My name is Ms Wu (she/her) and I currently teach Chemistry and Music at VAAS. :)
I grew up splitting my time between the East San Gabriel Valley area and Taipei, Taiwan. For college, I attended the University of Southern California (USC), earning a B.S. in Chemical Biology with minors in Musical Studies (Cello) and Psychology. Through the LAUSD Teacher Preparation Residency Program, I went on to obtain my Master's in Teaching for Secondary Science, as well as a Gifted Education Certificate and Special Education credential at USC Rossier. Fight on!
This is my first year teaching at VAAS, and I have really been enjoying getting to know everybody - it's a great place. I look forward to learning with all of you!
Fun Facts about Ms Wu:
- I have a gashapon (gacha) machine in my classroom!
- I have a twin sister and a scrungly dog.
- I speak Mandarin Chinese and a bit of Taiwanese, Japanese, and Spanish.
- I played competitive Pokémon for ~3 years.
- I played five sports in middle/high school.
- I am ALWAYS down to talk about neurodivergence!
- My favorite element is Bismuth.
- I am almost exactly 50/50 on every element of the MBTI test except for J/P.
- I have worked with Science Olympiad at the local, state, and national levels for three years.
- Although I minored in solo music performance, I love writing, arranging, and producing music for small ensembles. I also love music theory!
- Besides teaching, other career paths I considered were psychiatry, forensic science, baking, law, and admissions counseling.
- My favorite type of chemistry is organic chemistry - it gets a bad rep, but it's actually really fun! My pipe dream is to bring an introductory OChem course to high school science students. :)