By Jasmyn Genchev

Meet Ms. Devra Heyer, Tempe Prep’s newest 6th grade science teacher. She has a chemistry/bio major and an education minor from the University of Texas, and knows how to teach several different grade levels.

Ms. Heyer had her first teaching job at the age of 19, where she tutored kids to help them get ready for college, kicking off her career as a teacher to a great start. After a friend of hers, who had already been teaching and living in Taiwan for a year-and-a-half, encouraged Mrs. Heyer to apply for a teaching opportunity in Taiwan too, Ms. Heyer decided that, “I lived in Texas my whole life, I should move.” Sure enough, she was interviewed and requested to come as soon as possible.

In Taiwan, Ms. Heyer taught both speech and conversation to high school students and math to the middle school students ages 7 and 8, at an elite private boarding school (with its own train).“I was impressed with how brilliant they were at math even though they were required to be taught in English,” Ms. Heyer said.

Even in her spare time, Ms. Heyer enjoys science oriented activities such as gardening and mapping caves. During her time in China she had an amazing opportunity toexplore Er Wang Dong, the largest cave in the Wulong Karst region in Chongqing Municipality China, as well as the nearby San Wang Dong. One of them just so happened to be a location where Transformers: Age of Extinction was filmed.

When asked why she finds science so fascinating and why she enjoys teaching the subject, she replied, “Science was the only subject I couldn’t teach myself, soI wanted to share my love for it with others.” Now living only 3 miles away from school, and with no car, Ms. Heyer rides her bike everywhere, traveling about 15 miles an hour.

As devoted as Ms. Heyer is to what she teaches, I’m sure she will have a very successful career at TPA