Davis gravitates to physics

A few feet away from physics teacher Kirk Davis’ desk hangs a fist-sized toy pig held by a strand of thread from the ceiling panels. The flying pig, as students have affectionately dubbed it, not only teaches a lesson on tension and centripetal force, but also serves as an inspiration to students that the impossible is within reach.

What might not be so obvious, though, is Davis’ resemblance to the flying pig. He, too, has done the extraordinary in his career by making the dramatic shift from a chemical engineer to a high school physics teacher.

“When I was 22, [I would’ve said] no way [to teaching],” Davis said. “I didn’t dream of being a teacher, but now I am.” 

Davis, who graduated from Stanford with a degree in chemical engineering, worked for an engineering consulting company called ACUREX for a few years designing an ethanol-from-corn plant and setting pollution limits until he “tired of looking up steam-table numbers.” Deciding he “wanted a bigger perspective,” he went to Northwestern University to study business. In his summers, he found himself by chance working in health care.

After Northwestern, he spent the next 25 years in Illinois and California working for various companies like health care consulting firms Abbott Laboratories and Booz Allen Hamilton. His projects included designing equipment for emphysema treatment and making an implantable hearing device.  

“[In business], you wake up in the morning and don’t know what the challenge is going to be,” Davis said. “In health care, you’re motivated by profit, but you also feel like you’re helping people.”

Gradually, Davis found himself drawn to another profession: teaching. As his three now-adult children went through high school at Saratoga High, Castilleja and Harker, all of them ran into “really bad” math or science teachers. He then realized there was a need for more teachers who could communicate effectively. 

“I felt I could do it,” he said. “It’s one of those things where if you have a gift for something, then you should find a way to do it.”

However, he didn’t have an affinity  for physics in school and only took the basic curriculum for his engineering program. At the time, then in his 30s, Davis still wasn’t considering teaching as a career, but after many years working in business, memories of his English teacher helped push him into the profession. 

“We’d read ‘Brothers Karamazov’ [by Fyodor Dostoyevsky], and Russian novels are so complicated because every character has eight names, [but my English teacher] was able to help keep us on track,” he said. 

As a result, he decided to work as a substitute teacher at Redwood Middle School, but found the difference between working with venture  capitalists in business politics and teaching a room full of 30 middle school students too great. 

“I’d kill kids; they were too young,” he admitted.

In 2007, one of the Saratoga High assistant principals at the time offered Davis a job teaching physics and introduction to business because he knew Davis was interested in a full-time job. Davis attended a local community college for a few years to receive his teaching credential and jumped right in.

His first year was a tough one. He learned the material from physics teacher Jenny Garcia and taught it a few days later, but Davis loved the experience. This was an opportunity for him to finally explore what proved to be a dormant passion for physics.

“[There’s a] beauty to physics … it explains the universe,” Davis said. “Physics is fundamental to everything.”

In addition, physics is naturally a hands-on subject, which allowed Davis to show students concepts through demonstrations and experiments.

“[With physics], you can go out and experience and feel,” Davis said. “I want [my students] to really think about problems.”

Davis also said one of the biggest payoffs for him as a teacher is helping students realize their potential.

“For some kids who think they’re not good at science, it’s fun to make them see ‘Oh, I can do this’,” he said. “[Physics] is a basic understanding of how things work, not an esoteric [topic]. Hopefully, I’ll inspire someone to think: ‘Oh, I can get this stuff, I can understand it, I can like it even.” 

Looking to the future, Davis plans to continue teaching for many more years.

“Teaching is [very] worthwhile,” he said. “It’s not as good as curing AIDS or something, but I feel teachers are needed in society. If it’s worth doing, do it right.”