"London didn't have a sewer system. Would you like me to be more specific?"

Hugh Burns stands, leaning against a chair, legs outstretched. He doesn't hold any notes. He has memorized the page number when he asks his high school students to turn to “The Canterbury Tales.”

“I got to get a life when I know what page it's on,” teases the English teacher at Sarasota's Suncoast Polytechnical High School.

Born in 1939, Burns, 75, is the oldest teacher in Sarasota County schools at a time when many longtime educators are aiming for retirement in the next few years, amid the mounting pressure from standardized tests, stricter teacher accountability and waves of other changes to the profession.

Read more at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.