Mrs. Benvenuto is a teacher at Hamburg Area High School who has been teaching for 12 years since 2014, with some of those years spent doing student teaching. Mrs. Benvenuto’s favorite thing about being a teacher is interacting with students on not only civics-related topics, but just interacting with students as a whole. The reason she chose civics was because she fell into civics due to needing to free up some classes for other teachers, as she actually used to fall in mainly global studies, which is one of her favorite classes. The reasoning is that since global studies is typically a senior class, she likes to teach one final thing about the world before students are sent out into the world. She also believes if students have an understanding of the world, that students can understand whether people should or should not make conflicts with certain countries. However, she fell into teaching civics as well since she enjoyed teaching people in ninth grade.
She graduated from Tamaqua High School in 2010, and Bloomsburg University as an undergraduate in 2014. She got her Masters Degree from Kutztown in 2021, then is actively getting her second Masters Degree from Wilson College, which she will earn in May of this year.
Outside of school, most of her time is taken up by her daughter Penelope who will soon be turning 13 months old, and her husband. However, she likes to go out with them, so she does a lot of hiking, walking, and museum visiting, an example is that she is soon visiting the Buchanan house on Monday. She never taught at any other districts, but, she used to substitute from day-to-day at Fleetwood, however, her substituting job overlapped with one of her other jobs, with some of her other jobs being McDonalds and a Hometown Farmer’s Market in Tamaqua, a server at Perkin’s in Bloomsburg, and at Texas Roadhouse in Wyomissing and Harrisburg.
Mrs. Benvenuto stated that she is really enjoying her time at Hamburg, and hopes she can retire from here and not pursue another career. She does not see herself going anywhere else, does not plan to go anywhere else, and, in her words, “has been a Hamburg Hawk for life.”
Freshman Leonardo LaVentura stated that they think Honors Civics is a fun class, since he enjoys the discussions we have on our topics, and thinks the assignments are interesting. What Leo likes about the classes is how straightforward everything is, since he doesn’t like surprise aspects for classes, and the straightforwardness keeps him knowing what is going to happen. The daily agenda also helps keep track of both work and spirit days. However, Leo does not like the graded participation, since he does not like how competitive it can get over getting participation points, and it can turn the environment hostile. Leo believes if students are recommended for the class, then they should take the opportunity, since it is a fairly easy class, but also does have some challenges placed throughout, and will overall leave students with lots of memories.
