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By: Claire Bott
What comes to mind when you think of someone who dropped out of high school? You might think of someone being a failure, but what about that person becoming a teacher?
Struggling as a student helped pave the way for Chris Nguyen to get back on track and pursue De Anza Community College and soon after completing the rest of his schooling at UC Davis and San Jose State, to pursue physiology.
Starting school was hard. Nguyen never thought of high school as important. He felt school wasn't teaching him information that would set him up for success in the real world.
Nguyen: “For me, I was one of those kids where I was like, this is forced work. I want to learn how to do taxes. I wanted to learn something that’s important to me. I didn't really see the importance of like, bio, English, or like history.”
Chris Nyguen is 26 years old from San Jose and is in his first year at Yerba Buena High School as a hysiology and biology teacher for freshmen and Juniors.
Nguyen went to Independence High School as he struggled to finish high school, but he went back to finish it. He graduated in 2016, unsure what he was going to do, but he always found interest in physiology, prompting him to want to do something in the science field. He first thought of being a surgeon in his early thoughts.
Nguyen:”So I was in and out of, like I was in hospitals a lot. So human anatomy and physiology is, like, kind of my jam.”
When he completed his college, he started teaching at universities and worked in the medical field, while also being a fulltime medical student. He loved to work in hospitals and help people.But he felt that teaching college students was not his thing so he tried a different path of wanting to teach high school students. He felt that students who are in college are very self motivated and they didn't connect with him like how high school students did.
When he was looking into this job he wanted to teach people that weren't interested in the subject. His goal was to change students' minds about class.
Nguyen: “College students are very, like, self-motivated. They're there because they wanna be. And so the main difference is that a lot of my students, especially my freshmen they're not, like and I get it. They're not, like, interested or they don't feel the importance of it. But it's super rewarding, like, when kids come back and they tell you they really like stuff like that.”
He loves that he worked better with high school students because it felt rewarding knowing he can spark interest. He also liked how he could change a student's view and motivate them to do something better and open new paths in life they thought they wouldn't like.
Now Nguyen wants his students to know it's okay to try new things and different paths. He hopes his story shows that it's never too late to change and start over. School was hard for him but when he found what he loves he's now helping students do the same.
Nguyen: “I would say you gotta do it because you like it, dude.Like, it's a very thankless job sometimes.And the hours are a lot more than just your nine to five.But it's super rewarding, like, when kids come back and they tell you they really like stuff like that.”
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