• When the Math Department Chair, Dr. Nancy Autin, moved into administration, Sister Lawrence replaced her after just one year.
• Sister had to adjust in moving from all all-girls school, Mount Carmel,.

Girls study more and do their homework. With boys, you have to ride them and put out more carrots. I never gave points for homework at Mount Carmel. It was just expected that you did it.

After five years, Sister Lawrence won the Brother More Schaefer Faculty Award in her first year of eligibility for the award.

I got a call upstairs from the principal (John Devlin). "Please come to my office. Don't worry, Sister, there's no work involved." When I arrived, he hemmed and hawed, talking about many things. He was waiting for Brother Ivy (the president). I wondered, "Oh God, what did I do?" When Brother Ivy arrived, they told me about the award. Would I please write a speech? "Wait a minute. You told me there was no work!" I did it on evangelization, the theme for the year. I was surprised. I never found out who nominated me. [Sister, it could have been any number of people.]

Her teaching career was interrupted by a call to service from her religious community.

• She was elected to the Sisters of Mount Carmel provincial council in 2001 and served as assistant to the president (the office corresponding to provincial in the Brothers of the Sacred Heart).
• For three years, she taught just three classes in the morning. Then she'd go home and do congregation work.
• She left Brother Martin in 2003 to work full time for the sisters. She was reelected for another four-year term on the council.

Katrina provided a great challenge to the Sisters of Mount Carmel as it did to everyone else in these parts.

• Sister Lawrence had to make arrangements for 59 elderly nuns, including twelve to had been at Our Lady of Wisdom on the West Bank, to get re-placed after the hurricane dispersed them.
• Sister learned of a nursing home in Welch LA that had an unoccupied wing with 12 beds available. Then a crisis developed when 16 nuns from the motherhouse who were living at St. Benedict's Abbey had to evacuate because of a gas leak.
• So Sister Lawrence called on the resources of her large family.

I called my brother. "Oh, yeh, bring 'em." He has three children who live within minutes of his house. My niece made a sign that said "Nuns on the Run" so they'd know where to turn in.

When her term on the council ended, Sister Lawrence returned to Brother Martin.

• She had helped out part time one year in order to be listed on the faculty roster to retain her state certification. She assisted Dr. Pat Speeg with standardized testing.
• When Sister told other nuns that she was returning to the classroom, they exclaimed, "You've got to be nuts going back to teenagers!"
• Just as she did in 1991, she had to make adjustments after five years away.

Students' attention spans had lessened. So had their memory. They have a hard time retaining anything. Elementary math concepts are just not there.

• She taught two classes of Algebra I for new ninth-graders. To say they weren't prepared for the intensity Sister brought to the task would be an understatement.
• For the current school year, she moved from one period in the Instructional Lab to working there from 9:45 to 1:20 each day with no classes to teach.

I'd finished 50 years of teaching. I figured that's a good milestone. I don't mind tutoring, but I have never charged for tutoring. That's not for me. I feel I can always help people with math. I do math all day long. It runs the gamut of courses most days. I haven't taught Geometry since 1970 and I haven't taught Calculus since Mount Carmel. I like what I'm doing in the sense that I don't have to prepare lessons, and every day's different. I don't have to do grades, and I don't have to deal with parents. I did this wrong. I should have started this way!

• Looking to the future, she's taking it year-by-year but intends to be back for 2012-13.