Photos courtesy Ms. Medeiros and Mrs. Donovan
By Victoria Pumphrey, Staff Writer
9/19/25
ROCKLAND - Rockland High School students have the opportunity to take courses outside of the core classes like English, math, and science. There are countless options for these courses, called electives, that the students can choose from.
Some of the electives are centered around business, the arts, media, music, or family and consumer sciences.
The teachers who run these classes have skills that set them apart in certain areas.
Some of these elective teachers have learned new things throughout their lives, but some knew that it was meant to be for as long as they could remember. One of these teachers is Ms. Kata Medeiros, who has always had a passion for art.
She said, “I think I’ve always been interested in art. Even as a little kid, I remember being really into art.”
Ms. Medeiros has officially chosen to teach over mainly doing professional work.
She said, “I did freelance photography for a long time… and it’s a lot of fun, but the schedule is hard, you’re working most weekends and nights.”
She continued by explaining that she had taught an after-school course once, which is when she discovered her passion for teaching.
Ms. Medeiros said that she does not specifically prefer working digitally or traditionally, but she enjoys both techniques for different reasons, and although they are very different, she finds that they are also similar.
She also mentioned, “I find myself working digitally a lot just because photography is a pretty digital medium nowadays.”
People’s homes are vessels for endless creativity.
Ms. Medeiros said, “My husband’s an artist too, so we have a lot of art in our house. Lots of paintings and drawings, and it definitely looks like an artist’s home.”
One final notable statement that Ms. Medeiros made was that, “Most of my art [related] dreams are stress[ful]... I had a dream it was raining glitter one time. That was terrifying.”
Ms. Medeiros made it a point to say that it was never her plan to become a teacher; it was just a series of unexpected twists and turns that led her to the person that she has become.
Ms. Adrienne Donovan is another elective teacher in the Family and Consumer Science departments. She mentioned that she has also always been inspired to do what she does today.
“We’re makers. We’re doers… My family are restaurateurs. We still own a restaurant in Connecticut. It’s in the blood,” shared Ms. Donovan.
Cooking is not the only thing that she teaches; she also teaches and shares her passion for sewing.
She mentioned that her mother’s sewing machine was always in the living room, as well as her grandmother’s in her bedroom, so she was constantly around whatever she needed to start a new project.
She has always loved being crafty, so when the position opened up, “It was fate, it felt like coming home,” she shared.
Ms. Donovan’s favorite part of teaching is watching her students’ confidence and skills grow. She also included that her classes are so mixed with people from all four grades and all different abilities.
That being said, her classes are not always a straight ride, filled with ups and downs. She mentioned two particular memories that were definitely unexpected.
“[One of the biggest mistakes was] the year that we made salt cookies… It was like hard tack from World War II. It was awful.”
And of course, “Then there was the muffin mystery of 2017. They either added too much baking powder or baking soda… There was not one molecule of muffin batter… [it had] gone somewhere into the fourth dimension.”
Does she cook at home?
“I absolutely adore cooking meals,” she said, “I despise baking. I hate it. Cooking meals is an art form; baking is an absolute science. And I’m more of a ‘wing it from the hip’ kind of person.”
Apparently, she is known in her family as the “Soup Goddess” and also shared how much she used to love cooking real Chinese food for New Year’s Eve, and her endless memories that came with it.
Ms. Donovan also teaches a class called Fashion and Design.
When giving gifts to people, she mentioned that she always includes something homemade. She used to embroider towels and sew antique lace onto towels when she was in high school.
Also, most of the time when people have something that rips, they go straight to her, but she usually can not fix it because it is most of the time nylon, or synthetic fabrics that are difficult for even a pro to fix; she often fixes the football jerseys and says that she sews a little navy blue heart on the inside to “protect the kid that was wearing it.”
One class that sets students up for their future is Personal Finance.
Mr. Jared Lordi is the teacher behind this class, which helps students who want to learn the basics of finance that they will need throughout the rest of their lives.
He mentioned that since his baby was born, his financial standings and priorities have changed.
He said, “Our budget has tightened greatly, and it’s become more apparent how much we actually need to save and put away and budget appropriately.”
He also mentioned that one very important lesson that he teaches his students and encourages them to learn early on is also about budgeting.
“Kids might be having their first job and first source of income, and they’re spending so much on things that they don’t really need," Mr. Lordi said.
One lesson that he teaches that has been recommended by many students is how to buy a car. He introduces them to the expenses, taxes, and insurance processes that all students who want to buy a car have to go through.
Despite his own challenges with following this piece of advice himself since having his son, he always recommends that “The ideal split would be like 50% towards your needs, 30% for your wants, and 20% to your savings.”
When coming across unexpected financial expenses, Mr. Lordi mentioned that the best source for the payments needing to be made is ideally the savings account, but it can be hard sometimes to pay for really expensive bills that were not accounted for in the budget.
He also mentions, “It’s good to find a 0% interest credit card that will allow you to make purchases without getting charged right away.”
Finally, he stated that his biggest financial weakness is going out to eat. “I like the experience of dining,” he said, “but in my budget, that is not super realistic every single week, so we have to pick and choose when that happens.”
As far as these three elective teachers go, they often use their specialties, not only in the classroom, but in their everyday lives.