Teaching is a profession that goes beyond being just teaching. It includes shaping young minds and provides them with the tools to make them successful. Teachers encourage critical thinking and creativity.
Mrs. Rodgers, a beloved teacher on our Mountain Ridge campus, has been teaching here for about 19 years. She teaches Biomedical Science classes and is the Athletic Trainer at Mountain Ridge.
Inspired by her teachers in high school, she decided to become a teacher. Now, she inspires many students to pursue successful careers. She loves to build relationships with students and guides them towards their future.
When talking about understanding the students and helping them out, Mrs. Rodgers says, “We have some different programs on campus to set goals or look out for students that may be struggling in areas and set up different ways to help them achieve their goals. Whether that means communicating with the students, parents, or other teachers to see whether they might be seeing similar patterns in their other classes too.”
Mrs. Rodgers describes the BioMed program by saying that it’s a hands-on program with a lot of lab work and collaborations. Students will get the opportunity to explore various careers and work as those professionals as they solve problems together. It may be in the lab or patient/client scenarios. Students will get to be creative and explore a lot of different things in these four years.
Mrs. Rodgers teaches with the ‘Project Lead the Way Biomedical Program’ as a facilitator. She does not teach with notes or presentations for the students, but instead with activities and information, applying projects. She gives them background information, and then students work individually with groups or by themselves. This makes them explore and learn things with their groups and share different perspectives. Students take this newly learned knowledge and apply it in real-life situations.
Mountain Ridge has been named a Distinguished High School by Project Lead The Way, recognizing the efforts and achievements of the CTE Bioscience and Engineering programs. This is thanks to Mrs. Rodgers, Mr. Randolph, and Mr. Miller.
Mrs. Rodgers is the advisor for HOSA Future Health Professionals. This is a career and technical student organization. This organization offers participation in leadership activities like competitive events, community services, and community outreach events. She’s also the athletic trainer here at Mountain Ridge. She runs the sports medicine club, for which all students can volunteer in the athletic training room.
Ichcha Pandey, a sophomore, says, “Mrs. Rodgers pushes us to be the best version of ourselves and teaches us how to be respectful in the classroom. She teaches in many ways to use biomedical sciences in our everyday life and helps with our future plans.” Adding to that, Pavani Miryala, another sophomore, says, “I like the way Mrs. Rodgers teaches us. It helps us better understand how we could go into medical school.”
Do you already know all of this information about Mrs. Rodgers?? Here’s something interesting!! Mrs. Rodgers loves running half marathons. Running makes the human body feel good and more productive. This explains why Mrs. Rodgers can take on so many different activities and still keep her cool.
Finally, when discussing the struggles of uncertain students, Mrs. Rodgers says, “Keep an open mind. Not everybody knows exactly what they want to do when they’re in high school.” She asks the students to keep an open mind and remember that things change. Experience and explore things, and don’t close yourself off to certain options because what seems absurd might be the dream in life.
