This new teacher explains how she got involved in science and her experience working at The Philadelphia Zoo.
Ms. MaryKate Fisher is soon to be Malvern Prep’s new science teacher but has a lot more up her sleeve than just science facts.
Fisher will be teaching Physical and Chemical Systems to the 10th grade and also an AP Environmental Science class this fall. Fisher said she’s ready to explore the new classes here at Malvern and hopeful for what they will shape up to be.
“Physical and Chemical Systems is a growing and developing class, which I love and is so cool because there is so much we can do with it,” Fisher said.
Science may be Fisher’s favorite subject to teach but she has also been teaching math and other core subject classes for the past 15 years.
“For the last nine years I was living in Delaware. I taught in Catholic school so I kind of just filled in where they needed me,” Fisher said. “I ended up teaching I think every subject they’ve had in the middle school. Even religion, like I’ve taught it all.”
Fisher has also minored in the studies of Human Biology in college. Fisher has both interned at the Philadelphia Zoo and The Museum of Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Although Fisher never became a zoologist, she did think about working in the forensics field. Her job at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology gave her a look into this career path.
“I was brought in to catalog and photograph a collection of over 2,100 skulls,” Fisher said. “It was very interesting, and there are tons and tons of artifacts at the Penn museum, tons of Native American artifacts.”
Her internship at The Philadelphia Zoo exposed her to another career path, but she decided that teaching would suit her better.
“Did you ever have those people from the zoo come to your middle school with animals and talk about them and hold them?” Fisher said. “That was me except I was in a zoo and would do shows for people where I would talk about the porcupines of the nine foot Boa.”
Fisher was particularly fond of her internship there because The Philadelphia Zoo is one of the only zoo’s that offered internships. Her job there also gave her opportunities to be on local and national television.
“I would do lots of television interviews and a lot of local news programs, I also got to be on shows like Good Morning America,” Fisher said. “I talked about the bald eagle when it came off the endangered species list.”
Fisher was grateful for all her previous jobs and not just because she got to meet a couple of overweight porcupines named Pins and Needles.
She is ready to start the school year with the right foot forward as she will begin her Malvern job in our very own zoo, the bottom floor of Sullivan.
“Actually I’ll be teaching downstairs in the zoo, the environmental science class is downstairs where all the animals,” Fisher said. “I’m so excited, it’s like I’m turning full circle here.”
