The scientfic equation for good teaching involves many factors. Science teacher Ms. Mary Scott implements two of the most important:  teacher-student interaction and involvement. Advising the Class of 2014, teaching science and AP Bio courses, and advising a club, Scott values those personal connections and involvements with students that make her career rewarding. Although she had always wanted to be a teacher, events and people in her early life were causing her to doubt her education career.

“I thought I always wanted to be a teacher. Then when I got to La Salle, I had a math professor who basically said I shouldn’t waste my time or my talents, basically saying I’m too smart to be a teacher. At that time my mom had taken ill and I rerouted my career to pre medical and I really loved the sciences. I applied to medical school and got in. Everybody was excited to go to medical school and quite frankly I didn’t care. I still loved the sciences but I just didn’t care too much,” said Scott.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Scott attended Little Flower Catholic High School for girls, an all girls’ catholic high school. Scott then earned a scholarship to LaSalle University where she got a bachelor’s degree in biology.

Scott then decided to go back for her master’s in education. During that time she worked as a lab technician but teaching remained first.

“I was that dorky little kid when I was six years old that played school in the basement, so this is where I was meant to be,” said Scott.

Scott began teaching in 1996 at North Catholic, an all boy’s Catholic high school in the city, and while at North Catholic, Scott was involved with many activities. She did Student Council, National Honor Society, Community Service Core, Senior Class Advisor, helped with the sophomore dance, and coordinated every year a battle of the sexes between North Catholic and their sister school. Then, Scott decided to try out public school; it just so happened that the timing was right and she applied at North Penn and got accepted. Scott started working here in 2005 at that time  up on second floor C pod and had 5 classes of 4.0/5.0 biology, until she picked up an AP course a few school years later.

“So when I got here I was excited to get back to my roots of teaching but that only lasted 3 years. Then I really wanted to get involved with the kids outside of class. Getting involved puts you in a very different perspective with the kids. For example, if you taught special education maybe the only time you get to deal with other groups of kids is being an advisor. Maybe if I only deal with AP kids I’m missing a huge part of the other population of kids, so getting involved is a great opportunity to get to know more people and to be known by the kids. That’s important to me because when the kids see you are making an investment in them, their future gets brighter. I definitely think you should become involved. Its fun, it’s great to get to know a whole bunch of kids you normally wouldn’t encounter,” said Scott.

Here at North Penn Scott became a class advisor along with Mr. King for the class of 2011. She had a great time and decided to do it again, this time working with Mr. Hertz advising for the class of 2014.

“I think it’s the interactions with the students that I cherish the most, getting to know them from an academic level, then a personal level getting to see that proverbial light bulb go off.  What’s nice about teaching AP Bio, with loving the sciences as much as I do and feeding off the motivation of students who generally take AP courses, I’m effectively teaching the future researchers, and doctors and nurses and so on and it’s really exciting to be a part of knowing that 10-15 years from now one of my kids can cure cancer. Part of that passion comes from in addition to class advising, I am also an advisor for the Future Health Occupations club and that was actually started in my time here so that’s kind of cool. Part of the reason it’s such a good deal here is because we have such a supporting department and overall the kids are just great, it’s easy to feed of off their enthusiasm. It’s a nice supportive environment and bottom line everybody in this building is doing to for the kids and that’s nice to be around,” said Scott.