In my last post I talked about how I finally reenvisioned collisions and explosion problem solving for my on-track physics. It went so well I’m definitely going to integrate more of it into AP. The goal of the reenvisioning was to set students up for a meaningful tennis ball cannon launch lab at the end of the lesson sequence. If you’re unfamiliar, you create a tennis ball cannon, launch it, and have students calculate some quantity based on momentum conservation. To be honest, I haven’t run this lab since my first few years teaching for a few reasons. One was that my cannon got stolen at my f ..read more

I did it. I finally revised how I teach momentum conservation to my on-track physics students and I’m never looking back! It can be really hard to shift something that “works” especially if you don’t have a team. For my on-track physics students collision/explosion problems were always an “easy win” for students. We would define that “momentum is conserved” and then talk about how to solve the problems. I would lecture and show them the “table method” and then the “brute force method” and allow them to choose how they wanted to solve. This was satisfying for students. It felt easy and studen ..read more

This month marks a full year since I started my term as the High School Member at Large on the Board of Directors for the American Association of Physics Teachers. Joining the board there were a few goals: We want to have amazing, meaningful experiences at AAPT We want to feel like full members and not second-class citizens at AAPT We want to get as many new people involved as possible (because once you’re in, you’re in!) It’s been a year of listening, learning and acting, and I’m happy to say that New Orleans was amazing. Here’s the rundown! Committee meeting EARLY in the conference: We w ..read more

I am so sick of the teacher influencers on social media. Like many of us, I downloaded TikTok for the first time during the pandemic and the algorithms quickly locked me in to similar videos. Rebecca Rogers was first with “real things” Then Mr. Williams and so many more… Then I found burntoutteachers And after a few of her videos I’d had enough. Every single one of the teacher influencers started with reasonable intentions: exposing the challenges working in the educational system with a bit of humor and a bit of sarcasm. A bunch of these influencers now tour with Bored Teachers. And you kn ..read more

What happens when you combine university resources with high school teachers across the state? A model for universal excellence and growth. Pleased to share my piece in The Physics Teacher about the IPaSS program at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. I’ve shared about the program on the blog before here shared it in our local paper and gave a presentation at AAPT This summer when I returned from our August institute, it was really important to me to share the power of the program with the largest community of physics educators through TPT. This, however, is quite the daunting task ..read more

I don’t like showman physics. I’ve been honest about this before. The idea of being the “sage on the stage” running a bunch of super cool demos as a vehicle for teaching isn’t my style. What would have been considered demos are now observational experiments, because everything about my class needs to be framed around what science is and who does science. If I am the keeper of the knowledge and the toucher of the things I am sending very strong messages. Don’t get me wrong, the demo show folks have their place in the world. But I’m not a part of that space, and neither is my classroom. Not in t ..read more

In studies around expert teachers one salient feature is that expert teachers provide students learning opportunities to shift their thinking. Specifically, those opportunities should include productive struggle, explicit connections of task to concept and deliberate practice, where there is an opportunity to receive feedback. (Stigler & Miller, 2018) In the last year I’ve started implementing practices from Peter Liljidahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics and I wanted to share an activity we did this week. We did this task at vertical whiteboards which have the advantage of k ..read more

The first set of posts I wrote for this series was about momentum because I made such a large shift from how I used to teach to how I currently teach. In the same vein my teaching of forces has also changed. In the past my force unit looked like this: Inertia Day! Lots of Demos, initiation into the inertia club with club cards (you hold the card on your index finger with a penny on top and figure out how to flick the card out from the penny) F=ma. Define it, notes, define force diagrams, practice force diagrams. Practice F=ma problems. One day on action-reaction. Gloss over it; “it’s easy” I ..read more

As a high school teacher homework is a constant battle. At my high school it’s an equity issue. Many of my students lack the time, space and resources to complete homework. But also, we also know that the fundamental differentiator between excellence and mediocracy is discipline and deliberate practice. And on a very fundamental level “use it or lose it”. So how to ensure practice and ensure it in a way where learning is happening for all students? Enter Mild, Medium and Spicy questions. I picked this idea up from Peter Liljidahl when he joined our nationwide physics book study in April on his ..read more

I’m super thrilled to share that October 21st I will be one of the keynote speakers for the joint Illinois/Chicago sections AAPT fall meeting. I’ll be talking about the SciComm unit I ran this last spring. If you follow me here or on Twitter you saw the journey first hand. As someone who enjoys communicating through blogging, twitter and speaking engagements this invitation means a lot to me. More info an registration here! The joint meeting is always really exciting because we usually see a great turnout and representation from high school and college faculty. We’re also able to bring in some ..read more