Chemistry and physics teacher Ashwini Avadhani didn’t so much find her passion for sciences, it found her. 

“When people say that you have to have a passion, I say you have to discover it as you go along,” Avadhani said.  

And that’s exactly what she did, by starting to pursue a scientific focus as a 10th grader in India, where students were pushed into picking a direction at a young age. Her mother wanted her to do sciences, and she got a free undergraduate tuition as a bonus.

“Honestly, I was really bad at chemistry,” Avadhani said. “The funny thing is, I see you guys as high schoolers, and I was not even a fraction of how smart you guys are. But if you took physics and chem, the girls got a tuition waiver in India.”

Although it didn’t come naturally, Avadhani stuck with it and went on to do her master’s in both organic and inorganic chemistry before moving to California.

“We used to spend 6 a.m. to 1 p.m., the whole morning to afternoon, in the lab,” Avadhani said. “And then we had lectures afterwards.”

One of her most memorable memories occurred while she was taking her practical exam. She was performing a series of tests on a small and limited amount of powder, when she had an unfortunate incident.

“It was a final exam, and I dropped it,” Avadhani said. “I had to scrape it from the floor.  But I still did really well on that, I was good at labs.”

After doing her master’s in India, Avadhani moved to California and enrolled as a graduate student at Cal State Long Beach. There she got her first introduction to teaching by working as a teacher’s assistant.

“I realized I was good at it,” Avadhani said. “I could break down the problems and solve them for the undergrad kids.”

Avadhani went on to teach at Ohlone Community College and then eventually Woodside High School, where she had to teach integrated science to freshmen. This included bio, physics, chem, and sex ed. 

“I dreaded that class [sex ed],” Avadhani said. “But that is what I started with.”

Now Avadhani has been teaching Chemistry H and Physics at Paly for 13 years. She aims to make teaching science fun and exciting, instead of just the boring lectures she received when she was a student. 

 “I like teaching with analogies, giving real life examples, and demos,” Avadhani said. “The best part is when my demos fail, and they just don’t work. It demonstrates that in spite of the fact that you’ve learned for so many years, or you’ve taught for so many years, it doesn’t mean a demo works every time.”

Avadhani would also like to teach AP chem, which features her all time favorite lab, in which students dissolve a brass bead to find the mass percentage of its components. 

“I find beauty in it because you start with a solid, you dissolve it, you look at the color, and from that you can backtrack to the percentage,” Avadhani said. “The convolutedness of that lab is amazing.”

Many students appreciate Avadhani’s thoroughness and unique teaching methods, including sophomore chem H student Anjini Sanchorawala. 

“I think Mrs. Avadhani has a great teaching style, and she’s very unique in her ways because instead of just following the slides, she explains everything thoroughly using her whiteboards,” Sanchorawala said. “ I think she also prepares kids very well for AP chem. She’s just very good at explaining, and conceptually she knows her stuff, so it’s great to learn from her.”