Math teacher Jeanne Yu brings more than just the unit circle to the classroom — she tells stories of her adventures around the world, from film sets to glowing-eyed monkeys. While her career has taken her from India to China, her love for creativity and teaching has remained throughout her life.

“Growing up, I really enjoyed math so I always thought I would major in math or engineering,” Yu said. “But I also really liked being creative.”

Throughout her life, Yu traveled internationally, exploring and teaching simultaneously. And since starting teaching at Los Altos High School in 2012, she has taught Computer Science, Engineering, and various Mathematics classes for more than 12 years. But before all that, Yu studied engineering and film at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

Her initial plan was to become an engineer and work until she could sustain her other passions in the film industry.  Despite being reluctant to attend MIT, the university’s new Media Lab — a research laboratory for innovations — let her grow her passion for cinematography. But a couple of years into college, her mindset changed.

“I thought, ‘Why do I need to be an engineer for ten years?’” Yu said. “‘Why can’t I just go straight to the creative stuff?’”

Over summer breaks, Yu interned for several major film companies — including those of directors James Cameron and Sam Raimi, known for “Avatar” and the “Spider-Man” trilogy, respectively. One summer with Raimi’s team, she accidentally deleted an entire movie script, forcing them to scrap the whole project.

After graduating in 1994, Yu worked in Los Angeles for five years in film production but eventually realized the industry wasn’t the right fit for her. After observing her friend’s classroom, Yu was inspired to become a math teacher — and joined a teaching program at Pepperdine University. By chance, two weeks before joining the program, an opportunity to teach at a local middle school arose, and Yu took it.

“Miraculously, I got the job with no experience,” Yu said. “I had no idea what I was doing, so I had a lot of help and guidance from mentors and somehow survived.

Yu worked at Culver City Middle School for three years, all the while getting her teaching credentials during the summers. Once certified, Yu started to consider teaching abroad. She spent a few summers in Korea and China, occasionally being the only teacher who could speak English. Then, a chance encounter with her car mechanic introduced her to the Woodstock School in Ooty, India.

“It was life-changing,” Yu said. “Living in nature, battling monkeys, the little jackals, eyes glowing at you at night, the occasional mountain lion or jaguar that I never saw.”

At Woodstock, an international boarding school in the mountains of South India, Yu taught students from around the world, from Korea to Bhutan. 

“Ms. Yu helped bring joy back into my life with math and helped make me the person I am today,” former Woodstock School student Sanskar Bhattacharya said. “She was one of the few teachers that made me believe in myself.” 

A highlight of her time at Woodstock was the biannual week-long field trip to the villages in the Himalayas in Jaunpur, India. Looking for an excuse to visit more frequently, she asked the locals for an issue she could help with. One problem that they wanted to communicate to the world was inequality. The solution? Media coverage. 

With her film background, Yu and her students created a documentary featuring the village, called “Palayan: A Story of Exodus.” Initially, the film was centered around gender inequality, but ended up shifting to migration. The plot revolved around the issue of “brain drain” — the emigration of specialized workers from a country — as many living in rural parts of India would often leave for opportunities abroad.

“We parallelled it with my own students leaving India to go to other countries,” Yu said.

The film played at the Script Film Festival in Kochi, India and the Commffest Global Community Film Festival in Toronto in 2010, and is available for purchase on Amazon.

Once Yu came back to the U.S., she worked at Leonard Herman Intermediate School in San Jose, teaching both math and film. The filmmaking class involved producing a thirty-minute production every month for Create TV, a sub-channel for PBS. 

After a couple of years, Yu hoped to switch from teaching middle school to high school. In 2012, Yu finally ended up at Los Altos High School. Despite switching schools for the majority of her career, after 12 years at LAHS, she has no plans of leaving.

“She’s very human,” junior Aaron Tsai said. “I’ve honestly felt more comfortable sharing stuff there than in any other class.” 

Yu notes that LAHS reminds her of all the other schools she has worked at around the world.

“Kids are the same everywhere you go – they want to have fun and do well,” Yu said. “Even though every culture is different, they’re just regular people.”