Ideas when moving into teaching physics
Bentley was a new school having only taught 9th grade conceptual physics before. I was charged with building out physics, and an AP offering in physics
I sent the following to the administration regarding my proposed job as a second-year teacher. They agreed to drop me from AP Calculus (though I did teach 5 sections that year), my push for honors over AP physics was denied so I taught AP Physics Mechanics C. Three preps, 5 sections, building a physics lab, being a second-year teacher, first-time physics teacher and having to create assemble and purchase physics lab equipment made for my second hardest year in education. (the hardest year was the first year at EPS due to the amount of time I had to spend getting up to speed on tech infrastructure).
Trying to get a handle on the workload of that year.
2003-04 Planning out AP Physics E&M
As much as I am a systems thinker, I don’t have a system for my thinking. My best description would be that I dive deeply into the problem, learning and stewing in it until some pattern begins to emerge. Once that happens, I’ll pursue that into a solution of some sort. It doesn’t feel very efficient but it does seem to be very effective for me. I’m unsure if I would recommend this approach to anyone else, it just seems to work well with the way my mind works.