Mr. Evan Pasion, who graduated from Saint Francis in 2003, has been an educator at Saint Francis for sixteen years. As the head of the math department, he primarily teaches AP Calculus AB, but he also currently teaches Economics and AP Macroeconomics and has previously taught Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Precalculus, Precalculus Honors, and Intro to Computer Programming.
The Lancer: What was your experience like as a student in high school and university in terms of your academics, athletics, etc.?
Mr. Evan Pasion: Well, I went here, so I’m an alum of the school. I picked up things pretty quickly, so I wasn’t one of the people who was super stressed out—I was able to navigate pretty well. I was able to take some really challenging classes here and had a good experience with those. I really liked math and science a lot when I was in high school, and so I gravitated towards that. And then when I went to college, I took the next step and explored a little bit—my freshman year, I took some math classes, I took some engineering classes, and I took economics classes, and I really liked the application of some of the math concepts in economics, so I ended up gravitating towards that. I got my degree in economics, and I did what they call “math track economics”—economics can be a social science, so it’s like a little bit of that balance of humanities and science, but I gravitated towards the math-ier side, so it was like integrating calculus into it. I did my thesis on modeling with data to answer economic questions. I also ended up taking a class my freshman year on Roman history, and it was super interesting, and a lot of it was just because the professor was really engaging and really interesting, so I took like three other Roman history classes. I didn’t get a major or minor in it or anything, but I took a bunch of those whenever I had elective classes, so there were some classes like that—that I really enjoyed that weren’t part of the structured major. But I’ve always been interested in problem-solving and modeling and applying mathematical things, so that’s what led me from high school on.
TL: As a Saint Francis student, did you already know that you wanted to pursue a career in teaching? If not, how did you realize this was what you wanted to do?
EP: No, I didn’t. I got into teaching through coaching—I initially was doing finance stuff for a tech company. They called it strategic marketing—it’s kind of like trying to predict market trends, so it’s that same kind of mold that I talked about, where you’re using data to try to model something and make a prediction. I liked that, but the situation—the company I was working for—wasn’t the right scenario, so I left there, and while I was trying to look for other similar jobs, I started coaching. I was coaching at a small high school, and they wanted people to sub and moderate during lunch, so I picked up some extra stuff there. At the same time, I was coaching Mr. Volta’s daughter for club volleyball, and we were at a tournament, and he was asking about how I was doing since high school, and I told him, “I’m looking for these jobs, and right now I’m coaching, and I’m subbing at this other high school,” and he said, “Well, we have an opening at Saint Francis—if you’re interested, you should come look at it,” so I decided to try it out and interview. I’d never really taught in a full setting before, and so I kind of jumped into it. I enjoyed it, so I kept doing it, and I haven’t left.
TL: What makes Saint Francis special to you as an educator, and how do you think it reflects in students’ experiences?
EP: Well, I think that for me, the fact that I went here makes it special because it’s like an additional level of shared connection with the students. When you meet alums of the school, even if you didn’t go at the same time or you didn’t know each other in high school, you kind of have this shared connection. So with the students now, whether I have you in class or not, I know that if you come back in ten years for reunion, even if I’m not teaching here anymore, we have that shared experience of being alums of the school, so you kind of get that extra layer. The other thing, now that I’ve been here for a while, it kind of feels like (with us in the math department) once you’ve been here for a while, you feel like you’ve added your pieces to it—you’ve added your stamp to it. When you’re a new teacher, you’re just trying to follow along and figure it out, and once you’ve been here for a while, then it’s like, “Okay, I’ve added this thing to it, or I’ve brought this to the department and therefore brought this to students,” and so I think once you start to put your stamp on it, it becomes a little more special, you know? Like, this is something I’m personally providing that comes from me to the students, and you can build that connection in that way too.
TL: What is the most rewarding and most taxing part of your job?
EP: Grading can be taxing, but that’s just kind of part of it—you know that, and you can plan it in. I’d say the most taxing thing is when you have a lesson or a class period when you’re not getting energy back from the class. It gets really hard, it gets really taxing, when you’re trying to get some back-and-forth, and it feels like you’re just talking at people. I think that’s what was really hard on Zoom, where it felt like I might as well create a web video and post it because there’s no interaction—it’s a monologue, not a dialogue. I think that’s when it becomes tough. The rewarding side is the opposite—the flipside—of that: when you set something up, and it kind of takes off, and all of a sudden, you’re speaking a lot less than the students. That’s when it’s kind of fun, because you’re seeing those connections get made, the students are talking to each other and explaining to each other, and things start clicking, and then they go back and realize, “Oh, now I get that,” “Oh, that’s what that thing was,” “Oh, that’s why we write it that way.” When those connections happen, it’s really fun because you’re actually seeing the learning happen. It’s nice when students learn it—sometimes they learn it at home, sometimes they learn it, and you don’t see that process happening, but when you have a class and that stuff’s happening in real time, it’s super cool to see that.
TL: Could you explain your teaching philosophy and how you exemplify it in your teaching?
EP: I’d say my philosophy has changed over the years. When I first started, when I was a new teacher, I thought that good teaching was finding the right combination of words that would take the knowledge from me and transfer it into the student’s head, and I just needed to find what’s the right way to explain it or say it or draw it that’s going to transfer that knowledge over. But I think what I’ve realized and what my philosophy has shifted to is that there is no perfect combination of words—that the teacher’s job is to have the students find a way to connect what’s in front of them to what they already know. And so, for me, what I try to make that look like in my teaching is time for students to think and conceptualize and be a little bit thrown into the deep end rather than having every single little step given to them so that they start to figure out what’s going to make sense in their way rather than memorizing some list of stuff. So I think if you were to sit into one of my classes, you wouldn’t see a ton of front-loading of, “Here’s the thing we’re doing, here’s all the steps, here’s what you memorize, let me do three examples with you, and you just follow along with what I do”—kind of recipe-following. Hopefully, there’ll be more conceptual ideas, hopefully there’ll be more time where students are trying some things out and making mistakes, so they can figure out how it fits into their own knowledge and understanding.
TL: Regardless of whether or not students want to pursue a future in math, why do you think math classes are valuable?
EP: I think what people think of as math is probably narrower than what it really is. I think people think of math like it has to be with numbers, and I have to be computing things, and I have to get a right answer. A lot of people say that they don’t like math because it’s not creative, but I think when you get into math and when you get further along in it so that you can see the bigger picture, what you realize is that it’s less about the fact that there’s numbers and equations and symbols, and it’s more a way of thinking and a way of problem solving and organizing your thoughts, and I think those are things that we all do every day, constantly. If you’re in a geometry class, you’re probably not going to use the components of writing a triangle proof in your everyday life. Unless you go off to become a geometry teacher, you’re probably not going to use Angle-Side-Angle a ton in your daily life. But the logic and the critical thinking that’s needed to construct a proof, you might use every day—every time you write an email, if you give a presentation, if you’re a lawyer arguing a case, that structure and that kind of thinking is going to be super important. So I think once people broaden their definition of math, it becomes really obvious how it’s going to benefit them in a number of different ways.
TL: What do you like to do outside of the classroom?
EP: I like to play basketball—I do that recreationally. There’s a lot of stuff I like to do, but I don’t have time to do because I have little kids at home, so I do a lot of stuff with them. We like to play games at home—I’m a big game-player. For me, my big hobby—I don’t spend a ton of time with it, but I try to do the New York Times crossword every day, and then other word puzzles and stuff I like solving.
TL: If you could teach a subject other than math, what would it be?
EP: I’m teaching econ for the first time this year, so definitely that. If it had to be something I’ve never done, I would say microeconomics because we teach macro, and I like it, but the stuff I really did a lot with in college was micro and another subject called econometrics, so I’d love to see one of those two classes in the future.
TL: Have you taught or been taught by any Saint Francis teachers, and if so, who?
EP: I taught Ms. Deale, and I think I just moderated Mr. Lucas—I don’t know if I actually had him in class. Maybe in the summer. I coached Ms. Wahler. And I taught Ms. Ogren. Teachers, I had Mr. O’Donnell for math, I had Mr. Ikezi, I had Mr. Carroll, Mr. Kemp, Mr. Smith, a bunch—I’ll probably forget some. Ms. Franco, Sr. Jodi, Mr. Quinn, Mr. Meulman I had for freshman PE—so a bunch more.
TL: Do you think there’s more doors or wheels in the world?
EP: Oh god. I’ve heard a version of this because it’s like, well a building has a bunch of doors, but a car has four doors, but then all of these chairs have wheels, and what do you consider a door or a wheel? I’d go wheels, though, because I think there’s more interpretations of a wheel than there are of a door.
TL: What’s something you’ve been wanting to learn how to do but haven’t had the time for?
EP: When I first started teaching here, I did an Intro to Programming class, and I really only knew the intro stuff, so I wish I had a little more programming knowledge and could go a little deeper down that computer science, maybe even more towards the data science side. I wish I had a little more time to dig into that, maybe take some classes on that, and just do it for my own interest and learning rather than to prepare for some class or something.
TL: Do you have a favorite food?
EP: We do a lot of icebreakers in class that revolve around food, so I have to think about it. I’d say my favorite food… as soon as you guys leave, I’ll think of something I like even better, but I’ll say my favorite food is barbecue. I like barbecue, and I like going to barbecue restaurants.
TL: Do you have a barbecue restaurant recommendation nearby?
EP: Close to me, there’s a place called The Smoking Pig in San Jose that’s really good.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
