Darla Petricca of New Hyde Park, N.Y. will receive a master’s and a bachelor’s degree from Mount Saint Mary College on Saturday, May 17.
No one can say that Darla Petricca of New Hyde Park, N.Y., a Mathematics major on the Adolescent Education track, isn’t a hard worker: When she graduates from Mount Saint Mary College on Saturday, May 17, she’ll be walking away with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree.
Thanks to a mix of earning college credits in high school and an accelerated schedule of classes at the Mount, what takes most students six years to achieve has taken Petricca only four.
Like her peers, Petricca spent much of her final semester completing her student teaching. Her first placement was at Heritage Middle School in Newburgh, N.Y., teaching seventh grade Math. Her second was at Valley Central High School in Montgomery, N.Y., teaching ninth grade algebra.
It’s been a valuable experience for her, she said.
“You learn a lot in class [at college], then you can see how it works when you’re actually teaching,” Petricca explained. “You’re learning classroom management and what to do when the unexpected comes up. And I really enjoyed creating a relationship with the students.”
Like many others, Petricca discovered her passion for the teaching profession when she was still in high school. However, her story isn’t as cut-and-dry as that might sound: Early on, she was having some difficulty in Math, the subject that would later become her forte.
“My learning style didn’t really agree with how I was being taught in the classroom,” she said. “But then, I got teachers who would make real-world connections to math, and showed me how math can be fun and interesting. And that’s what I want to do for middle and high schoolers myself.”
For anyone who’s met her, it’s no surprise that Petricca is an excellent student. She’s no stranger to the Mount’s Dean’s List; she was named both a Ralph and an Aquinas Scholar, recognitions given to the college’s best and brightest students; and she was inducted into Kappa Mu Epsilon, the honor society for Math, and Kappa Delta Pi, the honor society for Education. Most recently, she earned the Sr. Mary Genevieve Love Award for Excellence in Mathematics from the Mount’s Division of Math and IT.
In addition to her academic achievements, Petricca played on the Women’s Soccer team at the Mount for all four years of her college experience. But when a knee injury took her out of the game for a significant amount of time, her boundless determination to recover had a positive impact on her academics as well.
“When I tore my ACL, that was a very long and difficult recovery, emotionally and physically,” she explained. “That encouraged me to work hard and get back on the field. That perseverance has become a part of my teaching style now. Math can be a tough subject sometimes for students and even teachers, but I know I can handle it.”
With commencement just a few days away, Petricca has her sights set on the future. But she’s also taking some time to look back on her last for years at the Mount.
“There are so many things I’m going to miss,” she said “I’ll miss living on campus and my professors. I’ll miss being on the soccer team and all of my close circle of friends. The people that I’ll keep in touch with and will be my friends for life, I met through soccer – the preseasons, practices, and all those rainy games. And honestly, I’ll miss being a student in general.”
She added, “Now I’ll still be going to school, but this time, I’ll be the teacher.”