When hands go up during a particularly tricky problem in lecturer Andrew Duffy’s freshman Physics 105 class, Jiaya Chen (CAS’17) and Robby Finan (CAS’17) come to the rescue. They’re learning assistants—students who passed this class last year, and who have returned to help teach it.
With the nation facing a worrisome lack of qualified physics teachers, Duffy says the Learning Assistant Program, which includes a course in education theory and practice, is a great way to get physics majors “turned on to teaching.”
Less than half of all high school physics classes are taught by teachers with degrees in the subject, compared to 73 percent in biology and 80 percent in the humanities, according to the US Department of Education. The figures are worse in high-poverty areas. Duffy says the problem is being compounded as school districts switch physics from senior elective to freshman requirement in recognition of its foundational importance. As a result, “You need six or seven times more teachers.”
“I REALLY WOULD LIKE TO SEE BU BECOME A NATIONAL OR AT LEAST A REGIONAL CENTER FOR PHYSICS TEACHING.”
In 2011, Duffy helped lead BU’s admission into the Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC), a National Science Foundation–funded group focused on addressing the shortage. Since joining the coalition, BU has introduced the Learning Assistant Program for physics undergraduates—a collaboration between CAS and the School of Education—and secured Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program funding, which gives financial support to upperclassmen and master’s students who intend to teach the subject. For three years, PhysTEC also subsidized a physics teacher-in-residence to boost connections with local schools and improve BU’s preparation of future teachers, a position now supported by the University.
Although BU has long hosted a state-backed project, Improving the Teaching of Physics, to give local teachers a better grounding in the subject, PhysTEC has allowed it to do more than just play catch-up. In the past, the University produced one or two high school physics teachers a year at most; six will graduate in 2015. The current teacher-in-residence, Mark Greenman, says six might not seem like much, but he points out that the two biggest physics teaching programs in the United States barely hit double-digits, and the most common number across higher education is zero. “I really would like to see—and I think the potential is there—BU become a national or at least a regional center for physics teaching,” says Greenman, an educator for more than 35 years and a member of the Massachusetts teaching hall of fame.
One of the big challenges now, Greenman says, is marketing. “People think, ‘Oh you’re not going to be happy as a teacher, and you’re going to be poor.’” But he notes teacher salaries can reach six figures. As for job satisfaction, Greenman cites a recent American Institute of Physics survey of former physics majors on career happiness: high school teaching comes out on top.
Caitlin Johnson (SED’15) has wanted to teach high school physics since she was 16, but the misconceptions led her to engineering instead. The pay was great, Johnson recalls, but “what I was doing was not fulfilling to me in the least.” She started looking for teaching programs, and a friend at BU made a great sales pitch: the ability to focus on physics teaching is rare, as is support like the Noyce Scholarship.
“I come home so happy and contented every day,” she says. “I know that I’m doing something important.”
Back in Duffy’s freshman physics class, Chen says being a learning assistant is fulfilling, too. “I find most satisfaction when students come in to ask me a question that I actually do not know how to solve,” she says. As a sophomore physics major, explaining something to another student is a great way to learn herself. But she also considers this valuable practice: she already plans to be a physics teacher.