By: Devina Mathur
"My name is Mrs. Castellucci, and I am a science teacher at Howard High School. I have many hobbies including traveling. One of the places I really enjoyed visiting is Australia. There are so many different things to see there, but I only did the North Eastern Coast. Just the amount of differences between Sydney, which has a super commuter friendly and old school city feel, and Cairns, with coral reefs, is insane. I had a pretty good childhood. My parents bought an old 26-acre farm house almost in the middle of nowhere. My brother and I built forts and found crazy stuff outside since people would dump their trash on their property, which is a minefield of treasurers for kids! My family would always take trips all over the East Coast. Today, my parents are still happily married, and I continue to enjoy traveling with my grandparents. They are all really good role models for me. When I was in middle school, the death of my cousin, Billy, changed my life. He was born severely retarded, had truncated motor skills, and was almost non-verbal, but he loved music videos and movies. He had a great laugh. The doctors basically said he wasn’t going to live very long, but he hung on there for a really long time. Because of him, I learned a lot about family commitment. My aunt went back to school to become an occupational therapist so she could help take care of him, but right before she graduated, Billy passed away. She continued on and treats other kids by helping them in ways she never really got to do with Billy, and I thought that was really awesome. This is partly where my love for working in the allied sports comes from. It’s that untouched community that has so much to offer. It’s probably why I do what I do if I really think about that. I got my undergraduate degree at Millersville University, and I was a biology major with a minor in marine science. In high school and college, I was part of an environmental group that did a lot of informal education. We got featured in news week for teaching kids in elementary schools about environmental awareness. One of the professors I worked for in college, in the marine science program, led me to enter a summer science camp which raised my interest in science. When I graduated, I randomly got a job at the Maryland Science Center doing informal education. My best friend from high school was moving to Maryland and needed a roommate, so I moved down here, didn’t have a job, saw the science center was hiring, and got a job on the spot. While I was there, I thought to go back to school and teach since it seemed that was where the universe was guiding me, and then I got my masters degree at Towson and started teaching. Besides science, I am very passionate about learning as I like to explore new things. I think this is why I read as much as I do. I love to learn about why things are the way that they are, and I hope this carries over to my classes and creates interest for science in my students. I like when people want to learn, and I want to be able to talk about new things with them. I think in school, we can often get too focused on achievement in terms of grades and how assignments are completed, but life is so much more than some of those pieces, and sometimes our biggest failures and mistakes are the things that we learn the most from but are too afraid to make. Especially in school, where there is a big pressure to achieve and grades are attached to everything, the idea of trying something new or failing in something new is so important. I preach about this at the Science National Honor Society induction where I give students a marshmallow and advise them not to be afraid to act like the kindergartner who wants to try things and build the tallest marshmallow tower. That’s a big thing for me. You get a lot from failures sometimes, and even though it’s hard, it shouldn’t be something you are afraid to try."
Devina's Connection
I connected a lot with Mrs. Castellucci’s story. I love to learn, and always do the best that I can in my classes because I am genuinely interested in my subjects. I also travel frequently with my family. I visited Australia with them when I was in second grade. I learned that Mrs. Castellucci and I share a love for the meat pies down under and agree that there is so much to see in Australia. I took forest tours around Sydney and saw many different spiders, animals, and plants. I even had the chance to feed a kangaroo and try steak for the first time.