November 2017: Teacher Feature | Science is Her Passion

Ms. Janice Lubker loves science so much that she teaches three different scientific subjects: Biology, Integrated Science, and Chemistry. She says that science is easy to teach because it is extremely interesting and it explains everything in the world.

Ms. Lubker has been a teacher for 20 years and she has taught at Armijo since 2011. Before she became a teacher, she worked at UC Davis as an animal health technician in the large animal sector and then taught Animal Care at Western Career College in Sacramento.

She said that she does not have to motivate her students to keep doing well in her class because “they motivate themselves.” Her background in science and her teaching experience at Western Career College helped her decide to become a science teacher. She had been thinking about teaching for a long time, so then she decided to teach public schools. This allowed her to spend more summers with her daughter.

Ms. Lubker completed her education at a university in Brazil, majoring in veterinary medicine. After that she went to UC Davis and got her Master of Science in Comparative Pathology. Later, she went back to get her teaching credentials. If she had not become a teacher, she said that she would have become a large animal pathologist instead.

The thing that motivates Ms. Lubker at Armijo is that some of her students visit her after they leave and she sees them “having huge successes in their life” and she feels “so proud to be a part of that. Even if it’s just one or two students a year it just makes it worth all awhile in the world,” she said. One thing that she enjoys about Armijo is the camaraderie in the science department because all the teachers work together for unity and it is fun to work with them. If she could change anything about Armijo it would be class sizes because she thinks that the school needs smaller classrooms so teachers can give individual attention to their students and there would be fewer discipline issues.

While teaching takes up much of her time, she does find a way to fit hobbies into her life as well. She enjoys horseback riding, dog training, gardening, and building things with wood. She said that she used to also surf.