Anna McGarrigle

David Peters, a new addition to the Paly math department, moved from New Jersey to San Francisco. Peters loves teaching math, finding motivation from his students, past and present who have returned to visit and thank him.

The Campanile: What did you want to do when you were a kid? Did you always think you wanted to be a math teacher?

David Peters: When I was a kid I wanted to be a doctor. When I was in high school and applying to college, I always thought, “I am going to be doctor.” One day I figured out, as I was taking the math courses, that people would come to me for help, not because I was necessarily the best math student in my class, but because I was really good at explaining things. It kind of naturally came together. I am good at math, I am good at explaining things, I should be a math teacher.

TC: What’s different here in Palo Alto from New Jersey?

DP: Definitely the weather. This time in New Jersey it is in the teens at night and the 30s in the day, if you’re lucky. But here it never gets down to freezing. Football starts three hours earlier out here so that’s a big reason we moved. [My wife and I] spent most of our lives living in New Jersey and so we could have stayed there. Our parents, for instance, already bought their retirement homes elsewhere. Five years from now, most of the people we knew wouldn’t be in New Jersey anymore. So we weren’t held to it for any reason. We said, “Let’s not live in New Jersey our whole lives.”

TC: How is Paly different from the high school you went to?

DP: My high school, again, wasn’t too different from [Paly]. It was well to do. I would go to high school there or here and I feel like I would come out the same.

TC: What brought you to Palo Alto?

DP: My wife had just finished grad school before she got a job we said, “where do we want to live for the rest of our lives?” It wouldn’t make sense for her to get a job and us to put our roots down where we were so we picked the Bay Area because I thought it was beautiful, and I got a job at Paly, so we moved.

TC: Tell us about your style.

DP: I don’t know, I think I always was a person who wasn’t a terrible dresser. When I met my wife, I could get a second opinion on things from a woman [which] helps. I walked into H&M and bought a bunch of stuff when we moved to California because we couldn’t take our clothes with us. My style is very H&M and I don’t know what that says about me but that is probably where I get most of my clothes.

TC: What are you hobbies outside of teaching?

DP: Back when I had time for hobbies, I played the piano, I played the guitar, I used to sing in a band, and I also like to run. I even own an Xbox and used to play it all the time but now I usually end up hanging out with my wife and we catch up on TV.

TC: Do you remember a teacher who stood out to you in high school?

DP: Yeah, I had a couple. I guess part of the reason I’m a math teacher is because I had good teachers. Part of what really turns a student off of math is if they have a bad teacher. I think one bad teacher in a subject can spoil any love of that subject you have or may have had. All my math teachers happened to be good, which translated into me being good at math, taking it in college and then becoming a math teacher. I had other teachers even in subjects I wasn’t great at, who were particularly good and inspired me. I remember I had a history teacher named Mr. Closan. I was terrible at history, I got C’s, but he was such a great teacher, he’s someone I will never forget.

TC: What drives you to wake up every morning?

DP: I do like my job. But at the end of the day if I had a choice between waking up and watching TV, I would certainly choose the latter. With that said, I think a lot of people end up in jobs that they don’t like. I am fortunate in that I really do like my job and at the end of the day, there isn’t much I’d rather be doing. If I had a billion dollars and never had to work, I probably wouldn’t come to school everyday. Maybe I’d pop in and talk to the kids and stuff. But I think I am pretty lucky because I do love my job.

TC: What do you hope to get out of your job as a teacher?

DP: I think I’m pretty good at my job, so what I get out of it are students who come at the end of the year and thank me. I like when students who return from college for a visit and say “Oh you’re such a good teacher.” I could be the guy who comes to school every day and puts his feet up on the desk and reads the newspaper while the kids do a worksheet, but I’m not that guy. They get the sense that I know what I’m talking about and that I want them to do well.