How do we alleviate the shortage of qualified physics teachers?

[element08824]

I realize this thread has been going on forever, but I would like to make a couple of comments.

I teach high school physics. I doubt that I'm really considered qualified. After I have taught physics a few more years I might be getting close.

One of my biggest complaints is lack of student friendly materials. Let's say I want my students to do some additional practice on motion graphs. If I spend some time searching the Internet for potential worksheets/practice problems I might come up with 2-5 things that might possibly work with my students.

However, if I want to find something to help my biology students practice identifying parts of a cell and their functions (or any other biology topic) I will easily finds 100's of things that could be useful and it will take me much less time.

So if you want to make physics teachers "better" supply them with the necessary materials. I would seriously like to see some honest to goodness drill and practice sheets for physics. The materials that come with the textbooks are not what I need. They often only have one or two of each type of problem and if students need extra reinforcement it's not there.

Even if you have a "qualified" physics teacher, they probably get fed up with creating all their own materials and leave for something else. I'm to the point I'd rather teach any other subject than physics because there is so much more support for the other subjects. But I'm basically stuck teaching physics because I am the only teacher in my school who has the certification.

Zodea

I agree!