Dr. Sara Ansteatt is a first-year chemistry teacher in Fauquier High School (FHS). Teaching for the first time, she is ecstatic to join the science department. Ansteatt graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and did her postdoctorate work at George Mason University. As an undergraduate, she spent her time at Frostburg State University. “That’s where I fell in love with chemistry,” she declared.
Science has always been important to Dr. Ansteatt, and her love for it stretches all the way into her school years. “I got into science because of my high school teacher,” she said. “I liked chemistry because I was kind of good at it.”
Her dream is to provide and teach chemistry to her students. Chemistry is filled with math, which Dr. Ansteatt said isn’t her strong suit. “We gotta get through the boring bits before you can do the fun bits,” Dr. Ansteatt explains, as most students prefer labs or hands-on experiments over math. She tries to make teaching the math component of chemistry fun by “trying to get [students] to do a little bit of math and then…being able to have something fun with the math.”
Outside of work, Dr. Ansteatt takes part in many hobbies, including crocheting, dice making and reading. Dice making, in particular, is one of Dr. Ansteatt’s specialties. “I think I found a random YouTube video. It seemed easy enough…[and] it’s kinda chemistry related,” she recalled.
Dr. Ansteatt’s dicemaking peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic, when labs were shut down and she couldn’t be a hands-on chemist. Discovering dice-making made her feel at home, as it’s a participatory, somewhat science-related hobby. “It gives me a creative outlet and makes me feel like I can do science if I’m not in a lab.”
Before coming to FHS, Dr. Ansteatt had a passion for researching. Research was her primary interest at the time, “Do I wanna do teaching? Do I wanna do research? I’m more of a research person,” Dr. Ansteatt stated, before making the executive decision to start teaching. As she put it, “My main goal is that at the end of the year, [my students] at least take one piece of information from me.” Dr. Ansteatt wants her students to learn and grow. To have fun while acquiring necessary information for years to come.
Dr. Ansteatt loves hands-on activities in the classroom and does as many labs as possible. “I’m an organic chemist by training. So I like mixing stuff together and having explosions happen on purpose,” she bantered. Dr. Ansteatt loves working with colors, chemicals and dyes. “All the stuff I was working with in my post-doctorate was [boring]…I wanted to do the fun stuff, so at least visually appealing to me.” Having fun while learning during her labs is of vital importance to Dr. Ansteatt.
FHS is super excited to welcome Dr. Ansteatt into the school community. Her brilliance, know-how and friendly personality are a vital aspect for the student body to learn from.
