Room 317 had previously been associated with former Community teacher Tod Tharp, best known for his role as Charles the Wrestler in the CET production of “As You Like It”. But the new occupant of room 317, new science teacher Marcy McKormic, isn’t without her own creative talents.

Before discovering that her heart lay in teaching, McKormic planned to pursue a future in medical illustration. Although that normally entails illustrating science and medical textbooks, McKormic had something different in mind. “I wanted to work at the Smithsonian, and set up all the presentations and exhibits, and things like that.”

McKormic, who has always been fascinated with science, said that being a medical illustrator is a good way to combine both the arts and the sciences. “Well, it was interesting in high school. A lot of people, teachers and counselors, were like, ‘Oh no, you have to choose one or the other, you’re either a scientist or an artist, you can’t be both.’ And I was like, I don’t know about that. So, I was lucky to find a program at U of M that combined the two things.”

Still, the amount of people willing to combine the two subjects seems to be a small amount; there were only six students in  McKormic’s graduating class, herself included.

A firm believer that life will take its own path, McKormic went back to school to become a teacher, and first came to Community for the 2003-2004 school year to be a student teacher. As she worked alongside Liz Stern and Kathy Heder, two of the science teachers of that time, McKormic fell in love with the science program at Community. “I was really excited. I wanted to do student-teaching here, because it had the integrated science program.”

The daughter of an Air Force veteran, McKormic spent most of her childhood moving from place to place. She moved to Ann Arbor when she was eighteen for her undergraduate studies, and has more or less lived and worked in the area ever since. “It’s the longest I’ve ever lived in one place,” McKormic explained with a laugh.

Thankfully, it doesn’t look like she will be moving again any time soon, especially since McKormic said that she has always wanted to teach in Ann Arbor.

Employed full-time at Community, she has taken the job position formerly held by Tod Tharp and now teaches two classes of FOS I, two classes of FOS III and one class of FOS II. “My heart was always at Community. I really wanted to be here, and it felt like coming home. So when the job opened up, I had to go for it.”

Before landing her job at Community, McKormic  spent eight years teaching science at Saline Middle High, applying much of what she had learned as a student teacher at Community to the curriculum in Saline. “I took a lot of the principles of integrating the science and what I learned here to over there. So it’s been a nice transition. We cover physical science in the middle school, chemistry, a little bit of physics and energy, energy and the environment.” McKormic described teaching middle school science as fun, but a “whole different level of challenges.”

Now that she’s back at Community, McKormic has her work cut out for her with the FOS II program, something that the science department is looking to rework. But McKormic said she’s looking forward to that. “We’re developing, or rather, redeveloping the FOS II curriculum, adding to it, updating it. So I’m really looking forward to all that work in FOS II.”

And although she’s only been here for a short while, McKormic already has plenty of stories about mishaps in the classroom, adventures outside and how quickly the expected can become the unexpected. In the first quarter of FOS I, students spent a lot of time down at Traver Creek, looking for bugs and testing the cleanliness of the water.

The first week of school, McKormic took her class down for their introduction to the creek, hoping for good weather. “I checked the weather that morning, there was nothing on the radar, ten, twenty percent chance of rain. So I was like, we’re going, that’s not enough of a chance to change our plans. So we get down there, I can see a few clouds, the clouds seem to start building, we get down to the river, we’re actually looking at it, and it starts to sprinkle. So I was like, okay guys, we’re going to pack it up, we’re gonna head back,we don’t want to be in the rain. And  as we’re walking back, crossing the Broadway bridge, there’s no cover anywhere, and it just started to downpour. I mean, the biggest raindrops you’ve ever seen, and there was nothing we could do. So we just decided to book it, just run, and we came back to school literally drenched. So second full day of school, and I am sopping wet in front of my students.”

Still, her students were good sports about it, and that is one of the things that McKormic loves about Community. “I love, like I said, the independence of the students, the willingness to learn, not just within the classroom but, you know, to tap into community resources.  And just the level of maturity of students here, I really admire and really enjoy.”