Ever since Ishan Saharoy was a kid, he knew that he wanted to be a teacher. However, he didn’t know what he wanted to teach, and biology wasn’t on his radar until his freshman high school biology class. Saharoy attributes a lot of the joy that he had in his class to his teacher, Isaac Pallone.
“I didn’t think I’d like it very much, but I ended up liking it a lot,” Saharoy said. “[Mr. Pallone] was a lot of fun, and he had a lot of big-picture ideas about biology, which I really appreciated because I like big-picture things. By the time I was going to college, I knew I was doing biology at UT.”
Saharoy, a high school graduate from Lynbrook High School in San Jose, California, and graduated from The University of Texas at Austin this past spring. When choosing which college to attend, Saharoy was stuck between the University of Illinois Chicago, University of California Davis, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and UT.
“I ended up choosing UT because the other schools weren’t fit for me,” he said. “I really liked that UT was in Austin, and I had never been to Texas, so I was open to trying new things. Getting a job where I was a student teacher ended up being a great outcome.”
When Saharoy did his student teaching through UTeach at McCallum, he was placed with Nicole Sorto, a freshman biology teacher in her 33rd year at McCallum. During his time, he had grown to love the community, which led him to want to get a job here.
“I love the inclusiveness and the drive from the students,” Saharoy said. “They respect each other, which is not something you see at every high school. I like the whole culture of McCallum.”
Sorto was impressed with Saharoy from the beginning when he came to help out in the 2025 spring semester.
“The kids embraced him, and he built a rapport very quickly,” Sorto said. “He’s super knowledgeable; he knows his stuff really well. He’s gone through the UTeach system, so he’s been taught how to teach, an advantage a lot of other teachers don’t have.”
Sorto said that Saharoy’s teaching style and quality blew her away due to his natural teaching ability.
“His best quality is that he’s calm and has a sense of humor,” Sorto said. “When questions are asked, he smiles and replies softly. He doesn’t make a big deal of things and has a good balance of leniency and control of his class.”
Sorto is not the only teacher at McCallum to have a previous relationship with Saharoy. Cat O’Neal, McCallum teacher and head water polo coach, met Saharoy in the spring when he asked about joining her in coaching water polo.
“He approached me last spring and said ‘Do you need an assistant coach,’” O’Neal said. “He’s been willing and able the whole time. He’s ready to take on so much coaching and bring forth his knowledge to the team.”
O’Neal also emphasized Saharoy’s qualities not just as a teacher or coach but as a person.
“He’s very relatable,’ O’Neal said. “He’s easy to be around, we laugh at practice and he gives ideas very easily and very freely. He’s a team player, not just in water polo. He’s always willing to help, especially his students and his classes. Before water polo, he’ll say, ‘I gotta go record this lecture so my students have it the next day’. He really cares about the people around him and shares everything he knows.”
O’Neal said that Saharoy fits right in with McCallum’s community due to his open-mindedness and care for his students.
“He seems like a really good fit, culturally and just his disposition, it seems like he really enjoys it,” O’Neal said. “McCallum has a very distinct culture, and he’s open-minded and here for everything McCallum has to offer.”
