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By JEFF DEAN Times Leader Correspondent
Sunday, February 06, 2000 Page: 1E
Editor’s note: Each month, the Times Leader Newspaper in Education
department selects a Teacher of the Month from nominations submitted in
writing by students.
Mackin Elementary school teacher Maria Bowman likes to make her educational
philosophy clear immediately. “The most important thing is to challenge all
your students,” said Bowman, a fifth-grade teacher who was voted the Times
Leader Newspaper in Education Teacher of the Month for January. “Each
individual student must be challenged in an individual way. Not all students
are at the same level, and not all students have the same interests.”
According to Bowman, finding those varying levels of performance and interest
is what she finds most rewarding about her job. As a self-contained teacher,
she said she also has the benefit of having her students throughout the school
day, for all their subjects. “I think being self-contained is a benefit,
actually,” she said. “If I’m teaching a particular concept, for example, a
difficult concept that I see the students are having a hard time
comprehending, I can stay on it past the normal period. I enjoy the
flexibility self-containment offers.” The same theory holds true for themes,
Bowman said. At the moment, she has her students reading about patriotism in
the American Revolution while they study the same historical period later in
the day during social studies. “That way, the students have a background to
build upon,” she said. Bowman, who lives in Plains Township with her husband,
Thomas, and three children, Amanda, 18, Angela, 15, and Tommy, 13, is in her
third year at Mackin. She holds a bachelor of science degree in elementary
education and early childhood development from College Misericordia.
“Thursdays are our newspaper day,” Bowman said. “And like everything else,
I try to incorporate the paper throughout all the day’s lessons. “For
example, we might do a language arts project where I have the kids pretend to
be journalists and rewrite an article. Then later in math, I’ll give them a
certain amount of `money,’ and have them go through the paper to figure out
how many advertised items they could buy. “And of course, we look for all the
Mackin news in the paper too,” Bowman added. “Plus we enter all the Times
Leader contests we come across.” Bowman’s class is gearing for a monthlong,
multigrade project whereby students will create a hallway display of the ocean
floor. Some of Bowman’s students will research and create different species of
fish, while others concentrate on plants or coral reefs. “In the past, our
big display has been a tropical rainforest,” Bowman said. “So frankly, this
is brand new. I’m looking forward to it. We know where we’re starting, but we
don’t entirely know where we’re ending. We’re going where the kids take us.”
The fifth-grade teacher searches out new ways to challenge her students and
ends up enjoying a challenge or two herself. “I want to say most of all that,
that I love what I do,” Bowman said. “I’ve always had great parent
cooperation, which is key. With parent involvement, students really benefit.
Things work very well when everybody works together.”