guilty of teaching differently

By Mario P

In a world where crime exists, there must also exist a system of justice. Forensic science is the study of criminal science, and it has evolved drastically over the years. One young teacher has stepped into the field, eager to prepare students and teach them about criminology to maintain order and justice in the world. That teacher is Albert Tsai.

Tsai is a new teacher who recently graduated from SJSU. After going through the undergrad program and teaching one year at Evergreen, he was then transferred here to Yerba Buena High School. He's found his experience to be quite different here.

Tsai: “It's definitely something different. I wouldn’t say it's a bad experience… If anything, it shows that when it comes to school, school is not all that different. People like to categorize people and that kind of thing, but really at the end of the day, we're all just human. You should look at everybody like the person they are.”

Tsai’s style of teaching is very hands-on. He does labs with his students, using techniques used in real crime scenes to find and preserve evidence, and even simulates entire crime scenes for the students to investigate, engaging them in the lesson. Tsai believes it's more important for students to fully understand a concept than for them to do repetitive and tedious tasks, and that the main idea of science class is to learn concepts and how to solve real life problems.

Tsai: “My favorite thing about teaching is when people find their interests in something that they never thought about previously… It's partially the stuff you're teaching, but it's also the way you present it to people… If you just produce a really dry lesson that people feel is being is pushed up onto them, they're not gonna wanna learn, but if you make it relevant to them, that's what makes it a good lesson.”

His students can see this by the way he teaches, instead of assigning repetitive and lengthy homework every night. He assigns a test every other day, but with no more than five questions. The main goal is to see if the students grasped the concept of the lesson.

Tsai: “My teaching style has always been the type where I really don't give you guys any more work than I absolutely have to… I don’t really care about your ability to crank out repetitive work over and over again, I don't care about how many assignments you can turn in—I care about whether the stuff is registering to you… You take a science class because you want to think, not because you want to do the same thing over and over again.”

Aside from teaching, Tsai also makes sure to make his classroom a safe space for his students and tries to be understanding and look at things from the student’s perspective whenever there's any problems in the classroom.

Tsai: “I understand that teenagers will be teenagers. I was one myself not super long ago. Bottom line is, I just don't want people to be a jerk to me and to each other. I try not to go hard in terms of disciplining because, really, everyone has a reason for doing what they do.”

Teaching has its ups and downs, whether you’re a new teacher like Tsai, or a veteran teacher. Being a teacher can have a huge impact on kids and the teacher themselves, prompting them to change the ways they look at things and even their lifestyles.

Tsai: "I'm not really used to salary life. I used to work hourly before this. I used to be able to go to work and at the end of the day be able to not think about work ever again, but when you teach, that's not what happens… You don't just stop thinking about school at the end of the day. You don't get to go home and stop thinking about school. Similarly with your teachers also don't get to stop thinking about school either, so it cuts both ways.”

Nonetheless, Tsai will continue to do his best as a new teacher and will continue teaching and is eager to learn and grow alongside his students, teaching them forensics science like no other teacher.