Jeannie Chu

Ms. Chu is an amazing Physics teacher! Though I have Ms. Chu for both Chemistry and Physics, I want to emphasize her accomplishments as my Physics teacher. First, I must clarify that Physics can be a difficult class, and many of us struggle with it from time to time. However, Ms. Chu gives her students every opportunity to learn by providing us with examples and answer sheets that allow us to find our mistakes and improve. Though, this is something any teacher could do for their students, so what makes Ms. Chu special? Ms. Chu is unique because of her ability to make, what would be, a boring class into something exciting. Now, I must clarify that I'm a bit of a class clown. This doesn't mean that I interrupt the class or disturb the learning process, but it does mean that (when we aren't busy) I'll joke around with Ms. Chu and the other students. For instance, just recently I told my class that I had never gone sledding despite living in the north for all of my life. Jokingly, I asked Ms. Chu if she could take the class sledding so I could finally experience what I'd been missing out on. I said this sarcastically, not expecting Ms. Chu to actually go along with me. However, she took it upon herself to go to the principals and ask them if she could take our class on a field trip to the nearby sledding area. Obviously, we wouldn't be going to just have fun. While there, we're expected to calculate the momentum and impulse of the person sledding. My point here is that Ms. Chu took the opportunity to both give me my first sledding experience while also incorporating such a fun trip into our learning! Not only does Ms. Chu make learning fun by incorporating unconventional methods of applying what we've learned to the real world, she also goes along with us whenever we want to do fun activities. For instance, my class wanted to do Secret Santa right before holiday break began. We asked Ms. Chu if she could participate with us, and she was all for it. Instead of just blowing us off and not letting us have some fun before break, Ms. Chu wanted to be a part of this fun activity. Not only that, but fate would have it that she ended being my Secret Santa! She could've easily gotten me a small gift, but instead she took her generosity to the extreme. We were all tasked to put what we would like from our Secret Santa on the white board so that our Santa wouldn't have a hard time finding a gift. I put white chocolate and some joke answers. Ms. Chu took it upon herself to give me three large bars of various kinds of white chocolate (all delicious) and funny images to go along with my joke answers. Her gift to me felt personalized and that she truly listened and cared for me as a student. On a smaller note, Ms. Chu always has funny stories to tell throughout class, and, though these stories tend to be short, they add a lot of humor to each class and leave each lesson to be unpredictable and exciting! These are just a few examples of Ms. Chu's kindness and humor. I've known Ms. Chu for over a semester now, and I'm glad to also have her for my final months as a senior. I truly cannot think of a better teacher for my physics class or a teacher that I had an easier time connecting and conversing with! I love Ms. Chu and I know many of my classmates feel the same!

Zukaina Al-Mohamed