Now in his second year at LWHS, Jeff Treviño brings twenty years of teaching experience to our campus. His perspective on technology—one that views engineering as a vehicle for joy and beauty—offers a glimpse into his approach in the classroom.

Hear more from Dr. Treviño in today's teacher spotlight!

Q: What is a project you are particularly proud of?

I’m proud of the students in my Code for Sound class. It’s the first year this class has existed, and there’s some bravery there to sign up for a class and not know what’s going to happen. They’re diving headfirst into complicated topics that a high school student normally does not encounter, things like digital signal processing, data structures, and algorithms, in tandem with digital music production, in a way that I’ve usually only seen with college level students. 

Q: What made you want to suggest this course and give it a try here?

It's important not to bore students. So if students have past coding experience, they should not be forced to take a class that presumes they're starting from scratch. We wanted to have at least two levels within Tech Arts, and we have that now. So we have several courses that students with no past coding experience can take, and we can start from the beginning. And then in this class, Code for Sound, we assume that everyone has had at least one term of programming, and we talk about more advanced topics. We get to go deeper.

Q: Why did you become a teacher?

My mother was a special education teacher, and I feel like being a teacher was a big part of how she went about being a parent. With that in mind, I don’t think I really chose at any point to be a teacher—it was just part of our family environment. Teaching is how you show love to the people around you; you teach them how to do things. It’s something you can give other people to show them that you care about them. 

Q: What motivates you in the classroom?

There are a few things. One is the way technology emerges and changes at such a fast pace, and thinking about how our classroom experiences do or don’t integrate all the new stuff we see on a regular basis. Another thing that is truly motivating in this department is the prospect of creating something that will lead to joy or beauty. 

And then also, I think, something that I find really motivating is being able to work on a team. Here, the whole department is a team. We’re sharing resources, and we have projects that cross shops, like our "glowing object" project, which rotates through the electronics shop, the wood shop, and the metal shop. You have to think about how what you’re doing fits in with everything else. And it feels really supportive to be part of a team.

Q: You mentioned a connection between technology, joy, and beauty. Can you say more about that?

Arthur C. Clark famously said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." For me, it goes back to my childhood. My grandfather had a jukebox repair company, and I grew up around old orchestrions—automatic, pneumatically powered xylophones. The message was always that the purpose of complex mechanical technologies was just to create music.

When we teach design thinking, we teach that it begins with empathy toward the user. But on top of that, you’re implicitly imagining a beautiful experience for someone to have with this object. That’s what I love about design: beyond empathy for the user, it’s about imagining a beautiful experience someone else is having.