When I entered Dr. Smbat Avetyan’s classroom, I thought at first that he was a biology teacher, as his room was filled with plastic cadavers, jarred animals, medical diagrams and other things of that nature.
But I was mistaken. Dr. Avetyan is a new physics teacher at Glendale High School, and his coursework has nothing at all to do with the biomedical sciences. The classroom decor is a product of another factor: the recency of his appointment. At the time of this interview, Dr. Avetyan had only been at GHS for “one or two weeks”, and he had not yet had the time to redecorate.
Dr. Avetyan was born in Armenia, but he grew up here in LA County. He immigrated in 1987, just barely dodging a deadly earthquake in the country of his birth, and he ended up graduating from Pasadena High School. He briefly attended Cal State LA, before transferring to UC Santa Barbara, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in Physics.
Dr. Avetyan also earned a master’s degree in Manufacturing Systems Engineering & Management at Cal State Northridge. He eventually finished his doctorate at Cal State LA, through a joint program, and in addition to his prior degrees, he earned a master’s in Physics and doctorates in Educational Leadership and Physics Education Research.
While a college student, Dr. Avetyan admits that he had some early struggles, and he made “all the mistakes you can make as a student.” But he learned greatly from his failures and turned himself around. He says that his greatest strength, as a teacher, is his ability to identify the problems that students are having and then tackle those issues in a clear-cut, sensible way.
Dr. Avetyan developed those skills, he says, through the aforementioned challenges he personally faced as a pupil, and his experiences allow him to empathize with those currently struggling with their own education. Over the years, Dr. Avetyan has also learned how to manage himself extremely well. According to him, being well-managed is “95% of education.”
Once he gained these skills, Dr. Avetyan was better able to help out his colleagues, and he discovered a love for education, which he says is still one of his greatest passions. He’s been in the field of education for twelve years now, and he has taught at several colleges and still teaches at Cal State LA.
GHS is his first public high school teaching assignment, but Dr. Avetyan has taught at several private high schools beforehand, most notably Rose and Alex Pilibos, an Armenian Christian school. He had a great experience with a class of seniors he taught at Pilibos, astonished by how “genuine and sweet” they were. When the graduation day arrived, it was a deeply emotional event for him, with deep feelings aroused by their parting.
Dr. Avetyan says that, at the university level, you don’t get to “forge personalities,” like you do at a secondary school. He says that you can’t really shape college students long-term, in the way you can with high-schoolers, nor can you forge lasting connections, the way that Dr. Avetyan did with his senior class. That lesson, which he learned firsthand through teaching at Rose and Alex, is one of the main reasons that he’s at GHS today.
Now that he’s started teaching at GHS, Dr. Avetyan’s first impressions of our campus are very positive. He says that some of his colleagues, including teachers who had taught here before, were “scaring him a little bit”, as they built up the difficulties they had teaching at a public high school. But he has been pleasantly surprised by his experiences here so far.
Dr. Avetyan has found our student body to be “very genuine” and “very sweet,” saying that he’s been “very impressed at how well-mannered the students are.” He recalls a specific example, from the very day that I interviewed him, when he had a new Russian transfer student who didn’t speak English. Another student, who was fluent in Russian, helped her out, and they quickly became close friends. Dr. Avetyan says that his “greatest hope” is that this friendship will continue indefinitely.
Dr. Avetyan does, of course, have hobbies outside of school, chief among them the soccer game FIFA 24. He loves watching the sport, as well as attending “events that include soccer.” He admits that FIFA has become “pretty much an addiction” for him. He challenges any student to try and beat him at the game, fully confident that he will win.
As a last comment, Dr. Avetyan advises GHS students to try to aim higher than attending a community college, hoping that everyone will apply instead at a California State University or a University of California. Despite the lower costs of community college, he still advises against it, as “it’s very easy to get lost in the weeds.”
Dr. Avetyan feels that students often don’t make it through community college. In that environment they may easily get distracted, and it “all ends there”. Meanwhile, with higher-level universities, you’re far more likely to actually complete your degree, as the college system’s “only goal is to get you in and out of there in four years”; that is, it’s fully dedicated to ensuring you complete your education, to a far higher degree than at community colleges.
Dr. Avetyan says that he has “a lot of influence at the university, CSU, and college level”, and that he’s glad to help his students get into college any way that he can, whether that be writing a letter of recommendation or getting them involved in some project. For any of his students reading this, be sure to keep that in mind; he’s “more than happy to help”.
