heart of gold

By Jonathan Michua

David Calbreath is a teacher unlike any others, even after 12 years of working at Yerba Buena High School, you can immediately see the passion of trying to do his best to teach every student until they get a grip of what they are learning. Mr. Calbreath cares about his students; he would rather see the student taking a long time to get their work done than seeing them get a 0.

Calbreath: “I want kids to get to interact with it and have fun with it and real stuff is better for that and any other I just do feel like i've gotten to connect with students better and got to see from their point of view better of the years and that means a lot to me.”

Calbreath has always wanted to connect with his students and be a good teacher for them and help them as a friend, not as a teacher. Even if somebody’s struggling with their work he will lecture them about the problem and try to help them with the entire worksheet. Sometimes he will take some problems off if they are really struggling but he will put all the time and effort until they truly understand.

Calbreath: “I would love to be a good math teacher but what I try for most is to make a good connection with my students and help build their confidence with everything including math so my impact is personally special.”

He admires his students that really want to complete something even when it's really late or they are really dedicated to continue even after being really behind and missing many days of school and still ask for previous worksheets and to help teach them to know what they missed out on.

Calbreath: “Students who like missed a lot and were just incredibly dedicated to fixing it catching up. I had people like who go slow at tests and instead of getting frustrated they just keep going and asked for more time when I know if it was me I would've given up. I just think that's really cool.”

Sometimes even Calbreath struggles with some of the work, but the other math teachers in the department help him. Calbreath looks up to the other math teachers and gets inspired by them and enjoys getting along with them all.

Calbreath: “There are other teachers I've definitely been inspired by who helped with some lessons. I got to see them approach their students or their lesson plans that I like alot. I have been inspired in a lot of ways and i liked here and when i worked at mount pleasant both times I really felt supported to be able to experiment as a math teacher and i really like that."

Calbreath has many years of experience working at Yerba Buena and he doesn't plan on moving away from being a math teacher. He still enjoys teaching even after 12 years of doing it, and the motivation he gets is from the math teachers and students that all make him want to continue his job of teaching.

Calbreath: “My favorite part always has been the students. I get to meet sweet people. I hate it, just getting to know somebody and when they graduate it's like ‘You're so interesting I wish I got to talk to you more before’, but my favorite part is absolutely working with students. That’s the main reason I would recommend this job to other people.”