her father to a grass field across from a neighborhood. Her father told her this field is where she would be attending high school. He was an accountant and had helped with the arrangements to purchase the land.

“I saw it when it was grass,” she says. “Little did I know how much of my life I would be at Bishop Lynch.”

SCHOOL DAYS: McMillin was part of Bishop Lynch’s third graduating class. At that time, boys and girls were separated into different sections of the school.

Male and female students had separate administrations, counselors and course requirements. The long classroom hallway near Ferguson Road was the boys’ hall, and the long classroom hallway near Inadale was the girls’ hall.

McMillin says the girls knew “exactly which tile meant we were in the boys’ division.” The students had lunches, dances and pep rallies together, but during pep rallies they sat on different sides of the gym.

“The students I have now think it was really lame that we had to sit on either side of the gym,” she says.

THE JOURNEY BACK: “I knew I wanted to teach forever,” McMillin says. “I remember thinking that [Bishop Lynch] was really where I’d kind of like to teach.” After graduating from Texas Christian University, she taught at St. Philip’s in Dallas, where she attended from first to eighth grade, for two years before receiving a call about teaching at Lynch. “I was thrilled to get back here,” she says. This is her 34th year at the school.

HISTORYLESSONS: “Part of having so many alumni back is that constant connection with the history of the school,” McMillin says.

She has the opportunity to share with her students the history of traditions like the junior-senior tea.

“When I was here as a sophomore, the first class was graduating, and the girls ahead of me were going to miss their friends so they threw a party for them,” she says.

The tradition has continued and now includes a “Saturday Night Live”-style skit where the junior girls act like the girls in the senior class. “It had to start from somewhere,” McMillin says.

YEAR 34: This is McMillin’s 34th year at Lynch. “Every year, we have new kids, new teachers, new things going on in the department, but it still always feels like Lynch,” McMillin says. “It’s kind of a second home for most of us.”