Born and raised in Taipei, Sydney Hou finds a new life in the Brookline High School community. She has just recently finished graduate school at Tufts University, where she pursued her dreams of becoming a history teacher. Outside of teaching tenth grade history, Hou enjoys baking, cooking, dancing, and going to the beach.

What are some of your hobbies?

I really like to bake, I like to cook, and I love going to the beach, I did that over the summer. I really like to dance, but since grad school I haven’t gone that much, I’m really busy. It’s harder and harder to go dance because it’s time consuming, but for baking for me is a stress reliever so when I’m stressed, when I’m sad, or upset, I usually just bake. And I live in a house with sixth of my college friends so I really enjoy baking and then seeing them eat that and feeling happy and the process also justs kinda calms me down keeps me grounded. I’ve done that since college, like baking for my housemates, and stuff so it’s always just some quiet time for myself and to produce something that’s really yummy and beautiful for my friends. It’s really nice. I started baking actually when I was little. You know those like pre-made cookies you just cut up? I started doing that with my mom when I was really little and then she bought me a baking cookbook and then we started making easy things from the book together and I guess I just kept doing that myself so yeah that’s kinda one thing that’s really important to me.

What is your best memory of high school?

My best memory of hs? Huh that’s hard, I would say that it’s not one particular memory but i did dance all four years and every year we put on a big production. And it is just so special because its all four grades of people and it kept getting bigger and bigger by the time I was a senior. I think we had like a 120 people or something in the production. And that’s always super fun for me because that’s really different from doing a school team. School team is a lot more serious and we have to do a lot more work, but dance production is always so fun and all my friends come out to support when we do performances. I originally didn’t want to do it, it was my sister who told me to audition, and I had a great time all my best friends are from my dance classes and rehearsals and whatnot so i feel like dance production is one of my best memories.

What led you to become a history teacher?

I think that I’ve always kinda wanted to be a teacher. When I was little I would play grading games by myself, but it wasn’t until high school where I had a really, really good history teacher and he really helped me think about history not as memorization, but as understanding, processing, and critical thinking. So it was him who kind of helped me figure out I wanted to do history and wanted to teach history.

What is some advice for your high school self?

Huh, I think that I would say enjoy high school more and don’t worry too much about grades. And I know that sounds cliche and that every teacher says that but I think I went to a really competitive school where everyone is like, “oh if I get an A- it’s the worst thing that can happen”. I already wasn’t super hardcore to get straight As, but I think there’s a lot of pressure to perform. I still got into a great university and I was fine so I think that it would’ve been really fun if I had enjoyed more of my extracurriculars or explored different clubs and things like that.

How are you liking BHS so far?

I like it a lot. It’s kind of crazy because the schedule is very different from what I’m used to growing up and at the school I student taught at last year, so I’m trying to get used to pacing, classes, and getting to places, but I like it a lot, everyone is really friendly. I also really wanted to serve Asian American students. I think that any sort of representation of minority students is good. I think it’s rare to find a school with such a large Asian American population also in addition to everyone else.