Vincent Egyed is a first-year Advanced Placement science teacher at Brewer High School who previously worked as a science teacher at Brewer Middle School. Egyed moved into the high school with many of his old students, which has caused quite a stir of positivity among his old students.
“Seeing how excited some of them are to see me is heartwarming, to say the least,” Egyed said. “When it comes to the AP course, relearning and applying the language of physics correctly has been a challenge. I don’t want to use the wrong words and potentially confuse my students or contradict myself.”
AP classes are a challenging route to take for a student. For a teacher, though, AP classes could even be seen by some as the ultimate challenge. To start teaching one as a high school teacher is one thing, but starting as a middle school teacher is different.
“This is my fifth year teaching in WSISD, and the transition itself is still in progress,” Egyed said. “But it has been pretty smooth so far. My biggest challenge is having to reteach myself some of the physics content.”
Though it may not be sunshine and rainbows, challenges are made to be overcome, and there’s no one better to take on that challenge. He didn’t just become someone ready to teach an AP class overnight, though, he’s had his years at the middle school as a stepping stone.
“I worked in WSISD for four years before moving up, so a lot of the programs were already familiar to me. So I’m not as overwhelmed as I would be if it were my first year in the district” Egyed said. “Teaching at Brewer Middle School was instrumental in making me the teacher I am today. I still have a long way to go, but BMS was a great stepping stone.”
Not everyone would want to teach such a high-level science course nor has a science brain. Egyed, on the other hand, found his passion, and pursuing a career based on your passions is a smart move.
“The difficulty of the scientific content has been my favorite part of the course,” Egyed said. “I know that sounds funny, but I like the challenge of teaching a complicated topic. I want to learn as much as I can about the course, the content, and the AP test. Secondly, I want to organize all of the various activities that I have available and figure out what unit or units they can apply to.”
Sometimes, life takes you down unexpected paths. Very few times do people decide what they wanna do and stick with it for their entire lives. On one hand, you may not always get exactly what you want; On the other hand, like in Egyed’s case, opportunities may arise that you never would have expected, and sometimes it’s better to dive straight in.
“The opportunity presented itself and I jumped head first at the opportunity even though I had never taught physics or taught at a high school,” Egyed said. “My original goal was to just gain more experience in the classroom but in a different district from where I started. I hoped that I could parlay my experience gained at a middle school into being a teacher at a high school, and it just so happened to work out. Lucky me.”
While we all know and love Egyed for his teachings within our school lives, he also happens to be a very interesting person outside of school with a variety of fascinating and compelling hobbies.
“I was in two bands from 2009 and 2014, I played lead guitar mostly, but I was the one singing some of our songs,” Egyed said. “I was a skydiver for seven years and coached for three of them. Now, I have a daughter who is almost three, so she tends to occupy a lot of my time during the daylight hours.”
Though a lot has been said about teaching and transitioning into teaching AP physics, as a school with many former students of Egyed many people are considering taking AP or on-level physics to once again have him as a teacher. Though it may be a great path for you, that isn’t the case for everyone.
“Your math skills will be put to the test. I’ll try and ease my students into the course, but there is a lot of math and interpreting data/graphs in the course,” Egyed said. “Someone once told me that physics is just complicated math with toys. It may be difficult, but I'm going to raise my expectations of all of my students as the year progresses.”
It’s safe to say that anyone who’s had Egyed is excited to have him back in school with us as we’ve moved up in our educational journey. For some of us, middle school seems like it happened forever ago, seniors who had Egyed haven’t seen him since COVID-19 was our biggest concern. Despite the time passed, and how much our world has changed since then, we’re all happy to learn something new from Egyed.
“Seeing how all the students have grown up and matured has been pretty cool,” Egyed said. “My first year in WSISD was 2020-2021, so for all of my former students who are seniors this year, all I saw was their eyes and forehead because we were all wearing masks. On top of that, most are hard to recognize because they’ve changed so much in the two to four years since I’ve seen them.”
With Egyed’s popularity and success in his new courses, as well as his dedication and ambition, it’s clear that he’s found his new home in Brewer High School. Though his middle school days may be over, he continues to inspire and uplift the same students that he did years ago and form connections with many students who missed out the first time around.
