Well known among students and faculty for his enthusiasm and bright personality for the last 18 years, Steve Kaback will conclude his time at the Upper School at the end of this year.
Kaback explains his journey to physics, saying, “I was at first interested in humanities questions, I was interested in cause and effect. I wanted to understand the era that I was in high school. Why were we seeing the political, economic, and social stories that I was experiencing?” Kaback was drawn to physics through his desire to understand the world, stating, “I realized in college that the human story wasn’t sufficient enough for me to really understand what was going on. I wanted to understand the human species and know how everything came about, what the physical story was. Guess what had the answer to that? Physics.”
Reflecting on his journey, Kaback notes, “It was very much a philosophical pathway into the discipline…to me it’s really about these rules that mother nature has laid out and using those rules to kind of extrapolate to understand the world that we’re occupying and how that influences human beings too.”
Kaback began teaching “by accident.” While studying physics research, he became connected with a professor who worked in physics as well as education. Kaback mentions, “It was not intentional. It was that curvy path that your life takes and the people that you meet and when you find someone who’s doing something that’s interesting and compelling to you, then sometimes you get caught up in that…All of the sudden I was a teacher.” The professor he worked with began teaching at Blake, and then hired Kaback.
Kaback has taught Pre-calculus, Astronomy, Regular and Honors Physics, AP Physics 1, and AP Physics C. He believes that the best part of teaching is the students, stating, “It’s so great to spend my day working with really bright, interested, motivated, curious about the world young bodies. I think that is forever inspirational…It’s just great to see people get excited to discover this stuff. It helps me discover new stuff.”
Jeff Trinh, physics teacher and good friend of Kaback, notes, “He contributes [to the community] in so many ways. He’s got an energy about him and a gravity about him. People just love going to him and getting help and chatting…He’s always around. He’s got passion, he cares.”
After leaving the Upper School, Kaback will be working as a curriculum writer at Honeywell, a company that creates cutting edge technology. He will continue to teach, working with physicists to help engineers and production managers bring products to the public.
