Lansing grad a new teacher in new times

Five years ago, Sophia Pitti-Daly was a senior at Lansing High School. Two weeks ago, Pitti-Daly began her first semester as a biology and chemistry teacher at Westwood High School in Westwood, Massachusetts.

“It’s terrifying,” Pitti-Daly said. “Everybody tells you the first year is the hardest. You don’t know anything.”

Throw in a pandemic-driven hybrid teaching model mingling virtual and in-school learning, combine that with a science curriculum calling for double period classes, and you get an incredibly complicated teaching schedule requiring day-to-day lesson planning for students she only sees once a week.

“In a way, I am thankful that this is my first year because nobody knows what they are doing,” Pitti-Daly said.

Pitti-Daly graduated from Lansing High School in 2015. She went on to Ithaca College and earned a 2019 bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in education. After taking a year to earn a master’s degree in teaching from Boston University’s Wheelock School of Education & Human Development, she found her current job at Westwood, a high school of about 1,000 students just outside of Boston.

There, she teaches three sections of honors biology to ninth-graders and one section of college prep chemistry (similar to a Regents-level class in New York state) to 10th- and 11th-graders.

Westwood’s hybrid model has half of the students in the building on any given day — half attend Monday and Tuesday and half on Thursday and Friday. Wednesdays are the all-virtual days with online “mini blocks” that are 35 minutes long.

“In my student teaching, we would plan an entire week a week or two weeks before,” Pitti-Daly said. “This year, we are sitting with bio and chem teams every day. It’s really stressful. I feel like we are just two minutes ahead of the kids.”

She commented on the numerous restrictions she faces regularly.

“Every second of every lesson has to be planned out,” she said. “We can’t do labs because we can’t have multiple students touching glassware. Lessons have to be distributed electronically because we can’t have students touching papers that teachers touched in the same day. For every minute in class, you spend three minutes planning.”

Pitti-Daly said the new experience is certainly one of a kind.

“It’s a cool way to enter teaching life,” she said. “Nobody will ever forget that you started teaching in the craziest year ever. I am gaining incredible experience in virtual learning. We will all come out better teachers.”

The pandemic has changed schools, probably permanently, according to Pitti-Daly.

“The education system needed a revamp anyways, especially assessment,” she said. “Our grading system is not focused on mastery as much as memorization. We are now forced to make mastery-based assessments. With half of our students at home, they can Google anything. They do have a computer open while taking the test, so it’s all ‘open book.’”

That led to a new practice, she said.

“Instead, we ask questions about applications and require critical thinking and analysis because students can’t Google that,” Pitti-Daly said. “They have to master a topic, not just memorize it.”

She has been thinking about this since she was 5 years old.

“I’ve wanted to be a teacher ever since I first had a teacher on the first day of kindergarten,” Pitti-Daly said. “My mom is an educator at Ithaca College, and she is a big role model for me.”

Her singing and violin skills led Pitti-Daly toward music education until middle school.

“Ms. [Christa] Salmon got me more interested in science,” Pitti-Daly said. “She cracked the door open, and high school solidified that for me. I loved earth science. I thought it was the most fascinating thing.”

Remarkably, Pitti-Daly’s high school English teacher is her model in the classroom.

“Ms. [Andrea] Huskie did these ‘Current Event Fridays,’” Pitti-Daly said. “That was my favorite — we’d learn from our peers. I have opinions on everything. I am very vocal. I started doing ‘Science in the News’ on our remote Wednesdays, and she shaped that. I wanted to bring culture into the classroom.”

Pitti-Daly also touched on the cooperation of her students.

“The students have been really great,” Pitti-Daly said. “I think that they are overwhelmingly happy to be back in school and that makes it nice to come to work every day.”

In Brief:

Chicken BBQ for Lansing Girls Soccer

Dave Hatfield will be cooking chicken for the Lansing Girls Soccer team Oct. 3 at the pits by the Lansing Town Hall. Dinners are $10 and will be available from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Drive-Thru Fall Food Fest

The Lansing Events Committee presents a “Drive-Thru Fall Food Fest” in Myers Park on Oct. 2 from 4 to 8 p.m., Oct. 3 from noon to 8 p.m. and Oct. 4 from noon to 6 p.m. Lemonade, fried Oreos, slushies, gyros, turkey legs, cheese fries, fried dough, hot sausage, cotton candy, chicken tenders, nachos, corn dogs, blooming onions, candy apples, corn and tacos will be available.

Blooms Kid Camp

Get crafty at the first-ever Blooms Kid Camp in partnership with the Lansing Community Center! Bring the kids to enjoy three festive fall-inspired crafts. Let them have fun getting their hands dirty making glow-in-the-dark pumpkins, rainbow leaf prints and even their very own DIY nature-inspired tote bag. Light snacks and water provided. Please bring a paint shirt or smock per child.

Scheduled for Oct. 12 with a morning session from 8:30 to 11 a.m. and an afternoon session from 1 to 3:30 p.m. on the first floor of the Community Center. $28 per child. Go to lansingrec.recdesk.com to register.