A new and exciting Physics teacher is here at Sequoyah. Kevin Delin joined the community just two months ago, but he’s already an irreplaceable part of Sequoyah’s high school. He grew up in New England and went to school in central Connecticut. After earning four degrees at MIT and writing an internationally-recognized textbook on superconductivity, he made his way to LA. In addition to teaching at MIT, he has also worked with the government, including the Department of Defense and the EPA, on environmental protection. He’s also a professional writer, with a few plays under his belt, in addition to an online archive of his published essays that you should definitely check out.
Delin found his way to Sequoyah when the school was looking for a new physics teacher. He took this job because “Sequoyah is a really interesting school, where there’s a lot of emphasis, not just on the individual’s development, but the idea of how that individual … might be able to impact society.” He also mentioned that “The idea of taking knowledge that you learned in the classroom, and putting it out to doing something broader in society is … an intriguing one for me.”
Thankfully, Delin has been having a great time at Sequoyah. “I really enjoy the students. And I really enjoy the faculty, and for teaching, that’s about the two most important things,” he said. “I really enjoy how the science department is organized and what they want to do as a group. And the students are very curious. So that’s really good.”
One thing he wants everyone at Sequoyah to know is that he’s not just a scientist. “I think of myself as a person with lots of interests, one of them being science.” He believes that people are more than what they studied, and he followed that up with “I’m as much of a writer and an artist and as I am a scientist. And I don’t see that as a dichotomy, even though a lot of society will want to look at people and say, ‘this is what this person does. And they do this on the side.’ … I don’t mind being identified as a physics teacher. But I don’t think of myself as a physics teacher or even as a physicist.”
If you see him around campus, make sure to say hello. But don’t treat him like an intimidating physics teacher. Remember that he’s “just a person who’s interested in the world around them.”
I never thought about it this way before. Thanks for opening my eyes.