Happy Friday

I had a great day today.  In one of my classes, we had a great discussion about why scientists might try to fit a mathematical model of best fit to a set of data.  It was a great "what do scientists do?" conversation, and I think it may have had a profound effect on my students' thinking about physics class in high school.  It totally jazzed me up.

Also, I had a "moment" in my honors class.  We were discussion the meaning of different quantities in the mathematical models we arrived at during our measurement labs.  We moved from a lab on the relationship between the mass of a cup filled with dice and the number of dice in the cup.  It is very clear in that linear model what the meaning of the "y-intercept" and the slope are.  So we moved to a different experiment, where we determined the relationship between the mass needed to balance a see saw with a set mass on one side to the distance the mass has to be placed from the fulcrum.  This ends up plotting a function like D=A/m  where D is the distance from the fulcrum, A is a constant and m is the mass.  I asked if the kids could come up with some meaning for the "A" term.  I did not have an idea what it was, but I wanted to hear what they had to say.  After two different kids made two different statements, it dawned on me what that term was.  It is the product of the set mass and its distance from the fulcrum on the other side of the see saw.  How fun is that to have figured something out with the kids during a white board discussion.  We even went a little long in class on the last period of the day on Friday.  The kids were so into the conversation.  It was great.

This modeling is going well, I think, but it is interesting how up and down my year has been.  I clearly have good days and bad ones.  Before I was trying to model, I mostly just had days.  Now, I get disappointed when the kids are opting out of participating and it can dampen my mood.  On the other hand, I have days like Friday where I walk away totally energized.  It was a great day!

The first full week... It's Hump DAY!

We spent a bit too much time on the measurement lab with stick-length and their mass.  I was surprised at how hard it was to get my students to discuss the physical implications of things like the so-called "y-intercept."  I said things like, "Oh, I wasn't aware we were measuring "y."  and they were completely thrown off guard.  Then I asked them to talk about the possible meaning of the "y-intercept."  All they had to share was that it was where it crossed the "y-axis."  No matter which kid engaged, that was as far as we were getting.  The knee jerk reaction to the "slope-intercept" form is strong with my kids, and it is clear that causing them to reflect on where the equation came from and what the meaning of the formula is will be essential to the process and to their learning.  After two days of discussion on those boards, we have moved on to more measurement labs.  They seem to be going better, but things are taking longer than anticipated.  I need longer class periods, I guess.

On another note, I am shocked at how much difficulty I am having getting certain classes to "circle up."  After my first request to circle up, I have one group that will not shift in their seat, not even a bit.  After my second request, they move their chair closer to the circle that is slowly forming.  Only after asking them how a game of "duck, duck, goose" would work with this type of circle did they actually move.  Then we still had issues because everyone was hiding behind some board or some other student.  In one class we spent easily 5 minutes just getting into a circle.  I am hoping that this is just the "beginning of school blues" but man, it certainly can take the wind out of your sails from a teacher standpoint.

All in all, modeling seems to be working well so far, but I am very concerned about the amount of time things are taking.  My wacky schedule doesn't help anything either.  I miss my honors class twice this week.  I clearly need more white boards.  30 is not enough because my honors class just used 2 for each group (that is 16) and I won't see them again until Friday.  That means my other classes have 14 boards to use for the next two days, and that clearly will not be enough.

White board stands revisited

I just wanted to report that my 2"x4" white boards stands function in portrait mode, but not in landscape mode, they fall over.  I bought a 2"x6" last night and will be making more holders tonight.  The 2x4 worked with some 2x4 pieces and some boards, but given the inconsistency of the densities of each piece, they did not all work interchangeably.  Also, while they "worked" in landscape mode, they were in what we physics teachers might call neutral equilibrium.  If pushed one way, nothing would change, if pushed the other way, they would tip.  I am hoping that moving the COM of the base back by an inch or so, and lower by quite a bit (the 2x6 has more mass than the 2x4)  I am hopeful that this will be my last work on the holders.  I have more important things to do, but I need these holders in place.  Particularly because my room is not set up for this "circling up."  Between boards and kids, there is almost no way to follow the rules of circling up.  If I can place the boards on my tables, then there can be an inner circle of boards and an outer circle of students.  I think this will work, and given that the tables are low enough, the students can all see every board and won't be hiding.  I will keep you posted and post pictures when they are complete.  I should get a white board home for my testing, but they are a bit cumbersome to haul around, and I always have a 4 and a 6 YO in tow when I am coming to and from school.

Measurement Day

Today my plan for each class was to go through a "measurement" lab so that they can get the hang of white boarding, using excel, and "circling up."  I had dowels cut to different lengths and I asked the kids to determine if there was a relationship between the length of the rod and its mass.  We took data, made data tables and graphs.  Again, the different approaches, the difference in confidence and the speed/precision of how they worked was interesting to observe.  In LSW after a 70 minute block we had graphs, we knew there was a correlation, and we were just getting to the fact that it might be a direct relationship.  In honors, the conversation took a different turn and we had to talk about circle etiquette and being careful not to be an explainer.  In the Calc-based class, the students worked through the lab quickly and were a bit frustrated by how much I was pushing them on the meaning of each of the terms in the "linear" model that they were using.  Throughout the day, I had to stop the kids several times by saying, "OK, I see that you understand that that number is the 'y-intercept' but I was not aware we were measuring 'y' and I am not sure we clearly understand the physical meaning of the 'y-intercept' in this case."  Many of the most advanced kids were struggling to be able to explain the meaning in terms of our exercise.  I found that very interesting.  I also found it interesting that one of my students hopped right out with a "for every" statement all by himself.  Good times!

In any case, the day left me feeling inspired and happy.  It also left my mind reeling about how to debrief the lab group sorting exercise some more and what I wanted to talk about with each group tomorrow.  I have to say, if I can keep this pace up and keep the kids engaged like this, I am going to have a great year!  Now I need to cut some floor tiles, make some graph paper copies and get ready for measurement day part duex.

Not only did this day leave me more energized, but it left me buzzing about my great day, and it gave me the strength to get more work done when I got home.  Maybe I am just still riding on the summer energy high, but I would like to think that there is more to it than that.  I would like to think that, instead of teaching sapping me of all of my energy, I am actually absorbing some from the energy of the students.  I tell you, it was a great day to be sure!

The First Day

On the first day, I planned on grouping kids for the group work we are going to be doing right out of the gate.  At my school we only have 20 minute blocks of time with each class on "orientation" day.  I find this time to be cumbersome because it is not enough time to get much meaningful work done, but it is not a short enough time to merely have a little face to face time and figure out where the classroom is.

Given the 20 minute block of time, I figured an ice breaker/grouping exercise seemed to be in order.  I was grateful that the night before school Gary Abud tweeted something about Frank Noschese's subversive grouping method.  This was perfect timing and a wonderful game.  I made the cards and edited some of the groupings to include road names near us and some others to get to the number of groups/students I needed.

I teach three levels of physics, "Light, Sound and Waves" a semester-long algebra-based entry level course, Honors Physics, an algebra-based course, and "Calculus-based Mechanics", a semester-long calculus based second-year elective.  The two sections of LSW finished the exercise in 5 minutes with very little discussion.  Given the number of car/president names, one class ended up with 6 presidents and a car all by herself and the other ended up with 6 cars and a president all by himself.  Once I noted that this might be an odd way for me to intentionally set up groups, they all looked at each other and switched seats, and voila, the appropriate number of three-student groups appeared.  In reflection on this, I found it intriguing that they were able to accomplish this task without really speaking a word.  Now, I should let you all know that many of my students have known each other since they were 4.  Liggett is a PK-12 school where 1/3 of any grade has been together since PK.  Perhaps they used telepathy:)

The Honors class took the entire 20 minute period and barely finished on time.  The students were much ruder to one another, and they were completely unwilling to change their mind.  "I have Washington, and Washington was a president, and I am with the presidents!" I remember hearing as another class member pointed out that Washington was also a state.  Leaders only emerged when the time pressure became clear.  Then the leaders decided that they should put all the cards on a table and sort the groups out.  At this point the 4 leaders, all girls btw, sorted out the groups correctly.  Some other students watched, and several completely disengaged from the activity.  I was surprised by how differently the activity went with the honors kids.

The Calculus based class took a bit longer than the LSW kids, but still finished pretty quickly.  There are only 11 of them though, so that might add to the speed.  There were fewer groups.  They did not argue much, but they are a really close knit group of students, so it made sense.  My honors course has 24 kids (my largest group ever) and that might be why that class took longer.

In any case, I don't know if I debriefed this exercise correctly, but It was odd to me to have honors kids disengaging in a 20 minute ACTIVITY on the first day of school.  Herumf!  One of my LSW kids commented that if this is what the first day looked like, she was going to be in for a long year.  I found that disheartening, as I am here trying to do something engaging, fun and useful, and her response was to be completely overwhelmed.

Lastly, I spoke with one of the mothers of one of my students after the second day of school, and she shared with me that when she asked her daughter what she thought her favorite class was going to be this year, she responded physics.  This was a shock to mom, and it makes it all worth it for me.  To have a student who is not necessarily predisposed to physics tell her mom that she thought it was going to be her favorite class encourages me to continue my journey as a modeler.

Could I be ready for the first day of school?

I did it, I got myself ready for the first day, I think.  I went to Lowes..... and then Home Depot because Lowes did not have enough white board material.  I purchased 5 sheets of 1/8" melamine type white board material and had the guys cut it for me.  The first cut was 2' off the 8' side making a 2'x 4' board and a 4' x 6' piece.  Then cut the board to two feet by cutting the 4' side in half.  Then stack all the two foot wide pieces up and cut a 3' length.  You end up with 5 white boards and a little 2'x1' piece left over for your daughters to play with.  So, I now have 25 white boards of this style and 5 magnetic wonderful ones from Costco.  30 white boards ought to be enough for me to have each class be able to keep a white board in action until the next class day.

Now to the holders.  I used a 12' length of 2"x 4" and cut it into 1.5' lengths.  Then I cut 3/4 depth slits to fit the whiteboards in.  I cut across the short way at one end and then along the long side.  I am hoping that these will hold up a whiteboard in either portrait or landscape style.  I will also be using my whiteboards as privacy boards during tests, since my classroom has tables and not desks.

I am going to attempt to import pictures here:  Please note that I am using one of the left over 2' x 1' pieces to model here.

Lastly, I purchased, and cut to various lengths, dowels and rods and the like.  I tried to make sure that the lengths I cut were doubled and quadrupled.  The plan is to ask the kids if there is any relationship between the length of the rod and its mass.  Then I will have them measure those things to see if there is in fact a relationship.  Once they have data, they can enter it into excel, or logger pro and get a fit for it.  Given that the relationship should be linear, the doubling and quadrupling should make it easy to see this pattern.  For fun, some of the dowels are oak and some are poplar.  The dimensions are exactly the same, and I cut the lengths the same.  This way, when the groups compare notes, they will have to notice that the slope difference goes beyond mere dimensions.  This should get me through until next week when my constant velocity cars arrive :)

Now, how will I learn the students names?

Here Goes!

Today we had our final "beginning of the year" meeting.  I have had very little time in my classroom, and with the challenges of  small children who need childcare, I have not been preparing in the way I would have liked to.  I am fully intending on modeling this year, but I am particularly worried about applying this new method of instruction to my second year physics students and my Light, Sound and Waves elective.  The former already have a strong foundation in this material, and the latter have none.  How do I model wave motion with students who don't already know the concepts of force, velocity, energy, etc.?  At the same time, how do I model with students who already "know all the answers?"  In any case, it looks like Labor day weekend will be spent laboring.  That seems counter to the cause for the holiday, but as a teacher, I guess this is just par for the course.  I guess I am just a bit upset that the summer has drawn to a close and the whirlwind of the school year is about to begin.  I will try to keep blogging to journal my escapades as a new modeler.  The more you read and comment, the more likely I will be to stick with this method of reflection.

Of course, there is a part of me that can't wait to say, "Does this seem like something we can measure?  Does that sound like a lab?  Great, get started!"  And of course, "To make this easy, I will make it multiple choice."

I look forward to interacting with you all in cyberspace!

SOCS-I Arons chapter 4

Tonights reading made me feel pretty good about what I do.  I have a cut circular path; I use an overhead projector to project shadows of motion and "arrows," and I talk to the kids about the difference between motion with direction(rotations through angles) and vector displacement.  I am curious how I would make this a discovery/paradigm lab instead of a "sage on the stage" event.  I am excited to have the kids walk around in front of the overhead projector.  I am a huge proponent of using "modern" technology when it has pedagogical implications in the classroom.  I wonder if it will be any better if I make the shadows on a SMART board.

SOCS-P

The reading tonight was short and sweet.  Thank you Laura!  I needed a night off so that I could get some scheduling work done for...well... work.  Anyway, it makes me think so much about what the beginning of school should look like.  I have questions and interesting sayings posted up around my room.  My intention is to help get the kids engaged.  I ask them which ones make them curious and try to engage in discussions about them, but after the first day, the conversations kind of died.  I am hoping that I can keep them coming with the help of this new methodology.  I am SO excited to run my kids through the "Do you think there is a relationship between the mass of a stick and its length?" experiment.  Then I am excited to say, "Do you think this is something we can measure?"  "Is that vague enough for you?" and the like.  I am sure this year will be a happier, more productive, and more engaging year.  Thank you to the team for giving me the push I needed.

SOCS-I (Arons 3.16-3.24 ish)

I remember reading the entry on equal signs before (I have owned the Arons book for a few years now) and it struck me again how much the material that we find so simple can be so confusing to our students.  I have made a point to talk about the different meanings of the equal sign in my class, but taking this class has pointed out so many more places where I have to be careful not to gloss over material that can be totally confusing to my students.

SOCS-P

After reading the Hestenes article on modeling physics about Malcom Wells' successes in teaching high school physics, I feel challenged to beat his scores on the FCI test mixed with the "Baseline Test."  I am on board with trying the modeling method in my classroom, and I am fairly convinced that the change in method will help my students gain a better understanding.  However, the challenge that no teacher, that this paper has heard of, has overcome his results.  Perhaps this has changed since 1994, but consider the gauntlet thrown down!

PS.  I am not sure the exclamation point should be the punctuation mark of choice in an academic paper.

SOCS-I Minstrell (Explaining the "at rest" condition of an object)

So, I have to say I was glad to have a shorter assignment tonight.  There must be something about reading heady articles at night in the summer time as a teacher, but I am finding it really hard to concentrate.  Anyway, this article was a nice easy read I could agree with.  I always have a ton of difficulty with the normal force, or as my kids all call it (regardless of what I call it) the "Natural Force."  Anyway, I spend a lot of time talking about it, but nothing seems to help.  I am not sure why I never thought of it, but having kids come up to the front and hold out their arms while I put books in them seems AWESOME.  I mean, how obvious, and yet this simple demo has eluded me for years.  I am excited to do this next year.  I think my students will immediately see the connection.  Maybe I am just fooling myself though :)  This year, in our discussions on the normal force, it came up that contact forces kind of don't exist.  I asked what our skin is made out of.  They said protons, neutrons and electrons.  Then I asked, what about the table.  Same answer.  Then I said, do you think these things interact with one another?  Then I asked, so....do you think you can actually "touch" anything?  They absolutely freaked out!  It was awesome, and it continued to be a topic of conversation all year.

SOCS-I Arons 2.8-2.16

S, in reading these sections of Arons, it became clear to me that he finds it very important to go over the base meaning of things over and over again.  That is, as we have been doing in class quite regularly, he thinks we should not just come up with a operational definition of a concept and move on.  He thinks we should force the students to think through simple examples like, if a ball is going up at 30 m/s, how fast will it be going in one second, two, three, four... and so on.  I think I am going to incorporate more of this into my classroom, but I wonder if my students will become tired of that kind of interaction.  I feel like after the first response the rest can come quite easily even if there is not a clear understanding by everyone in the room.  Perhaps the time at the top will cause difficulty, but otherwise, I see my students being frustrated by the slower pace.  Of course, I also feel like I am falling into the typical trap of a physics teacher-  If we clearly stated what happens, they must understand it now.  So, I intend on trying this repetitive process next year to see what kind of response it garners, and what kind of effect on understanding it has for the group.

SOCS - I (Hammer "Two approaches to learning Physics")

So after reading the Hammer article I find myself linking his two example kids to my own students.  I would actually be happy with either kid, as both seem motivated to learn.  Liza seemed to me what I call a memorizer, and Ellen a conceptualizer.  I wonder what a group of those two together would do for both of them.  This article makes me think of what I am doing in my classroom unknowingly to support students like Liza, as most of my "good" students follow this model.  I also wonder what I could do to help students like Ellen to gain organize and connect her conceptual thinking to her mathematical methods of problem solving.  There has to be a middle ground, and I have to support learning there.

SOCS-C Mestre "Learning and Instruction in Pre-College Physical Science

The Mestre article got me thinking about the Millikan Award acceptance speech by David Griffiths in 1997.  Both authors spent some time discussing textbooks.  Griffiths worries that spending more time developing concepts in the classroom necessitates students learning more "information" outside of class from the textbook.  He points out that, not only do many students find it difficult to learn from a text, but that most texts are not designed to present material without the guidance of a gifted instructor.  Mestre has similar things to say, I think.  He argues that the textbooks merely present a list of facts and problems for students to memorize and complete.  I agree that textbooks in physics are poorly written for high school classes, but it does get me thinking about how I picked up the conceptual understanding I currently have.

I seem to have arrived at a conceptual understanding through solving problems in textbooks without much direct guidance.  Then I would ask questions that came up through my solution, or more likely, I would be graded on a problem and realize my error.  Over time, and through repetition of this process, I gained the understanding I now have.  Through many failures and successes I have learned something that I do not think I could have learned without both the failures and the successes.  Science is hard, but it feels good to overcome a conceptual road block.  I think it is important to realize in all of this, that my expectation of my students cannot be mastery in the first run through.  Perhaps I need to reevaluate my goals/assessments looking forward.  I need to make sure my expectations of my students are in line with my reaction to my own experiences as a student.

SOCS-P (Arons 2.1-2.7)

So, reading Arons and his discussion of a "clock reading" as having zero length in time causes difficulty for me.  I immediately struck up a text message stream with my physics professor from college discussing this idea.  I will share it tomorrow in class with anyone if you are interested.  For me, if I am interested in describing instantaneous velocity and acceleration, I must inherently be discussing TWO TIMES.  Therefore an "instant" is by default a very small change in time.  Arons expressly states that an "instant" has no "length in time" just as a point has no length in space.  I guess this is semantics, but I really think it would hinder a discussion of any kinematic topic other than position.  To describe a velocity or an acceleration, two moments in time are needed, and both are the rate of change of one quantity per unit change of another.  If I go about describing an instant as being a single time with no "change" than I feel like I would have difficulty describing to a student why the "instantaneous acceleration" of an object at the top of its path is not zero.  I always talk about the fact that we are interested in two times, however close together they are, and an object will only be at rest one of those moments.  The acceleration will not be zero because the velocity is changing between those TWO times.  I have always described it this way, and I talk to my students about the fact that "instantaneous" really is an "average" over a very small time period.  I look forward to discussing my difficulties with my group tomorrow.  I have named this a "Philosophical" SOCS because I feel like this is a philosophical discussion, not a matter of curriculum or instruction.  I could imagine it being an instructional SOCS, but I guess I feel it is more about belief than practice.

Arons 1.1-1.12 etc

SOCS - I
After reading the first few sections of Arons "Teaching Introductory Physics" I am feeling pretty good about what I have been doing in my class.  In one instance he talks about requiring students to tell the story about what 2.3 g/cm^3 means.  This is a standard practice for me.  I still think I can get better at leading students as a group to ask these same questions of each other, but I feel like I have at least recognized that there is a need for this verbal reasoning.  Now I just need to improve at leading/guiding the students to their own revelations.

SOCS-I The extended cut

"How We Teach and How Students Learn" (McDermott)
After reading this article, I am resolved to improve my teaching practices.  I can think of times during the year where I have worked to move away from direct instruction, and I have spent a lot of time discussing the types of situations described in the article.  For instance, the discussion on the brightness of light bulbs resonated with me.  I spent some time, after working through Kirchhoff's Rules,Ohm's Law, and graphing the current as a function of the voltage across a resistor and across a light bulb, discussing specifically the brightness of a light bulb.  In particular, I think it is difficult to describe what it is that makes a light bulb bright.  Is it the current through the bulb, or the voltage across it?  It is pretty clear, based solely on practical experience, that a 100W bulb is brighter than a 40W bulb in the home, but how does that relate to a set up in our lab.  I think the brightness of a light bulb is a complicated topic- perhaps more complicated than this article claims it is.  There are so many assumptions made in the typical questions that aren't necessarily obvious or true.  For instance, it is always assumed that the power rating of each bulb is the same, and that the resistance of the bulbs will be unchanged as the bulbs are added, removed or their connections are changed.  So, we talk about these sorts of things in my class, but gaining a good conceptual understanding of the brightnesses of bulbs in circuits is actually VERY difficult, and I am sure I do not have a clear model.

Now, I can answer the questions as long as I am willing to go along with the aforementioned assumptions, but I feel empty here-like I was "taught to the test."  As my students and I walk through our conversation on this topic, I feel like I am teaching to some future test for them (not mine.)  But I do wonder why the teachers at large seem to be in agreement that determining the brightness of a light bulb is somehow simpler or at least more approachable than finding the power dissipated by a resistor.

Now to a light bulb question I can really get excited about, can anyone provide a reasonable and (here's the kicker) simple model to explain the brightness of a 40W bulb connected in series with a 100W bulb?  I think I can do it, but it is going to require me to pull out the big guns, and if my students and I got into that conversation, a good many of my students would be running for the door.  Determining the current in that circuit would be a nightmare.  I mean, what is the resistance of a 40W bulb... connected in series with a 100W bulb?  I dunno, the wattage, as stamped on the bulb describes the wattage when the bulb is connected to 120VAC.  That will not be the case when it is in series with a 40W bulb.  Anyway, I digress.

I look forward to developing methods in this workshop that will allow me to walk with my students through questions, explanations and model building such that they gain a stronger understanding of the concepts of physics.  I have spent a lot of time in recent years making sure my test and quiz questions are assessing the kind of thinking and learning I am interested in seeing in my students.  Now, I hope that this workshop will help me make sure that my students' experiences in my class will better develop the kind of thinking and understanding I am looking for on my assessments.  I made this a "Instructional" type SOCS because I feel like I need to work the way I approach topics, and the way I lead students toward the light without pointing it out to them.  The workshop has been modeling that wonderfully for me, and I am so excited to practice these methods more.

And seriously, if you have a model for my light bulb question, I would love to talk about it with you.

SOCS-I FCI

I think the Force Concept Inventory Test clearly addresses the errors apparent when using "common sense."  I hope to help my students learn to reason using Newton's Laws more effectively.
(Force Concept Inventory  Hestenes, Wells, Swackhamer)

SOCS-P "Wherefore a science of teaching"

After reading this article, I plan to think more about the concrete versus formal thinking going on.  I hope to incorporate the concept of "programming" a student's long term memory.
(Wherefore a science of teaching Hestenes)

The FCI

So, I must admit, I was a bit of a delinquent student today.  I thought I had set up mail forwarding from my new gmail address for this blog and for this workshop.  I apparently failed to click the bubble for "forward mail to this address."  I had set up the address and verified it, but alas, no bubble.  So, while I knew there was supposed to be some FCI test coming along, when I had not received notice, I figured some other plans were afoot.  Anyway, this morning, when I logged on to gmail to check the address of the location of the meeting (in an email received prior to my supposed forwarding attempt) I noticed a few emails from Don.  One of which was, of course, the FCI test.  So I madly woke up my home computer to print the thing this morning, and irresponsibly took it on my way to class this morning.  Luckily I arrived safely, with the test completed, only to find out that it would play very little role in what we discussed today in class:-(

I guess we were supposed to write about how we felt taking the test today.  My feelings are probably a bit, if not significantly, different than they would be if I had taken the test as it was intended, calmly and peacefully in my kitchen while my two daughters run around me screaming joyfully and asking when I will go and play with them outside.  In any case, I felt completely confident in my results, though some of the "air resistance" problems caught me asking myself, do they want the "real" answer or the "in a perfect world with no air" answer.  I opted for the latter in all of my choices.  I also found myself thinking, gosh, I wonder how my kids would do on this test.  We certainly talk about all of these concepts, and while I have never seen this test, we would certainly discuss the correct answers to all of the questions on it in my class.  I still wonder though, how would my kids do.  Or, in effect, how have I done as an instructor.  The alums that come back to speak with me usually talk about how well prepared they were for college physics, which I take as some sign that I am not completely wasting their time while they are with me.  So, I think I am doing OK, but I am not confident about how my students would perform on this test.  I am not even confident about how those alums would fare.  So, I plan on doing a before and after test next year to see what affect I am having on their understanding of the topic of force.  I hope to get a better understanding of how I am doing as an instructor, and over time improve my students' understanding of the concept of force.

Lastly, after spending 20 minutes trying to find the appropriate answer key for the test, I determined that, even though I took this test while battling traffic on 696 and Woodward Ave.  I aced it!  I mean, I should ace it, I am a physics teacher for goodness sake, but still, I always worry with things like this.  As a teacher, it always helps the confidence to know the answers before you ask the questions.  In this case, I was flying blind.  100% on this inventory is a small victory, but one I can be proud of.

Introduction

Hey Folks,

If you are here, you must be in the Modeling Physics Workshop at Oakland Schools this summer.  I figured a good first post would be to introduce myself.  I am Ben, and I teach at University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe Woods, MI.  It is a PK-12 grade secular private school that was founded in 1878.  I just finished my 11th year teaching exclusively physics there.  I am also a class dean, I am in charge of creating the schedule, and I act as the registrar in the upper school.  One of the gifts I have is total autonomy in my classroom.  This has allowed me to design a neat curriculum, and test out a bunch of new teaching methods in my 11 years.  I currently teach two junior level electives called "Light, Sound, and Waves" and "Classical Mechanics" a junior level honors physics class and two senior electives titled "Calculus-Based Mechanics" and "Electricity and Magnetism."  I am interested in meeting other physics teachers from southeast Michigan, as I am the only physics teacher at Liggett.  I attended Lake Forest College in Illinois, and have been the lucky recipient of loads of equipment and advice from my college professors there.  But, while I have had lots of experience, and I get help where I need it, I have not had a lot of interaction with other high school physics teachers.  I became interested in attending this workshop after speaking with Gary Abud of Grosse Pointe North High School.  He spoke very highly of this program, and it was clear that he was an energetic and capable teacher.  It was also clear that his students engaged in class in a different way than mine do.  We are currently undergoing a shift in focus with our curriculum at Liggett, and we are placing a heavy emphasis on student engagement and on making thinking visible in the classroom.  Our headmaster has written an academic paper outlining the curriculum, and he has named this new model the "Curriculum for Understanding."  This workshop seemed like the perfect fit for me in my current place in my career.  I look forward to meeting all of you.  See you next Thursday!