During high school, some students tend to find it difficult to pay attention in class with the traditional method of teachers standing up in front of the room to teach for 30 minutes, then sending the students off to work on their work for 15 minutes. Some teachers try to enrich their student’s learning experience through alternate ways of teaching as opposed to the traditional methods. 

Tom Fox

Tom Fox is a history teacher and has been teaching for over 22 years. He has found that doing things such as music related activities that are tailored to fit the topic his students are learning about work better in his teaching environment. 

“Kids learn in different ways. I always try to learn what my kids’ interests are and if there is a way we can present information in a way they enjoy. You still have to give tests, but there are so many new ways we can do that and have fun while we test. Once teachers learn about their students, we find ways to do things that aren’t so cut and dry,” Fox said. 

Fox believes that his students most enjoyed an activity that he put together during his 2010 year of teaching. 

“In Anthropology, we do a project I call “The Big Dig”. We do a simulated civilization creation where students will make things such as artifacts and languages and it’s completely fictional. After the class is done, we will have a different class analyze everything,” Fox said. 

Jessica Hogan

Some students report that biology teacher Jessica Hogan has been their favorite teacher.

“You can tell that Mrs. Hogan actually cares about her students. I had her a few years back, and I remember always being excited to go into her classroom. We always were doing something fun that I never really did in any other classroom,” senior Madison Zimmerer said. 

Hogan is said to have a different way of teaching. According to Zimmerer, almost all of her activities were hands-on.

“I’ve never really had a teacher like her before I had her for life science,” Zimmerer said. “Personally, the only way I would remember any content is if I have a specific event that almost forces me to memorize it. In Mrs. Hogan’s class, she was always acting silly and having us do labs so that really helped me learn.”

Hogan does a project where she raises trout throughout the year in her classroom. At the end of the year, she will then take her students on a field trip to release them. 

“We get the trout as fertilized eggs and then monitor them through hatching. You can see the tank through a window to my classroom and there is a poster out there explaining those terms. We feed them, test the water for pH, ammonia and nitrate and nitrite levels and change out water as needed. As they grow, this gets more intense because the more they eat, the more waste they create which means the water can get dirtier faster. Then in spring, we take a trip out to the Henrietta Sportsmen’s Club outside of Martinsburg, Pa. We put the remaining trout into Clover Creek, an approved trout stream, and we have stations for students to learn about the trout, what macroinvertebrates they eat in the wild, how to tie a fly, cold water conservation and others.  We also have a pretty great picnic and time for students to go fishing or hiking around the property,” Hogan said. 

Anthony DeRubis

English teacher, Anthony DeRubis, took on the task of teaching the AP Language and Composition class just this year. 

Since then, every once in a while, DeRubis has been treating his AP kids with special snacks or treats, along with trying to create fun projects that they will enjoy while still having them learn what they need for the AP test. 

“If all I have to do to thank them for all of their hard work is buy each one of them a special treat every couple of weeks, yes, I am going to do that. My kids always put 110 percent effort into each of their projects so every once in a while, there is absolutely a need for a special ‘thank you’ from me,” DeRubis said. 

Since the beginning of the year, DeRubis has held a bagel day, a donut day and on each holiday, he will bring in a holiday themed treat. 

For DeRubis’ visual rhetoric unit, he had his students sketch and paint their own piece of visual rhetoric. 

“I did my piece of visual rhetoric on women achieving more yet still being held at a lower position than men. When we were finished painting, our classmates would rhetorically analyze each other’s paintings. I really enjoyed this activity. It really helps when you know that your teacher cares,” junior Kaylynn Manley said.