Daniel Gardeazabal

Principal and Science Teacher

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I’ve been passionate about science and math for as long as I can remember; my family used to joke that I would become a mathematician before I even knew what the word meant. I enjoyed both subjects so much that I couldn’t decide which field to pursue in college. So, after completing high school in northern Virginia, I decided, “Why not both?” I earned dual bachelor’s degrees in physics and math from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As the first member of my family to graduate from college, each day exposed me to a world of academia that I hadn’t known existed. I became enamored not just with science and math, but with all subjects and the process of learning itself.

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While I never had tutors as a child, in college I eagerly signed up to become one after meeting others as passionate about education as I was. During those four years, I primarily taught physics and math, occasionally assisting with chemistry or SAT preparation. I then worked in physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but later enrolled in physics graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. In the PhD program, I honed my teaching skills while working with hundreds of students across a dozen classes. Teaching everything from introductory courses for freshmen to advanced courses for seniors, I gained a lot of insight into how students think differently from one another. This helped me improve as an educator and earned me an award as an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor.

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As education became one of the most fulfilling parts of my career, I expanded my teaching to include students in high school and middle school. My primary goals during teaching include fostering intuition and nurturing curiosity. I pay attention to my students' unique needs to ensure I can teach them at the highest quality. While I find it immensely rewarding to witness a student’s “light bulb” moment when they grasp a challenging topic, nothing pleases me more than listening to a student become intrinsically excited about a subject over time.

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Beyond education, I enjoy learning about different periods of history and have recently taken up writing as a hobby. I tend to immerse myself fully in new nerdy activities like chess, reading fiction, or learning music.