Mr. Pavon teaches Algebra 1 at Miami High.

  Mr. Pavon has been teaching math for almost 4 years at Miami High, and next year he might start teaching a science class. 

Teaching Career 

   Mr. Pavon says that his strengths as a teacher are his patience and being able to match the students’ energy, but his weakness is not being able to slow down. 

  His teaching philosophy is “I will give it my all. I will meet the kid if he or she wants to go to the ends of the Earth to do amazing in this class, but at the end of the day if the kid doesn’t put in the work. I’m not going to either. I’m not going to lose sleep over someone who doesn’t care.” 

   He became a teacher because he wanted a job where he could talk to people, and teaching also allowed him to have time during the day, because the thing he treasures the most is “time” and teaching lets him have that. 

Personal Life 

   Music is one of his passions. “I don’t know if I have a specific reason, but I’m obsessed with listening to music. My family calls me Headphones because I always have them on. Even when I’m walking around the school they are on, and teachers and students get upset with me that I don’t hear them, but I just love listening to music”. 

  More than anything, Mr. Pavon says that he values time. “I feel like time is something fleeting, like I don’t have to be rich. I just want to enjoy myself, and I think teaching meets that.” 

High School Years 

     Mr. Pavon attended Law Enforcement Officers Memorial High School, which he grew really attached to and enjoyed a lot when in his teenage years. At that time, they didn’t have anything like sports, music, or many electives and the ones they had were only AP classes, but in middle school, he was a band kid.  

   So, what he did to get around was play with the band kids from Miami Jackson, which was his home school. That was because he wanted to do the regular high school thing. Mr. Pavon at that time was the type of person that participated in everything: class officer, officer in National Honor Society, volunteer at United Way, Science National Honor Society member. 

    At the same time, it was stressful because he always tried really hard to do well in high school. One of the people that helped him a lot in life, especially in high school, was his history teacher. She was always pushing him to use his brain to be out there and to do things with his life.  Nevertheless, Mr. Pavon says if he had a chance to start high school all over again, he would have gone to a bigger school. 

    His advice for students to improve their experience in high school is: “Join a club, do a sport or whatever it is. I don’t want to sound like the older generation, but it’s like high school is that time to be alive so you should enjoy it while you are here because once you are an adult, there are new stresses in life.”  

College years 

    During college, Mr. Pavon developed time management skills, because he couldn’t be as laid back as he was in high school when he was one of the smartest kids, so he didn’t have to study nor manage time, but when he got to UF (University of Florida), he noticed that everyone was “the smart kid” so he had to start studying and keep up with the others. After UF, where he did his bachelor’s in biology, he went to FIU (Florida International University) to do his bachelor’s in chemistry. He does plan to go back to college to get a master’s degree in something related to science. 

    In college the things that Mr. Pavon liked to do were hiking, rivers, exploring nature, going out with friends, etc. But out of all the things he did in college, his favorite thing was participating in the school’s relay for life on his senior year, because that was when his older brother had passed away from cancer, so he wanted to help with raising money for cancer research.