Gym teacher Mrs. Deitz has recently joined the Hamburg team with a positive start by the kind teachers and students at Hamburg. In previous years she has worked at Reading High as a swim teacher. She has been teaching for a total of 15 years with this currently being her 16th year. 

     Before starting at Hamburg, she was a swimmer and again a swim teacher. Her favorite parts about being a swim teacher was seeing the kids’ faces of achievement after jumping off the diving board or learning to swim for the first time. She mainly taught four strokes freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. But she also taught two safety strokes, sidestroke and elementary backstroke. Outside of teaching Mrs. Dietz enjoys spending time with her two sons, Drew (10) and Jake (7). Both of her sons attend Wyoming Area School District.

     Hamburg’s other gym teacher Ms. Kelly was a main reason behind Mrs. Deitz’s new job. Ms. Kelly, who has been a teacher at Hamburg for 26 years with this year being her 27th year, gave some information on the process of Mrs. Deitz getting her job. Hamburg has always had three gym teachers, but at the end of last year, the previous gym teacher, Mrs. Heistand, decided to retire. This led to an open gym teacher position. Ms. Kelly emailed three of her most respected colleagues in Berks County. Ms. Kelly described our gym program as “not the run of the mill “gym” class, as Hamburg tries to focus on the whole child, and is more fitness-based then the traditional sport-based PE class.” So she was looking for someone who was able to fit the criteria to be able to teach a gym class like that. After those three colleagues recommended Mrs. Dietz, she went through the interview process and ended up standing out from all of the other candidates who applied. 

     The interview process started about mid-May. She was interviewed by Dr. Beissel, Ms. Kelly, Mrs. Freiwald, and Mrs. Wyles-Herbert. This first interview consisted mainly of questions asked to Mrs. Deitz about Social Emotional Learning, what are typical PE lessons, and her different opinions on health and PE topics. Towards the end of May, Mrs. Deitz was later interviewed again. This time she was interviewed by Dr. Beissel, Mr. Marra, Dr. Mextorf, Ms. Kelly, and Mrs. Friewald. During this interview Mrs. Deitz was asked to make a lesson plan about given health topics provided by the school. She was then asked to present her lesson and provide the objectives of the lesson, where the lesson would stand, what the students would be learning, and why she chose those activities. Mrs. Deitz was offered the job officially in mid-June. Her job offer was officially school board approved by the end of june.

     As Mrs. Deitz stated, “There is a LOT different.” She has elaborated on the size of the schools. Reading High has five floors when counting the ground floor.  With all of these floors comes 4,000 students. With 4,000 students comes 200 teachers. And finally with 200 teachers comes one principal and five assistant teachers. Students are given five minutes to get to each class, which sometimes isn not even enough.