In his 18-year career, teacher PJ Yim has taught nearly every math class, including Algebra 1 and 2, Geometry, Precalculus Honors, Calculus BC and AP Statistics. During this time, he has gained a reputation for being a talented and dedicated teacher. But this skill has been hard won.
Early in his career, Yim taught math at Leland High School in San Jose, where he made one of his most embarrassing mistakes. As part of his teaching repertoire, Yim often sends students outside if they are being particularly disruptive during class for a few minutes as a kind of “timeout.”
“I try not to send students to the office whenever possible, so I will send them out of class and then I’ll step out and talk to them when there’s a break in the lesson,” Yim said.
During one of his classes at Leland, Yim made the decision to send a student outside on a cold, rainy day for being loud. He reasoned that the student would be fine under the eave. His student probably would have been, in fact, just fine for a few minutes, but Yim got so engrossed in teaching the lesson that forgot to call him back inside.
“I think I enjoyed the quiet so much that I completely forgot about him,” Yim said.
But when the bell rang at the end of class, the student walked in shivering and wet, and all Yim could do was apologize by trying to make it clear that having him stand outside for the rest of class was unintentional.
“I didn’t mean to do that at all, but he and I were pretty cool about it afterwards, so it was OK,” Yim said. “But he was standing outside for half an hour, and I felt really bad.”
Now, Yim still does send kids outside occasionally, but tells the class to remind him to call students back in.
Another mistake Yim made was on his first day of teaching at Saratoga High. Before the beginning of the school year, he had heard about how academically competitive Saratoga High was and reasoned that the students would be able to absorb more challenging material immediately. But there was one problem — it was the first day of school and none of the students expected a lesson.
As soon as class began, Yim started teaching the Algebra 2 Honors material before even introducing himself. After students filled their seats, he simply said “Good morning class,” took attendance and started teaching.
Needless to say, some of his students didn’t even have their materials ready, clearly caught off-guard by Yim’s lightning fast dive into the material. The entire class was expecting their year with Yim to start with a class description and a syllabus, but Yim did not give either of those.
After that day, Yim realized that he should have done things differently.
“I should have started off a little slower, introduced myself and asked how the kids were doing,” Yim said.
But after these experiences, Yim has tried his best to avoid a repeat of similar events as he continues his teaching career.
“I’ve tried to not make any more mistakes like these,” he said. “I think I’m doing pretty well so far.”
