“THOSE MOMENTS WHERE THE BRAIN CLICKS”
“It's the kids that I care about. When I get to work with children, or young adults at this point because they're high schoolers—when you get to see them understand something, and they can take it into their hands and apply it in some way that I wasn't even thinking, or they connect something to a dot that I wouldn't even have dared jump to—that's to me the greatest thing. I opened up that doorway for them to even approach that.”
“And that's why I love teaching. I love seeing those moments—those moments where the brain clicks with something, when a kid understands a topic. Like when I'm teaching forces—these kids are, ‘This makes no sense. There's no way this works.’ And then, when they try it and they do an experiment with it, maybe a lab, all of a sudden it plays out exactly how they’d figured out mathematically. And they go, ‘Whoa! That actually happened!’ (…) At those light bulb moments, where everything's finally clicking in—there's no greater feeling.”
“This job's awesome.”
“The idea of a desk job destroys me internally (….) I'm sure there's salary and there's different types of aspects of work that you're going to get, and different challenges. But seeing somebody understand something that they didn't before and grapple with it, and even struggle with it—I love when they struggle with it and don't get it. That, to me, is also just as beautiful. Wow! You really don't understand it. Your brain is tackling this and fighting against every single thing (….) That's awesome. Let's figure out why that's happening. Let's see if we can get that to change. That's what I love. What I seek.”
“WHEN THEY WANT TO INTRODUCE ME TO THEIR PERSONAL WORLD”
“No matter where you are, if you can get along with the kids, that's what brings happiness. When there's a relationship there—and it doesn't have to be a close relationship at all (…) They want to engage with you, whether in content or not in content. Some of those non-content discussions are some of the more fun ones sometimes—like, Who are you as a person? So I always look for that, too. That's what makes me happy—when people just come and talk to me. ‘I just saw a great movie last night. Can we talk about this movie?’ ‘Sure. Let's talk about it.’ That brings me joy, when they want to introduce me to their personal world.”