When Brandi Bishop made up her mind to do something, she followed through.

Brenda Williams, Bishop’s mother, said she realized that trait when her daughter was 6 years old. Living in Tupelo, Mississippi, Bishop’s parents had bought a horse for her. They had taken her to their friend’s farm to see the pony, who was unbroken and not interested in being ridden.

Bishop didn’t care.

She had made up going to ride that horse, but not without getting bucked off first and dragged along the ground as she still held onto the reins. After getting up, Bishop simply got back on the horse again.

"That’s the kind of drive she had," Williams said of her daughter, a Tuscaloosa County school teacher who died in a Thanksgiving Day traffic crash in Monroe County.

Williams remembers that same drive as Williams was 10 years old, watching a commercial about donating money to starving children overseas. Getting up from the TV set, Bishop told her parents she wanted to give her money to those who needed it.

"Even at that age, she thought enough about young people to want to help them," she said.

Stories like that have raced in Williams’ mind since Bishop, 42, was killed Thanksgiving Day in a collision with a tractor-trailer on Highway 45-Alt in Monroe County. At the time of the crash, the longtime teacher and her husband, Brian, were on their way home to Aliceville after visiting family in Mississippi the day before.

Bishop had worked for the Tuscaloosa County School System for 13 years, starting as a social studies teacher at Davis-Emerson Middle School and working her way up to an instructional partner at Sipsey Valley Middle School, where she worked for the last four years.

As an instructor, Bishop collaborated with teachers on how to develop better lesson plans and collected data so schools could build strategies to improve. However, her love of teaching would always come through in the classroom, and she developed relationships with many students along the way.

"Students loved Mrs. Bishop due to the relationship she built with each one," TCSS Superintendent Walter Davie said in a written statement. "Students worked hard to please and behave in Mrs. Bishop’s classroom not due to any authoritarian stance she might have as a teacher, but due to the love and high level of respect they held for her.

"In short, they simply did not want to disappoint Mrs. Bishop."

Dundee Donald, Bishop’s sister, said she saw her sister's legacy at the funeral held Sunday in Mississippi, where many students and colleagues came to pay their respects. After the service, the students told Donald about what Bishop had done for them over the years.

"She had her family here in Tupelo, but she had a whole other world and family and friends that I didn’t grasp until she had died," Donald said.

Talking about her daughter’s path to teaching, Williams said the journey started from the heart more than what she had planned in her head. After graduating from Tupelo High School, Bishop had plans to go to the University of Mississippi, but ended up following her then-boyfriend to Mississippi State University. After getting her bachelor’s degree in political science, she had plans to become a lawyer, putting herself on the waiting list at the University of Mississippi.

Needing something to do in the meantime, Bishop decided to get her teaching certificate and become a teacher while she waited to go to law school.

Bishop quickly discovered that she had found her calling.

"She was good at it," Williams said. "She knew she wanted to help those kids."

After a couple of years teaching in Mississippi, Bishop got a job in Alabama teaching science and social studies at Pickens Academy, where she worked from 2001 to 2005. However, her longest tenure was with TCSS, starting as a social studies teacher at Davis-Emerson in 2005. Bishop's first work as an instructional partner was at Vance Elementary in 2013. By the next year, she was working as an instructor in the school system's southern region, which included Duncanville Middle School, Hillcrest Middle, Sipsey Valley Middle and High and Hillcrest High School.

Traci Primm worked alongside Bishop as a teacher at Davis-Emerson and later collaborated with her on lesson plans when she became an instructional partner.

"She was always positive, loved her job and was all about building those relationships," Primm said. "She could make you feel like you were her best friend, and you wanted to be friends with her. That was the gift that she had."

As an instructor, Primm said Bishop had the gift of making teachers feel like they were building better ways to connect with students, as opposed to changing tried-and-true teaching for no reason.

"She had a way of making you comfortable and being on your side," she said.

Frank Kelly, principal at Sipsey Valley Middle School, said it was impossible to think that anyone could ever replace her in the school.

"She was a person that was full of passion and professionalism and a work ethic that was just unbelievable," Kelly said. "Her passion was driven by a love for the kids, the love for the people around her and the love of her family.

"That would just flow from her whenever you met her."

In the days since Bishop died, Williams has read dozens of online remembrances to her daughter from past students, thanking her for all they did for her. In many ways, he said, her death has still not sunk in.

"She was just one of those people who seemed to have everything going for her," he said. "You have to wonder ‘Why now?’"

Donald sees the tributes and cards from Bishop’s students, colleagues and friends as reinforcing her sister’s legacy.

"I don’t think I have to worry about her being forgotten whatsoever," Donald said.

Reach Drew Taylor at drew.taylor@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0204.