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First Year Teachers Workshop
I went to this workshop part way into my second year of teaching. It was profound how much experience you gain in a year. Compared to teachers who were in the profession for just under three months, I was an expert (and the leaders of the conference were far more knowledgeable than I was). My…
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Assorted Professional Development Artifacts
These are my, professional development goals from October of the 2003-04 school year. That year, I was a third-year teacher, a second-year physics teacher and was teaching my seventh new course and developing my third new course. Additionally, they had me doing Upper School scheduling, running student activities, coaching volleyball and preparing to be Science…
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Course Planning and Moving into Physics
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…
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Rejection!
Some of the rejections I’ve received over the years. Some of these would have been really nice talks too. This project, a great one by former colleague Sarah Rainwater, was also not selected. Some people just don’t know quality when they see it. I do recall that the people on that team took the rejection…
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Avatari Project
The Avatari project started with a conversation between Ryan Winkelmann and me on gamification in education. We quickly brought in Karen Mills and looked at the 7th grade history project (we also had Nancy Adair and Paul Hagen join in). The premise was straight forward. The 7th grade research project was long for that age.…
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Presentations on Teaching to a Changing World
Teaching is an interesting challenge. While we are teaching content now, we are also preparing students for 10 years from now. This felt achievable when I started in 2001, there was no expectation of significant change by 2011 (we were wrong of course as smart phones, social media and streaming changed the media and social…
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Tech Curriculum Pathways
The tech discipline has unique challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, we have no graduation requirement (in US) so we don’t have a great way to capture all students, on the other, we have a lot of family, and societal pressure to take our courses. With our small slice of the curriculum (which is…
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todo Evolution of Society Course
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Courses Taught
The following are all the difference courses I have taught over the years. Feel free to ask me about any of them. Term and Year-Long Courses Precalculus Honors Precalculus Multivariable Calculus Conceptual Physics Physics Honors Physics AP Physics Mechanics AP Physics Electricity & Magnetism Science Workshop Scientific Thinking 3 Advanced Physics Web Design 1 Programming…
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Calculus Journey [2020-21 Fall Remote]
The first few days of Calculus (covering the fall for the pleasure of Oscar Fassino) laid out what was in store for the year of Calculus. As a student, I remember calculus being as large a cognitive leap as algebra was and I wanted to encourage students to lean into that potential discomfort in addition…
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Bentley Schedule 2004-05
Helped lead a committee to change the Bentley schedule to one with more blocks. They no longer use this schedule but we quite enjoyed it after we made it. Each class had a 50 minute session on Monday and then one 100 minute and one 60 minute block later on in the week. You can…
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Formative Pro-Dev: Exploratorium
https://www.sfgate.com/education/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-Science-teachers-with-an-Iron-2742305.php In the summer of 2004, I attended the exploratorium teacher institute and was invited to be an assistant teacher in the future. The intent of the program was to bring more hands-on science into the classroom using everyday materials (rather than fancy lab equipment). This was where I met Paul Doherty who was a…