This year we welcome a new physics/astronomy teacher, Robert Malason, to BASH. This is his first year teaching high school students after a big career change from being a Municipal Police Academy instructor at Montgomery County Community College and Temple University, and spending thirteen years on the police tactical team, first as a medic and then as the lead sniper. He is now a retired police officer that previously specialized in crash reconstruction using his engineering degree to help others. And while he’s loved each job he’s previously had, he found teaching at the police academy the most rewarding.

A specific experience that he found rewarding aside from teaching at the police academy  was crawling around on his hands an knees at a crash scene picking up broken pieces of a turn signal. “I [was able to use] the pieces to rebuild the lens on the hit and run truck that fled after injuring another driver very badly and ultimately convict that driver for his criminal actions.” That sounds like a bona fide episode of Forensic Files to us!

“Several times I’ve saved someone’s life, I’ve chased a bank robber on foot and caught him, the list goes on and on.”

Although many of these instances have had positive outcomes, they can also be very scary at times, especially with a job like being a police officer where often times they risk their own lives to save others and make the world a better place. Malason recounted a particularly frightening event which was “a SWAT job in particular with the suspect shooting at us.”

When asked about his choice in crash reconstruction, he responded that was good at it because his background involved an undergraduate degree in engineering and extensive experience land surveying. “It’s like solving a puzzle, only backwards. You have the final product, now [your job is to] figure out how that came to be.”

Malason has since moved on to teaching Physics and Astronomy at Boyertown High School this year and is super excited! After saying it was hard to find a job as a physics teacher, he added that he feels fortunate to join us at BASH and to be able to work with other great teachers was a bonus. “I like teaching physics because it relates to the world around us so intimately.  You can make life easier if you understand some basic physics concepts, like torque for example.” Students here at BASH can’t wait to find out what ‘torque’ means!

Outside of school he loves to travel and spend time outdoors, along with living a ‘rustic’ life where he cuts firewood for his wood cook stove that he uses to heat the house in the winter and make home cooked meals. And of course, he can’t forget to mention his tradition of taking his daughter to Phillies games in the summertime.

Family is the most important thing to him and he’s grateful to have made it through challenging and critical times in his years being with the police force. “Don’t ever forget your family.  Do everything possible so that you can go home to them at the end of the shift in one piece, both physically and mentally. The job is stressful on both you and them.” And then it seems as though Malason revealed a little insight as to what might spur a police officer to pursue something else like teaching. In regard to his family and their experience while he was an officer, he said, “They live it also, but through you.”