Before he stood in front of the classroom to teach science, Cory Couture spent his time traveling to Montana, Arizona, Newfoundland, Alaska, and more.

He has biked in the Rockies, looked at climate change effects in various places, explored the impacts of different energy options like coal mines, wind farms and has done fieldwork on glaciers.

During his travels while he was in college at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, he double-majored in geology and chemistry. He was able to experience what he was studying firsthand. Couture has had a passion for science since he was a kid.

“I always loved science,” Couture said. “That’s the best grades I ever got, both in college and in high school.”

During his college years, Couture had the opportunity to do a lot of traveling. One of his most memorable trips was to Alaska, where he got to see glaciers.

“It was weird walking on glaciers,” Couture said, “because it was the middle of May, so it was warm but we were walking on huge sheets of ice.”

During this adventure, Couture got to backpack with groups of people.

“We all backpacked with a van, so we had tents and stuff,” Couture said. “We drove around to different glaciers and mapped them, and we also looked at features of the different mountain ranges there too.”

Couture also got to see a huge volcanic arc that “plays a huge role in the climate of Alaska and the western coast of the United States.”

Couture’s journey around Alaska was around 10 days, while one he took to Montana was one month. Couture prepares for these big trips by “looking up the weather for the time you’re going to be there.”

“[It’s important to have] a lot of gear that can be taken down in layers. Layers you can add more of but also take some off too, but you have to make sure your packing is still light.”

Luckily, Couture has never been in a situation that he wasn’t prepared for.

“Since I have anxiety, I over-prepare for these kinds of trips,” Couture said. “That set me up for these kinds of things.”

Out of all these expeditions, Couture’s favorite moment was biking over the continental divide.

“When we were traveling up the eastern side, it was super cloudy, foggy, and rainy,” Couture said. “You couldn’t even see two feet in front of you, but as soon as we got over the mountain, it was very sunny and gorgeous.”

Couture has had many science related jobs in the past. Couture started out as an analytical chemist at a pharmaceutical company.

“I didn’t like that job that much, so I became an environmental geologist in New Hampshire where I did groundwater remediation,” Couture said, “[which] is cleaning up contamination in the soil and groundwater that people are around and use for resources.”

Although he did like that job, it was very exhausting, and Couture wanted to try something new that still had to do with science, so he became a science teacher at LHS where he began teaching Earth and Space Science.

This year is his second year of teaching, where he met first year biology teacher Amanda Claussen. Claussen’s first impressions of Cory Couture was that she knew that Couture and her were “going to become best friends.”

“I first met him when I got hired in April of last school year and found out that he was going to be right next door to me,” Claussen said. “We started chatting when I started, and now we visit each other’s classrooms all the time.”

Claussen says that Couture has shared good insights with her for her new year of teaching.

“He worked with some of the sophomores that I have now, so he’s given me good tips on how to handle them and how to look out for some good things with classroom management,” Claussen said. “Couture has also helped me with getting prepared for lessons, we’ve thrown our own ideas at each other.”

Claussen is planning on making a zoology class while Couture wants to teach a geology class.

“Him and I are talking about potential collaborations about fossils and that sort of stuff,” Claussen said. “We kind of nerd out about these things together.”

Claussen volunteers in the medical center at the New England Aquarium every Saturday.
She was ‘so excited’ when Couture went down to Boston to visit her.

“I got to show him behind the scenes a little bit in the aquarium,” Claussen said. “He has these Isopods that he talks about a lot, and we go over and look at them. We look at the insects and what they eat and we’ll pull out our dissecting microscopes and look at those types of things.”

During Couture’s first year of teaching, he also met a new student to the district, former freshman student, Zaineb Elmerse. Elmerse has moved to different places before moving to Londonderry, NH. She lived in Newmarket, NH, and previously before that, Louisville, Kentucky. Elmerse came during the middle of the year as a Freshman and was ‘very nervous’.

“I had Mr. Couture B period last year and he made the beginning of the day much better for me,” Elmerse said. “He is also very comforting to be around and brought a lot of happiness into the class.”

She was very nervous coming into a new school because she had been the “new kid” many times in her life, but having Mr. Couture made it easier for her.

Elmerse has a lot of great memories with Mr. Couture’s, but one her favorite memories was “when Mr. Couture helped us out with final exams by going through everything and making sure we understood all the [content],” Elmerse said. “I wasn’t stressed out anymore after that.”

Elmerse has always liked science, but Couture’s class was different for her.

“Mr. Couture made it more interesting than other teachers,” Elmerse said. “So that made me focus on learning more about the subject. I am very happy that Mr. Couture was my freshman science teacher last year,” Elmerse said.