Matt Lewis, school-wide renowned AP psychology teacher, is more than just your average lecturer. For Lewis, teaching psychology is not just a profession; it’s a hobby.

“I probably had the most fun learning about psychology because I could immediately see psychology out in the world,” Lewis said about his education.

He believes that once students learn psychology is more than just memorizing  terminology, his students will enjoy psychology as much as he does because it is present in every situation out there in the real world.

In fact, according to Lewis, not only is psychology present everywhere, but once one knows a little about psychology like Lewis, they’ll find themselves making ‘quick mental notes’, something Lewis finds himself doing often.

When Lewis now meets a student that happens to be the youngest in the family, he thinks about Alfred Adler (a developmental psychologist) and about what personality traits Adler’s theories predict that student will have. Unlike a course on American history or English, psychology, Lewis attests, is applicable to everyday life.

“When a student says, are we ever going to use this? I can always say yes, you’ll probably use it in the next twenty minutes or in the next hour,” Lewis said.

But Lewis doesn’t just teach psychology because it provides another gateway to perceive the external world; he also loves it because it provides another gateway to perceive the internal world, the world of high school students.

Fiddling with the minds of his students more often than not, Lewis has great time observing reactions.

“It takes some time to understand kind of how I function and my dry humor, but I like to see how kids react to it,” Lewis said. One of his most memorable instances of observing reactions occurred just a few years ago.

At his comedic prime, Lewis was able to lead his students to believe he had narcolepsy, a condition in which those afflicted suffer from “numbness seizures” and fall directly into deep sleep whenever in relaxing surroundings. The time then came where Lewis was the designated driver for his students on a school-related trip, and the reactions generated from students were priceless.

“Whenever I drove the [school car], they were always very concerned if I were to ever have a narcoleptic onset while driving,” Lewis said.

After the anxiety of having a narcoleptic driver, though, they all had a good long-lasting laugh, and the students were able to attach a fundamental aspect of psychology with a truly fun memory.

In fact, that is exactly what Lewis aims to achieve with his profound knowledge of psychology.

“What we know about the brain and what we know about learning, is that sometimes the more novel the situation, the more likely somebody is to remember it,” Lewis said, and with that in his mind, Lewis constantly fiddles with student’s mind with hopes to achieve such a goal.

Thus, Lewis has been able to transform the teaching profession, not into a job, but into a lifestyle.

“If I could teach psychology all day, I would,” Lewis said.