A chemistry and marine biology teacher stands right outside room 1705 as her Tuesday lunch club runs on. She stares at the countless papers pinned to the bulletin board board; one having a PacMan eating a scantron on it. These papers do not need grading; these are the drawings that her students have made on the paper she had given them to keep them occupied after unit tests.
Margaret Deng is not someone anyone would have expected as a chemistry teacher if they were a student at Palo Alto High School prior to the 2022-23 school year. But, neither did Deng herself back when she was still attending Gunn High School. As a student whose main interests were in humanities, she remembers taking two literature related classes per semester and hating chemistry. It was not until college that she found her interests in science.
“I took this one class that was about volcanoes, and I was like a seminar,” Deng said. “We would talk, go on field trips, and we did experiments too. One was where we put a bunch of golf balls and like tennis balls in a giant trash can, and then watched it explode. That was what made me go ‘hey, wait, I want to do this all the time.”
Many with similar interests in science will go down the research path. This is exactly what Deng did at first; but even after researching in three different labs, she still could not find the same value she found while teaching in her research.
“I actually tried research three times in three different people’s labs,” Deng said. “Each time I was like, ‘Wow, this question is so cool. I’m gonna love research this time.’ But it’s just like focusing on one topic for too long, and that gets me really bored. But in school, I’m teaching different topics every week, and I learn new things about those topics every time I teach them.”
As a first year teacher at Paly, her first priority is to enhance students’ understanding and love for science just as her professor did for her. Not only does she enjoy giving her own knowledge to others, she lives to watch people learn and to see their faces when the information begins to “click” inside their brain.
“It’s like magic,” Deng said. “You have something in your head and you’re teaching someone and then they also learn it, and so you’ve just transferred knowledge in your head to someone else. Seeing someone that get it like that just makes me happy. It’s [Teaching is] just really fun like that.”
Deng also knows what it is like to be a high school student in the Palo Alto community and appreciates the connection she is able to have with her students.
“I remember being a student here [in PAUSD] and I was so lost all the time, and I think being able to be a teacher in this community and being like: ‘I know what you’re going through right now’ is really special,” Deng said.
Off campus, Deng takes all of her interests and wraps them up into a “ball of fun” that can take her mind off anything.
“I read a lot. It’s kind of sad because like now that I’m a teacher, I don’t have as much time to read,” Deng said. “But I also like, wushu which is a type of Chinese martial art. It’s how I get in my exercise for the week and then [the movements] feel cool. And then I also like to write. What’s really fun now is I can write about what it’s like being a teacher.”
Above all, Deng looks to make a difference in her students’ lives as she continues teaching at Paly.
“As a first year teacher, it’s kind of hard to make everybody love science,” Deng said. “But I think year after year, it’ll get better.”
