May 21, 2010
PHILADELPHIA - The life of a Division I student-athlete is not easy. Between practice, conditioning, games and long travel days, a player's schedule is full. The life of a student-teacher is also not easy, between teaching full time, writing lesson plans and grading papers.
Recent graduate Mary Pat Conville did both in the same semester. This past spring, Conville student-taught high school math at Little Flower High School and suited up at third base for the Explorers, where she was one of the Explorers' top power hitters. Conville flourished under the time pressures, earning herself an Academic All-District honor while batting .345 in the Explorers' three spot with 12 doubles and 20 RBIs. She was also the only player to start all 44 contests this year.
Over at Little Flower, she taught three classes of Algebra 2 and one class of Honors Pre-Calculus, which included juniors and seniors. As a student-teacher, her responsibilities included not only teaching the class, but all of the prep work it entailed including lesson plans, designing tests and projects as well as helping maintain her cooperating teacher's grade website and filling out report cards.
Conville's days this past spring involved waking up at 6:30 AM to be at Little Flower between 7:15 and 7:30. The students could arrive at 7:30 if they needed extra help before the school day started at 8:00. Conville had prep periods first, second and third period, where she would work to get as much done as possible before her first of four classes. When the school day ended around 2:40 PM, she zipped out to get to softball practice in time, which started at 3:30. If there was a game, she had the flexibility to leave school in time for the game.
"It was a lot of time management, but it definitely wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be," Conville said. "I think it's because I'm organized and I had a lot of support from [Head Coach Brianne Brown]. She was awesome and my cooperating teacher was phenomenal.
At the beginning, I was nervous going to her and saying that I play softball and was going to be leaving early. She told me she was a mother of three and had a part-time job while she student-taught, so it was definitely reassuring to have so much support from her."
One of the things she enjoyed about student-teaching was being able to help her students realize how math is a part of everyday life.
"I gave my Algebra 2 classes a prom project where they had to budget for their dance, which was coming up in a few weeks," Conville said. "My honors pre-calc class also had a project where they had to take pictures of math in nature, sort of a scavenger hunt. Hopefully they got to see that math is all around them."
"One of the most rewarding things was when a few girls in my pre-calc class came up to me and said `You're doing a really good job! You seem more comfortable!'" she added. "It was nice for me to hear from them."
When asked why she chose to go into teaching, she said, "It was between teaching and nursing, so when I got to college, I decided to try teaching. My uncle was a high school math teacher for 40 years at St. Joe's Prep. My mom's uncle was a priest so he was at a couple of the Archdiocesan schools as a principal and as a teacher. It was in the family."
Conville also has a special place for the Archdiocesan schools, between her family being part of it and having graduated from Archbishop Wood High School. With that, combined with doing her student-teaching at Little Flower which is an all-girls Catholic high school, she said she would like to try to get a job within the Archdiocese but is applying all over the area.
Besides student-teaching this spring, Conville was active throughout her entire college career here at La Salle. She was also involved in the Campus Ministry, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, ran tutoring sessions at Logan Elementary School, worked for the athletic ticket office and was an officer on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She credits her time on SAAC for giving her one of the best memories of her college career, the trip to the NCAA Leadership Conference in Atlanta last fall. She and swimmer Kieran Edling traveled to Georgia State University to meet other SAAC officers from schools throughout 10 different East Coast region conferences and discuss NCAA legislation, leadership qualities and participate in a community service project.
"It was awesome being around people who felt the same things and had the same passion that Kieran and I do," Conville said.
On the softball field, she recently wrapped up a strong career where she posted a .322 career batting average and was the only player to play in and start every single game the past four years. When asked about her favorite softball memory, she talked about the team going to the University of Arizona two years ago to play the Wildcats and Creighton. The squad beat a Creighton team that was on the bubble of being ranked.
"My goals were to not be shut out, to not be mercy-ruled, and to not have a perfect game thrown against us," Conville said. "Not only did we accomplish that, we scored two runs on Arizona's pitcher who had won an ESPY the year before and beat Creighton 4-2. We proved that we were a good team."
Although her time at La Salle has come to an end, Conville intends to stay on the softball scene while pursuing a teaching career. This summer, she will be coaching an 18-and-under ASA team in Warrington, PA, and will certainly see where her career takes her.
Conville left, though, with a piece of advice for next year's returners: "Work as hard as you can, on the field and in class. It pays off."
