This month marks a full year since I started my term as the High School Member at Large on the Board of Directors for the American Association of Physics Teachers. Joining the board there were a few goals:
- We want to have amazing, meaningful experiences at AAPT
- We want to feel like full members and not second-class citizens at AAPT
- We want to get as many new people involved as possible (because once you’re in, you’re in!)
It’s been a year of listening, learning and acting, and I’m happy to say that New Orleans was amazing. Here’s the rundown!
- Committee meeting EARLY in the conference: We wanted to ensure the committee meeting happened… you know…BEFORE folks left and ideally on K12 day. Meetings planning committee also ensured ALL the meetings happened before regular conference proceedings.
- Educator Day schedule in advance: This was some great work thanks to our awesome high school programs director. At a large conference it can be confusing what will be of unique interest to K12 educators, so we created a one-pager to make this happen.
- Meet-up prior to the conference: This was my personal project and stemmed from taking on the task of connecting our Barbara Wolff-Reichert awardees with their mentors. I didn’t want to stop there, I wanted to get them connected to the larger community. And why stop there? Let’s get everyone connected! The zoom was really well attended with nearly 30/81 high school registrants
- More opportunities in the K-12 Lounge: I received feedback that the K12 lounge was “awesome” one of the really cool opportunities was an arrangement to have a group of earth science teachers come talk about teaching astronomy in the K12 classroom.
- WM24 WhatsApp group: Also a personal project… finding people can be hard, people are shy, people are introverted etc etc etc. I created a WhatsApp community which will be continued for ongoing connections with subgroups made for each conference.
- Teacher badge stickers: This was great, now we had little flags that identified us as K12 educators. Who doesn’t like a badge sticker!
As part of these initiatives I’ve also sent communications to over 600 high school AAPT members, conducted surveys to get feedback, encouraged the LA teachers to attend WM24 (we had all but one at the meeting!) and I even made a video about how to craft/submit a talk!
As a high school teacher who is also involved in a university partnership, I wanted to learn more about how universities could use NSF funding to support teachers. I contacted the NSF office inquiring how the office might support high school teachers at conferences such as AAPT and learned that their newest program solicitation NSF 23-596 includes the following.
- Partnership development project type that acknowledges the critical role that teachers and school leaders play in undertaking meaningful and potentially transformative research.
- Emphasizes the importance of honoring teachers’ expertise and perspectives as part of a reciprocal exchange of knowledge between researchers and practitioners. Teachers’ knowledge is essential to improving the science of teaching and learning.
- Explicitly addresses the need for project budgets to fairly compensate teachers for their time and contributions, which would include funding to attend and present at national meetings such as AAPT
What to Look Forward To in Boston
We are deep in the midst of making Boston even better. We already have the following sessions planned:
- Alternative Assessment
- Technology in K-12 Labs
- Facilitating Collaboration in K-12
- AI in K-12 Classrooms
- Incorporating Climate Change and Earth Science into Physics Classrooms
- Cross Disciplinary Learning in High School Physics Classrooms
In New Orleans one of our plenaries was Dr. Renee Horton. Dr. Horton is a physicist and Space Launch Systems Quality Engineer at NASA. She was the first black person to receive a PhD in material science and engineering with a concentration in physics at the University of Alabama. She has an incredible story around her journey and at the end of her talk discussed the importance of being culturally responsive educators. Much to by surprise, when she asked who knew what that was, hardly anyone raised their hands. As such, the high school committee and I are committed to getting a session on culturally responsive teaching in Boston. There are some other exciting things in the works as well!
Highlights for Myself…
After a really amazing committee meeting led by Danielle Buggé and Jason Sterlace, we had a fantastic discussion around assessments facilitated by Debbie Andres, our new VP for the board.
Other highlights included Renee Horton’s keynote, who reminded us that “When we stand as gatekeepers we tell our students that those things about their culture and those things about them aren’t important”
and for myself, getting to introduce Katie Mack for her keynote.
Another major highlight for everyone in attendance was the Exploratorium’s session “Hands on Ears on” about sound.
I am really excited to see what we can make happen for Boston. Speaking of which… submissions for talks are already open! Hope to see you there!
Physics.Teacher.Momma. 