Bower balances biology and anatomy

High School Science Teacher Ms. Kathleen Bower has been teaching at Milton for 26 years. Ms. Bower teaches PC Now Anatomy and Physiology, Honors Biology and Academic Biology.

Ms. Bower graduated from Wyoming Area High School in Exeter, Pa. She added she attended Bloomsburg University to study Nursing but changed her major.

She added she changed her major to education because she learned in a class that if she prescribed the wrong medicine to a patient and the patient died from it, she would be responsible for their death.

“In teaching, you can always fix the problem and do something different. In a hospital setting, it may be too late to fix the problem and could cost someone their life,” Ms. Bower explained. She added at the start of her career she couldn’t find a teaching job, so she worked as a Chiropractic Assistant.

Ms. Bower realized she wanted to go into education when she came across a professor at Bloomsburg University who was very energetic, she said. She added she wanted to be as animated as that professor.

Ms. Bower enjoys sharing her classroom with her animals, she said. She added she has many animals in her room including lizards, geckos, a bearded dragon, a frog and a rabbit.

She said the animals help her students learn. “One of the biggest things is it just calms kids down and makes them feel more relaxed,” Ms. Bower said.

Ms. Bower said she enjoys watching her students grow from freshman year to senior year. She added her least favorite part about teaching is giving standardized tests because they limit what she can teach. Ms. Bower said she loves teaching science, adding that anatomy is her favorite because it is used more in the real world compared to the test prep curriculum.

Ms. Bower said her students are very helpful when it comes to technology. She added her biggest challenge with technology is when her right clicker and left clicker change on her laptop and the right becomes the left and the left becomes the right.

Her favorite teaching memory is when she was teaching in the middle school and they were incubating eggs, Ms. Bower said. She added the temperature of the incubator got too high due to a power surge throughout the school and the eggs exploded. She said when they opened the lid, the fumes quickly spread throughout the second floor of the middle school, and teachers were forced to leave that floor. Ms. Bower added she has since then incubated eggs successfully.

Ms. Bower characterizes her tenure at Milton High School as enjoyable. “I have worked with some amazing teachers and administrators,” she said.

Ms. Bower added she loves to see the success of her past students. “Sometimes as a teacher it is what you do out of the class that makes a difference,” she said.

Ms. Bower has been married for 22 years and has two sons. She said in her free time she likes to hang out with friends, go on walks and watch her sons play soccer. Her older son, Keegan, plays at Arcadia University, and her younger son, Griffin, plays for Ursinus College.

Senior Payton Ritter said she has known Ms. Bower for four years and has taken Honors Biology and PC Now Anatomy and Physiology with her.

“Ms. Bower is one of the kindest people I know and is always willing to help others,” she said. “Ms. Bower is a constant reminder to me to be patient, kind and willing to help others.”