Connie Waggaman is the new chemistry teacher this year at Jacksonville High School. Waggaman teaches alongside Robinson in this subject that many students find difficult; she found her way here after facing many tough life decisions and interesting experiences.
Waggaman attended Indiana State University for her Bachelor’s and then went on to Miami University of Ohio for her Master’s. Waggaman didn’t always know she wanted to be a teacher but chose this path after wanting to match her five-year-old daughter’s schedule and found she had a passion for the job. Waggaman said, “I loved working with high school students; they have a unique, energetic outlook on life.”
While still in high school herself, Waggaman enjoyed her math and chemistry teacher because “he made difficult concepts understandable, and he was truly a nice person.” She also recalls a third grade teacher whom she enjoyed because “she treated everyone equally. She did not have favorites.”
Waggaman says her biggest pet peeve is “people who play favorites. Everyone should be given the same opportunities and have access to the same information.”
Interestingly, Waggaman says if she was not a teacher, she would still have a job in science. She says, “I would be doing scientific research or working at a museum.”
In the past, Waggaman identified a new species in Ohio and she says, “I identified a new species of shrew in Butler County, Ohio, and have a paper about that discovery published in the Ohio Journal of Science.” She also stated, “I worked as the assistant curator of the zoology Museum at Miami university of Ohio and loved that job.”
Waggaman is a well-rounded individual with a lot of scientific experience that she loves to share with her students. Besides her overwhelming success in the scientific field, she also enjoys having fun in class. All of her students this year can remember her swallowing a candle each hour that she had class and stumping everyone, and she says her favorite memory is “the day I performed the ‘whop’ for my 5th and 8th hour classes.”
Waggaman teaches through her own experiences and brings to the table amazing past experiences that she can share with her classes. She is a teacher who has taken a love for science and pushed it to its limits.