On course registration day, one class consistently fills before the fall: AP Psychology. At Skyline, it’s not just an elective; it is a phenomenon. Syd Lott has one thing in common with the student body—he loved psychology at Skyline just the same. His Senior year, he took Core Psychology with Chaz Adams, and it was more than an elective credit for him. Lott explains, “It was a life changing experience because I had grown up in a broken family with all sorts of mental problems. We started talking about that stuff in psychology, and I went ‘Holy cow, these are the answers to the problems that my family has.’”
At the time, Lott was already determined to pursue teaching in his adulthood. He said, “I planned on growing up to be a teacher because I was poor, [and] the only people I knew that had money were teachers, so I thought teachers were rich.” He eventually gained a scholarship to attend college and make that dream reality, studying psychology, history, sociology, political science, and economics—all to increase his chances of teaching. “I wanted to be well-rounded and have different things that I could teach so I’d get hired.”
Out of college, Lott’s plan was to go back to Skyline, this time as a teacher. There were no openings, so he spent the years between Alta High School and Davis High School. Lott explained, “I wasn’t impressed by them. I knew I wanted to go back to Skyline.” Eventually, he did. Initially, he taught the U.S. Government course before switching to Core Psychology along with another teacher. After she retired, he took over the program, and there was immediate growth in student interest. “Instantaneously, we went from one section to two sections. The next year we had three… and we have six or seven sections every year now,” he said.
Lott has a specific method to teach the course. His approach is rooted in learning-based statistics and storytelling. With almost every complicated AP term comes an elaborate, personal story. He explained, “There’s research that says one of the top five things that you can do to help kids get more out of a class is to give them the reason why they should learn it.”
He gave the example of math: “[In] Math we just teach math. But if you tell them where math came from and why we got to this point where we have these kinds of equations, it makes more sense. It clicks better. So, when I tell stories, my hope is that kids identify with it, and then it helps them remember the whole idea because there’s context, there’s a picture in their head instead of just a term and definition.” He finds that the personal anecdotes students take away with each term strengthen their learning and memory. Lott said, “Instead of it being a bigger pile of stuff you have to sort through, it’s a beautiful landscape of ideas that all intermingle with the stories that are easily remembered.”
Lott explained the students he enjoys teaching the most: “I like kids who’ve got problems. Yeah. That’s my favorite.” He finds that the common IB, rigorous student is not what he’s looking for. “It’s boring teaching kids who are just like, ‘I’m taking notes because I’ve been trying to take notes, and I’m not going to engage, and I’m just trying to jump through a hoop.’ That’s boring. So, it’s fine if that’s who you are, but I like having the kids who have more color.”
Lott’s appreciation for the science of Psychology is derived from his own personal transformation after discovering it. He believes the class broadened his understanding of the world, explaining, “Instead of me being in my little box thinking my little world I’ve experienced is all of it, there is now a much bigger world that I can try and understand and live in.” For him, it was empowering to understand the conditions of the human experience;“Psychology opened my eyes to the world’s huge breadth of experiences. The [idea] that my experience was on the end of a spectrum and that there were all these other experiences that I could possibly have—that gave me hope.”
