By: Brittany Smith

This teacher is fun, cool, and good at what she does; her name is Mrs. Joncas.

Mrs. Joncas is an important part of our math department at Eisenhower, so The Squire sat down with her to learn a little more about her background and teaching experience.

Joncas went to college at Penn State University, University Park. She has been teaching for 21 years and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics Education. We asked Mrs. Joncas what she liked most about teaching, to which she responded that the most exciting part of teaching is when students catch on to what you are doing. She enjoys breaking things down and trying to make things easier for the students.

Mrs. Joncas has had an interesting journey to her role as a math teacher at Eisenhower. She explained that teaching was not always her first career plan: “I started off in electrical engineering, as an engineer uses math and they get paid a lot. What I realized in college is that I don’t like working with my hands.  Basically, I liked figuring out how to solve the problem, but not putting the circuit boards together to make it work.  I’m actually really bad at putting it together and making it work. When it came time to change majors, I looked at the things that I liked – math and helping people – and decided to become a teacher.”

Once becoming a teacher, Mrs. Joncas worked teaching a variety of grades in both middle and high school.  She shared, “I taught middle school for 10 years and high school for 11 years. When I taught middle school, I would always say I do not want to teach high school because I do not like apathetic students. Now that I teach high school, I like it because we can learn things that are more intricate. It’s fun to watch student’s master new concepts.”

Mrs. Joncas lives in Corry, so it can be tough to get to Eisenhower when the weather is bad. Despite the challenging drive, Mrs. Joncas loves teaching at Eisenhower.  She described how she feels about our school saying, “There is no place I would rather teach than Eisenhower. Even though I live in Corry, I believe we have the best school. Our parents really care how their students perform and want to see their child be successful.”

In her free time, she’s usually somewhere watching her kids play sports. Mrs. Joncas also likes going to the fair and seeing all the people she usually only sees during fair week and seeing her students that she hasn’t seen since the end of the school year. She enjoys just about everything the fair has to offer, but most of all, the people. As she explained, “from the potato wagon to the ice cream shop, from the midway to the barns, there are lots of Eisenhower people around the fair.”

Mrs. Joncas is a great teacher at Eisenhower. We are very lucky to have her in our math department. If you miss seeing Mrs. Joncas every day at school, maybe you’ll have a chance to say hi to her as she’s checking out the Warren County Fair this summer!