Passion for Physics and Pedagogy

 When I started teaching, the veteran physics teacher had these cars for a particular lab he called "two speed shifters." They are wind up cars that when released, start moving at a slow, nearly constant speed, then shift and accelerate.  A piece of string was tied and taped to the top of the cars that would run over a smart pulley attached to our Vernier photogates. After the car was wound up and put near the photogate, the string had to be pulled back so that it would move against the pulley while the car pulled the string out. The set-up is specific, and sometimes finicky, but provides a very interesting graph for students to analyze. There are more specific details about the "how" below.   Students would focus on the velocity-time and position-time graphs. They would learn how to use the tangent line function on the position-time graph to find the spot where the slope started to decrease. They look at the velocity-time graph at that same time to see that the vel...

Moments before the start of school on the second day I realized I had not created a new seating chart for my class. Typically, I allow students to sit where they want on the first day of school but create a seating chart on the second. I use the random seat generator within my Learning Management System (LMS) but it isn't perfect and I have to make adjustments for students that need to be near the screen, my audio amplifier or who should most definitely not be next to their friends. My classroom only has movable lab benches for student seating, 9 tables that fit 4 each and they are all full in my AP classes.  Michael Freeman has a visibly random group generator ( here ) which has a lot of versatility in terms of group sizes and labeling. But I also needed help learning names (California class sizes of 35+ means a lot of kids across 5 sections) so I wanted name cards. I ended up writing their names on an index card folded in half. I used a different color or each period, going in ra...

It's hard to understand all the nuances of someone else's job, to understand exactly what they do day in and day out, teaching included. My friends and family see me grading and understand that, they can see me building something or buying things for my classroom and understand the need for that. Yet one of the hardest things for non-teachers to understand seems to be lesson planning.  "But you've been teaching awhile, can't you just do the same thing as last year?" "If you know the material, why do you have to write down how you'll lecture?" "Didn't you do that lab last year? Why change it?" One of the great misunderstandings of teaching is that while repeatable, it is rarely the same from year to year. There are some activities I have done every year while teaching the same course, there are some I did once and never again. Even the ones that are a "staple" in my curriculum have gone through many, many iterations. Some c...

I was fortunate to attend the  American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT)  meeting this summer in Washington DC. Usually held in July, this year it was in the beginning of August and ended the day before I started a new school year. As stressful as it was to start the day after cross-country travel, it was just the kind of pedagogical jolt I needed to start a new school year. As always, the conversations with other physics teachers, of all levels, gave me so many great ideas. I had so many insights into other classrooms and attending an AAPT conference always makes me reflect on my own teaching choices.  One of those conversations was with  Michael Lerner , who led a Q&A in the K-12 Teacher's Lounge. We were talking about my career, things that impacted me and our conversation reminded me of when I was a mentoring teacher for a new teacher credential candidate. I found having a student teacher in my room a very reflective experience. My student teachers woul...