Happy Tuesday! Let’s dive a little further into the life (get it, get it) of the Science Department. This week, let’s get to know Ms. Plance.
Ms. Plance is one of our lovely science teachers. She teaches Chemistry, Fundamentals of Chemistry, Health Science I, and Anatomy & Physiology. Plance has been at CHS for the last seven years and is a non-traditional teacher. She said she got into teaching “After going to school for exercise science. And athletic training, I realized, well, I knew before that I wanted to help people in my life, and I didn’t know exactly what plan that was. I knew maybe the medfield, I knew that maybe if I went to medfield first, and then I would teach later on in my life… I just grew up teaching. I had a positive role model in my life that I really appreciated… She was my sixth-grade teacher and she really believed in me… like I said, I just knew I wanted to help people.” Once she finished her undergrad, she got her master’s in education, which led her here with the head softball coach opening.
Plance is a Columbus native She went to Scotus Central Catholic and then continued her studies at UNK.
What she loves about teaching and coaching softball is watching the kids learn. She said, “I love the interactions and the relationships that you build with the students, and obviously, seeing students succeed is one of my favorite things. Because I know, like, in high school myself, I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, and I mean, I took a lot for me… I think that my high school did a really nice job at preparing me on taking notes and for preparing me for college. And I’ll be honest, I thought college was way easier than high school… I want to make sure that I can instill those habits that I had in high school that my teachers gave me to help students, too…I’m just teaching life lessons along the way as well. Like, there’s gonna be good days, and there’s gonna be bad days, and how we respond to things is obviously, how we get better… I just love being able to be around the girls and be able to coach them and teach them life lessons, and learn that softball is a game of failure. Like, you’re going to fail, but fail forward, and obviously, doing it together as a team. That’s one of my favorite things. I go about that same dynamic in the classroom.”
Along with all of her coaching and teaching, she does love doing other things in her free time. While yes, she does watch softball and help out with softball a lot, she does other things. She said, “I like to spend time with my family, my husband. We have two dogs, we go on walks, and we like to travel. Then I decorate weddings on the side, so that’s one of my favorite things to do. Again, helping people, but in this way, it’s by helping them enjoy their wedding day.”
The last piece she’d like to share is, “We need more teachers in the world, so if anybody wants to be a teacher, go ahead and be a teacher.” You don’t have to go the traditional way to become a teacher, and Plance is proof of that.
When learning in high school, it is really hard to apply topics like science to real life. Anatomy and Physiology makes it easy because you can think of it happening within you. One thing from Plance I’ve learned and kept in memory, especially with Valentine’s Day coming up, is “Arteries are red, and veins are blue, but for the lungs there’s an exception for two.”
Come back to AnchorNews for your next Teacher Tuesday!
