Students taking physical science classes might recognize a familiar face as they enter room E3 in the science hall. Melanie Letzring, who substitute taught often last year and student taught at the middle school, filled the open science teacher position after Deb Erpelding resigned.
Before Letzring became a science teacher, she debated a few different career choices before settling on science.
“I really liked school as a kid, and I thought I wanted to teach math. Then I was like, wait, no, maybe I’ll go into nursing because my mom’s a nurse,” Letzring said. “When I got to college, I actually met my [future] wife, Miss Hansen, and saw her education class. I liked the homework and was like, Oh, this is interesting. I’m gonna work on this instead. And I decided to become a science teacher.”
Letzring knew that teaching would be difficult, but within her first year of teaching, she has already had a few rewarding experiences.
“They always say it’s going to be hard, and you think you know how hard it’s going to be, but it’s even more stressful than that,” Letzring said. “But it’s still really rewarding. I like seeing kids learn.”
Though Letzring is endorsed to teach science at both the middle and high school settings, she prefers teaching high school students.
“I feel like the kids are a little more mature and they kind of are figuring out how to be responsible,” Letzring said. “At the middle school, it’s all like kids dabbing and saying silly things.”
While she enjoys teaching, she still gets stressed about managing multiple classes because she has to create lessons and lab activities for each class.
“I have two sections of physical science and one block of zoology right now,” Letzring said. “I’m preparing for two different classes. We didn’t have to do dissections in middle school, so there is definitely more work that way.”
Letzring believes that there’s less work with managing behaviors at the high school than there was while student teaching at the middle school.
Letzring’s kindness and patience has helped her students be comfortable in her class and with her teaching style
“She explains things really well,” a student said. “She has a unique style of teaching I feel most students can benefit from. She’s very patient with me whenever I need help and she listens to me.”