Many of Margo’s students from East Valley Middle School in Nampa have never set foot on a college campus, let alone competed in a science bowl, so they’re anticipating the upcoming adventure with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.

Margo is coaching two teams of 10 students each. If either wins the competition, they’ll get an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C. to compete in a national science bowl.

For now, Margo is not thinking that far ahead. “Many of my students don't have parents who attended college. So even for them just to visit a campus and be able to participate in the Science Bowl is an awesome opportunity,” she said.

Prepping for the competition began back in November. For Margo and her co-sponsor, another East Valley teacher, the first step was to determine which students who showed up for her after-school science club might be enthusiastic enough to put in the work required to be bowl-ready.

“We wanted to see which students were in it just for fun so we started out doing experiments,” Margo said. “We dissected frogs, we made a bike that could produce energy to make smoothies. From there, we channeled it into more competition style, going through practice questions from past years science bowls, with a buzzer and a timer, to get them familiar with how the competition's actually going to be, because it's kind of intense.”

As the bowl date – Feb. 11 – approaches, the students’ intensity is ramping up, Margo said. “They are super into it,” she said.

East Valley is a diverse school. Roughly half the students are white, half Hispanic. Participants in the science club mirror the overall student body. “It’s great seeing students from across those demographics being involved in this,” she said.

As an environmental science and public health major at Willamette University in Oregon, Margo did not set out to be a teacher. But she knew she wanted to find a way to combine those two fields of interest into a paying job, and teaching seemed a logical way to do that. And Teach for America seemed like a good fit.

Now that she is in her second year in the classroom, Margo has developed a passion for education.  “I love teaching. I'm really glad that I did find it in this roundabout way. I love my students so much –  more than anything. I love teaching them. I love teaching them science.”

TFA has a lot to do with her decision to remain in education for the foreseeable future. Her college didn’t have a teacher preparation program, so In her early days as a corps member, Margo felt “super nervous” standing in front of a group of students.

But that nervousness faded fast, thanks, she said, for the excellent preparation and mentoring she has received from TFA. She said she feels confident commanding a classroom and creating compelling curriculum for her students.

“I’m really grateful for the experience that Teach For America has given me. I feel like I've evolved a ton as an educator and that it is setting me up for success.”

Though she intends to remain a classroom teacher for a while, Margo said she is also eyeing policy fellowships for some point in the future. “It's nice to feel that Teach For America has prepared me for either of those routes and I know I will be confident going into either one of them.”