Teacher Stories: Margaret Conway, Fifth and Sixth Grade Science Teacher at Mullica Township School District, New Jersey
My name is Margaret Conway, and I will be teaching 5th and 6th grade science at Mullica Township. I go hiking at Rancocas State Park a lot, and I was like, “It would be cool to work at a summer camp here. Let me see if the nature center has anything.” And I actually found it online on their website, and it’s cool because they said they don’t put it on any of the job sites, so you actually have to be interested and like actually be kind of peeking around on the website to find it. And I did. It’s pre-k through seventh grade, and each week has a theme, and we go hiking, we play in the creek. There are different activities based on the theme for the week. Like the first week was taking them to the trail, so it was all about learning how to read trail markers and all that kind of stuff.
I’m hoping that, because it’s going to be my first year teaching science, that I’ll be able to bring what I have been doing at the summer program to my classroom this year. I think it’s so important for children and students to get off their screens, to get outside. I think it’s so important for them to learn how to be out in nature and kind of to be bored. That’s where creativity comes from: by being kind of bored and having to find ways to entertain yourself, and so I think it’s really important for them to be out in nature.
I’m really excited to kind of take on the legacy of the science teacher who retired and continue some of the projects she did. Like she did the egg drop, she used to do maple syrup tapping with the kids, and so I want to keep doing that to keep her legacy.
Interview by Gregory Andrus
