Workshops Work for High-School Physics Teachers

Howard Birnbaum’s article, “A Personal Reflection on University Research Funding” (Physics Today, March 2002, page 49 ) and letters responding to it (August 2002, page 12 ) discussed outreach requirements for NSF grants. I hope that summer workshops for high-school teachers remain an acceptable outreach mechanism.

In my state, high-school physics teachers are effectively required to take summer workshops. Physics teachers hunger for a little more content than many summer workshops provide. If we college physics teachers do not provide that content, we have abandoned our high-school teachers.

I had previously opposed workshops on principle, because they were offered as graduate work but did not measure up to serious graduate course standards. Now, I’m much less concerned about that situation. I urge physicists to overlook the fake graduate credit issue and offer their expertise and experience to an audience that has a real appetite for physics. I’ve given three one-week workshops, and estimate that they take about as much preparation time and energy as a new course. I now have a greater appreciation for the work it takes a teacher to keep a class busy eight hours a day, five days a week.