To my surprise, Irvington high schools are extremely adept. For most of my career, I have been teaching. Even in the 2 decades I spent in the industry, I have been contacting tutoring and lecturing, be that my peers, colleagues, or undergraduate students. I’ve taught at various colleges, including Berkeley and Chabot. But I found myself employed only for night shifts. And as the days went by, I quickly realized how badly I wanted to be busy in my mornings as well. That is when I picked up this idea of teaching at a high school.

Originally, I was worried. Having only taught full grown adults, I assumed high schoolers would be an immense challenge: rowdy, disruptive, and not as intelligible of the material as I would hope. But I was wrong. In fact, they were the exact opposite of all these things. And just a month into our year together, my students have been excelling on their tests, quizzes, and class discussions. Perhaps I’ll have to make future exams harder. 

The Irvington staff and student body is full of some of the most compassionate people I have met. Mr. Fung, for example, has been a great help in operating the school’s grading system, Aeries, something I was not at all familiar with before August. I say this often, but as someone who enjoys to complain, Irvington has done well in keeping me unhappy.