On Physics Education of the the 21st Century

element08824

I teach in a school with around 300 students; it is my first year there and I was hired just a couple days before the school year began.

Everyone takes Biology or Earth Science. (Enrollment about 60 in each.)

Then there is a low-level Chem/Physics course that is more like a general science class. (Enrollment about 60.)

There is a college prep first year Chemistry course and a college prep first year Physics course. (Chem enrollment: 12. Physics enrollment 6.)

This year the interest was so low that they are not offering a Chem II or a Physics II or an AP course in either. (Enrollment therefore is zero.)

Part of the problem is because the previous teacher made the Chem and Physics courses so hard that only the 6-10 "brightest" in the school wanted to take it. Colleagues tell me that the students in those classes were nearly always stressed.

Everyone else was advised to avoid it, or personally selected not to take it. I had some extremely bright kids in my Chem/Phys survey course that should have been in Chemistry and would have gained a lot from it, but they weren't going to risk their GPA or their well-being.

Woopydalan

I remember in 4th grade learning about potential and kinetic energy. However, all I remember was the video with the roller coaster and the song ''Energy, energy!''. I had a hard enough time learning how when you add to one side of an equation, you have to add the same amount to the other side of the equation, so obviously I wasn't ready for anything physics, other than maybe some conceptual ideas, like the fact that maybe there are different types of energy, without reference to what they even mean. All I knew was kinetic and potential energy as two different words, without any meaning attached to them.

Woopydalan

Elementary and Middle School science = Bill Nye the Science guy