High schools are infested with restless teenage minds and gossip is magnetized to our culture. Dramatic stories travel from person to person as if there is a telegraph around the school. Mostly students are terrorized by rumors, however, teachers are not safe from gossip either.

Korrena De, a teacher at Lewis-Palmer, is a prime example of this. According ‘legend’ by day, she is a teacher, and by night she is a Dj. Rumors also say she has supposedly also acted in Hollywood and is apart of a biker club.  

“I’ve been asked for two years in a row now if I could Dj the prom,  and I’m always so confused why they ask me,” De said.“I just want to be more well rounded, you know? So there was this school for Dj’s, Global Academy in Denver, and I looked at that and saw it was like ten sessions, so I went,” De said.

It turns out that De never actually was a disk jockey, she has taken a two week Dj class, but never used it as a profession. She likes to do activities out of what’s routine, to keep her life exciting. She found excitement in these classes and loved how much she learned from them.

“I don’t even really listen to electronic music,  my favorite music is pretty much Zeppelin and Tool, I listen to hard music, but I just want to have an appreciation of everything and anything and I wanted to know a little bit more on how some people are considered Dj’s by just standing up there and pushing a button as opposed to real mixing,” De said.

She learned a lot from these classes and was proud of her accomplishments during the lessons. Her classes taught her to not only cope with her everyday problems, but with her daily life as well.  

“Sometimes it’s a grind just coming to school every day and just beating your head on the wall wondering why the class won’t listen and wondering ‘what can I do?’ So I  need to keep my life fresh as well, which lead me to the classes,” De said.

Along with her unusual lifestyle she also has an unusual way of teaching, she is always looking for unique, creative ways to keep her classes listening.

“I guess it (the rumors) started  when  I was just in class one day and they weren’t paying attention so I just said ‘Well I can’t stay today, I have Dj lessons’ and everyone stopped, like ‘what!’ And I told them I was taking classes, which is probably where that rumor stemmed from, then all of a sudden I  became this world famous Dj,” De said

The rumors spread incredibly quickly and within weeks she was the talk of the school and the rumors still come up today, according to De, but she knew the rumors were not harmful.  

Lewis- Palmer students could  not get enough of the story of Dj De, so more and more tales sprang up about the science teacher. Some people started hearing about De acting with stars in Hollywood and her Harley Davidson club and even her professional extreme rock climbing career.

Gage Johnson, 12, has heard many things about De, “I’ve heard she and this bearded fellow she hangs around with are in this Harley club  and they ride around together,” he said.

It seems as though the talk around the school is more about her exciting teaching tactics. Such as jumping up on the counters to show her classes what it is like to be a pterodactyl, or running around the classroom to make a lecture tolerable.    

De continues to teach her classes and jump up on counters, while the rest of the school jumps on board with these ever-growing tall tales, worthy of a hero, about the infamous De of legend.