Lindsey Mcfall and Travis Gatewood, two of the most iconic English teachers at South, have been married for four years. They met seven years ago when Mcfall transferred to South from North.
“It’s always nice to brainstorm together and problem solve together and be a support system for one another,” Gatewood said. “Whether it’s dealing with new ideas or an issue at school, we have each other’s backs and support one another.”
Though they don’t see each other all the time, Mcfall sometimes makes her way down to Gatewood’s room to say “hi”.
“He brings me coffee every day. He stops at the Hyvee gas station and they sell Caribou coffee, so I get the vanilla hazelnut every morning, I stop by his room when I get here and get my coffee. So I had to get my coffee all last year, it was rough,” Mcfall said.
With Gatewood working at the Center for Academic Achievement last year, Mcfall no longer has a pre-established relationship with her students.
“Well obviously I prefer for him to be here,” Mcfall said. “It was different last year, he didn’t know my students, his stories from work were different from what we were used to. And I didn’t have my coffee every morning which was rough. He is also my best friend so it was like my best friend was gone.”

Seventh hour biology teacher Julie McCormic can be found in the sewing room.
“I have taken on the second teacher role in Ms. Neuman’s seventh hour so I enjoy it. It’s a sewing class so I plan on taking my sewing down there to work on,” McCormic said. “It’s just a fun time being able to build different relationships with people I don’t have in my classes or don’t see. And also have a fun time with friends”
While she uses some free time during her plan period, McCormic also sees her coworkers outside of school.
“We’ll watch TV, she’s a huge fan of RuPaul’s drag race, so we watch that show together, sometimes we’ll play video games, sometimes we’ll go out to eat, hang out, like friends do.” Choir teacher Jon Duncan said.

Not just the students are loud in the halls, passing by rooms 352 and 351 you’ll hear math teachers Andrea Dale and Julie Taylor talking to each other from their desks across the hall.
“We hang out every passing period, sometimes on the way to the bathroom, on the way to lunch, after school when we make copies, before school sometimes we check in to make sure we’re ready for the day,” Taylor and Dale said, talking over each other, “Sometimes in the parking lot, we walk out together.”
They have known each other for 12 years, they got their first lunch together at D’Bronx the day they met. Since then, both teachers worked at Shawnee Mission North teaching lower level math until Dale took the open position for AP Statistics at Shawnee Mission South.
“We only had one year apart, it was a hard year,” Taylor said. “I didn’t know she was going to apply when she did, we had kind of talked about waiting until our tenth year, but then she applied before. She left and I quickly followed.”
Outside of school, Dale and Taylor have been to many concerts, vacations, and conferences together.
“We’ve gone to concerts together, we’ve gone on vacations together, we’ve gone to 98 degrees, the boy band, dream, sister hazel, we’ve seen them several times,” Dale said. “We go to a fundraiser at the zoo. We’ve gone to California twice to visit her [Dale] sister in LA, we go to Laguna Beach. Sometimes we get together over the summer to work on school stuff.”
Over the years, the pair have experienced some crazy things, including Mrs. Dale accidentally stealing Mrs. Taylor’s credit card information for Chinese food.
“She was eating Chinese food in front of me! I was like ‘where did you get that?’ and she said ‘China King,’ and I was like, ‘I thought there were no China Kings here. What’d you do, spend $22.18 last night? Her face kinda went funny and she was like ‘I think that’s how much money my husband and I did spend last night.’ It was Andrea the whole time.”