By NANCY TULLIS

By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LEETONIA -- As a high school and college student, Sarah Shevetz was a volleyball player with a love of mathematics. As a first-year teacher and volleyball coach at Leetonia High School, Shevetz easily relates lessons on the volleyball court to the lessons in the classroom.
She developed a love for mathematics because the teachers at Lowellville made math fun. She wants to do the same for her ninth- through 12th-graders at Leetonia High.
"I want to try to keep it interesting and fun," she said. "I don't talk over their heads. A lot of people have a bad perception about math. It doesn't have to be scary."
Shevetz finds a direct parallel between schoolwork and athletics. She has students from all four high school grades in her classes, and many of them are athletes.
"I try to stress how important homework is," she said. "I can only do so much in the classroom. It's just like sports. If you play a sport, you have to practice. To be ready for the game, to really learn something, you have to practice. In class, I give them the tools to learn, and the homework is the practice."
Teaching and coaching
Shevetz is a graduate of Lowellville High and a 2003 graduate of Youngstown State University. She attended Hiram College for two years, where she played volleyball. She then transferred to YSU, and decided to begin coaching volleyball rather than attempt to earn a walk-on spot as a volleyball player.
She coached during the last two years of college, and during a semester of student teaching and a year of substitute teaching. As a result, she begins her first year as a high school varsity volleyball head coach with four years of coaching experience.
She said the love of math came first, then she decided teaching was a career that fit well with her goals of working, coaching volleyball and rearing a family.
She did her student teaching at Springfield Local and was a substitute teacher there. She was also a substitute teacher a few times at Leetonia and liked the close-knit community and the small-school atmosphere.
"I'm a first-year teacher and I have my own classroom," she said. "That doesn't happen very often. I was hired in May, and I was very excited to have the job and be the junior varsity volleyball coach. Then I got the varsity coaching job, and that was almost too good to be true."
Shevetz has four classes each day, geometry, second-year algebra and first- and second-year integrated math. She said integrated math is slower-paced algebra classes for students who struggle with math concepts.
Anticipation
After four years of education classes, student teaching then substitute teaching, Shevetz was eager to start her career.
Finding out in May that she had a job was a mixed blessing. She didn't have to spend the summer looking for a job, but she had nearly three months to be nervous about the first day of her teaching career.
"I think I was more nervous a few weeks ago than I was the last few days," she said. "By the last week I was just excited about starting, but I was out of the habit of getting up early and I was afraid I'd sleep in."
Shevetz made it to school on time, however, and the first day went well, both in the classroom and on the volleyball court.
"Education classes help you prepare, but it's all theory until you actually step into a classroom," she said. "You can't really know how teaching is going to be until you do it. I still feel like I am too young to be a teacher, but here I am."
Shevetz capped off the first day of her teaching career guiding her volleyball team to a come-from-behind win.
"I'm excited and my team is excited," she said. "I guess you'd say we're in a rebuilding year, but a lot of the coaches in the league are new, so anything can happen. I think it's going to be a fun year."