Extracurricular activities drive this teacher—and his students

“If you hook the kids, they will do whatever you ask,” says high school physics teacher Mark Vondracek. “If you make it interesting and fun and give them the opportunity to explore, and not just give them worksheets every day but actually do science, that is how you hook them. They get fired up.”

Mark Vondracek. Credit: Office of STEM Education Partnerships, Northwestern University

Vondracek’s students at Evanston Township High School outside Chicago have built basswood bridges, taken part in research at nearby Northwestern University, and analyzed data on exoplanets. Many of his students have won recognition in the Intel Science Talent Search, math modeling contests, and other science and engineering competitions.

But Vondracek says the competitions are “just gravy. The students work on these projects for fun. And if they get a paper sent out, great.” The level of student projects is amazing, he says. “I am convinced that we severely underestimate what teenagers are capable of.”

Vondracek’s 21-year teaching career is studded with nearly two dozen awards. In 2014 he was among 50 finalists in the inaugural year of the annual Global Teacher Prize. Launched by the UK-based Varkey Foundation, whose motto is “changing lives through education,” the $1 million prize is intended to raise the status of teachers. Vondracek and the other finalists met in Dubai in March to discuss practices and policies to improve teaching globally.

Vondracek earned his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for work in experimental high-energy physics. He worked on the Collider Detector at Fermilab. In the process, though, he realized that he was more passionate about teaching than research. Today he continues to devote 60 to 70 hours a week to his students.

Physics Today‘s Toni Feder spoke by phone with Vondracek.

PT: How did you first get into physics? And what drew you to teaching?

VONDRACEK: As far back as I can remember, my parents would tell me that I would not stop asking questions about how things work. In the sixth grade, my teacher knew I was bored with the science and math we were doing, and he actually went and got a high school physics book and gave it to me. Every so often he would stay after school and go through a couple of things with me. I knew I wanted to do something with physics.

My original plan was to get my PhD and probably become a professor somewhere. But in my first year of graduate school I was a TA in an introductory physics class. All the pre-meds were taking it. And I had a blast! It was just great fun working with people and trying to get complicated ideas across in a simple way.

In addition, it was an eye-opener to see that my adviser, who was working toward tenure, put most of his effort and energy into writing publications and grants. I started to wonder, “If I went on to be a professor, would I be able to put my emphasis on teaching? It might be difficult to get tenure that way.”

PT: What was your path to becoming a teacher?

VONDRACEK: As soon as I decided to teach, I was able to get a spot in the Chicago Public Schools system. I was able to get certified within eight or nine months at DePaul University.

PT: What do you teach?

VONDRACEK: Advanced placement [AP] physics and regular physics, and the physics part of “chem–phys,” a chemistry–physics combination class. The chem–phys program is unique—I don’t know of another school in the country that does it quite like we do.

Chem–phys is for advanced juniors and seniors. [The chemistry teacher and I] integrate AP chemistry with calculus-based physics. About every two weeks, we swap the students. So, say the juniors come in and I work with them on a unit in mechanics. Then they work on the next unit in chemistry while I have the seniors for two weeks.

Many of the topics are relevant for both chemistry and physics, and we look at them from both perspectives and find connections. The kids really get a better grasp of the subject. And if they go all the way through, they know me and I know them. And they have a comfort level—nobody is embarrassed to ask questions.

PT: You moved to Evanston Township High School from the inner-city Chicago school where you began your career. What’s the difference?

VONDRACEK: Every school individually has its own culture. And in school districts, there can be huge differences in terms of what they spend per student. They probably spend at least twice as much per student here at Evanston than they do in the city.

Evanston sits on the border with Chicago. There’s money, but over 40% of our kids are low income, and there is an achievement gap between white students and students of color. Evanston is essentially half white and half minority, and too frequently, to this day, you can tell what level a class is just by looking at the students.

At our school, it continues to be a top priority to close the achievement gap.

PT: Describe some of the efforts.

VONDRACEK: One thing I helped to start, about 15 years ago, is called Project Excite. The idea is to start young, support people over a long time, and develop their skills so they are ready to take the more advanced classes if they want to when they are in high school.

The program is changing now, but we used to start with third graders, with cohorts of about 25 kids each year. It was our hook year; you have to get them excited about science and math. Then each year, from fourth grade all the way through middle school, they would do Saturday courses during the school year and a summer program at Northwestern University, mixing in with the accelerated and gifted kids from around the country. By the time they got to high school, at least on paper, the achievement gap should close.

On the whole, the students from Project Excite are doing well at Evanston. They take honors and AP classes. About half the minority kids who come through chem–phys have been through Project Excite. The chem–phys cohorts average 45 to 50 students, but only about five are students of color. The Excite students tend to choose other areas of science to focus on.

PT: That sounds like an effective program.

VONDRACEK: Yes, but the trouble is that it’s expensive. Northwestern has put up the tuition money for the summer activities and weekend classes and has treated the program as a research project. A number of papers have been published on it.

But if we don’t find more money for it, then the last I heard, they will cut out the third- and fourth-grade parts of the program. The kids will start older, but [the program] will include more schools and more kids.

PT: How important are competitions for you and your students?

VONDRACEK: Students don’t necessarily have to enter a contest, but one of my goals is to get every single student to do something outside of the classroom. That’s where I put the majority of my energy. Depending on the year, I work with students for six to eight competitions at the state and national levels.

Some kids get really interested in contests. Others will work on robotics and electronics or want to learn some computer language. Some may write songs or make science videos. Whatever a kid is interested in, we try to get them working on something.

They start out knowing nothing about the topic, and by the time they are done, maybe they give a presentation, maybe a paper, maybe they participate in a contest. And they are talking like graduate students.

PT: What are some examples?

VONDRACEK: Recently some of my students have participated in math modeling contests. The big one is the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, sponsored by COMAP [Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications], an international contest. Teams of four students work together for a period of 36 hours. They get these real-world, open-ended, complex problems that they have to find some viable solution to.

Another example is a national engineering competition, where teams of eight students work collaboratively on different engineering projects.

In addition, we typically have 10 to 20 kids per year who want to work on independent and original research projects. Some go work in a lab at Northwestern, and some work on their own at home. I am a big proponent of basement science.

PT: What are examples of basement science that your students have done?

VONDRACEK: Many of them are with fluids or granular materials. This past year, one student did an experiment and computation on the hydraulic jump. In a drinking fountain, or your kitchen sink, if you let the stream of water hit a hard surface, it flows outward in a smooth circle form. At some point, the water lifts. It goes higher and it becomes turbulent. That’s the hydraulic jump. People have known about it for over a century. In this case the student was looking at what happens if you oscillate the surface up and down: Does this have an effect? It turns out it does, and we have not found this in any of the journals.

We look for everyday things where you don’t need a professional lab or any multimillion-dollar equipment. Where, if you are clever enough, you can find an aspect that hasn’t really been looked at before.

PT: Why do you favor basement science over working in a university research lab?

VONDRACEK: Obviously you learn a ton if you go into a lab and do a project. But you miss out on about half the scientific process. You probably didn’t have anything to do with forming the research question. You probably didn’t have anything to do with researching the background. You probably didn’t have anything to do with setting up the experiment and troubleshooting. In a lab, you might walk into an existing experiment, you might learn how to use the equipment, but primarily you get the data set and go off and do the analysis.

The advantage of working outside of a professional lab, even if it’s not glamorous, is that you experience the entire process. The students work through the frustrations of building the experiment from scratch and getting it to work. And they really get to know if research is something they want to do.

These are things they are not exposed to in their classes. That’s the level I want all of my students to get to. They really learn the stuff. They get beyond memorization and just cramming for a test and then forgetting about it. And they do pretty well: We had over 50 students who were part of teams that had national rankings in competitions this past year.

PT: One hears how difficult it is to attract good people to become teachers, and how undersupported teachers and classrooms are. What can you say about that?

VONDRACEK: It varies tremendously with school district. I will never complain about my salary here. But in a rural school in southern Illinois, teachers are making maybe half of what we make here. Salaries vary wildly from district to district; in some respects, it is education by ZIP code.

PT: You’ve also served on the board of education. What was that like?

VONDRACEK: I was twice elected and served on the board of education up where I live [in Gurnee, Illinois]—not where I teach—for the past eight years. I recently retired from that. [The position] allowed me to see every aspect of how schools and school districts work. I have a deeper appreciation now for what administrators have to do. I especially learned a lot about school financing.

During the recession [of 2008], I had a couple of the hardest nights of my life: We had to vote to cut positions of dozens of teachers and staff. And the demographics of students changed dramatically during my tenure, going from maybe 10% low income to approaching 40%. How do you handle kids who come to school hungry? One of the last things we did was establish school breakfast programs.

PT: Describe the Global Teacher Prize and your involvement in it.

VONDRACEK: Teaching is the lowest-paid profession. It’s not glamorous, and the top students typically don’t aspire to become teachers because they can make more money in other fields. The Varkey Foundation wants to raise the status of the teaching profession. The prize is effectively like the Nobel Prize of teaching. Each year 50 finalists from all over the planet are announced, and each year someone is going to win $1 million.

I was a finalist in the first year, announced in late 2014. Every year the Varkey Foundation runs an education conference in Dubai. It brings together education, political, and business leaders from around the world to focus on how these groups can partner to improve education on a global scale.

PT: You attended the gathering of Global Teacher Prize finalists in March in Dubai. How was it?

VONDRACEK: With that face time, the finalists from the first two years—now named Varkey Teacher Ambassadors—began to decide what we want to work on as a group. We have eight working groups that will, I think, work longer term on education issues. I am with the science education group. We have begun the process of getting resources, best practices, and other initiatives going. Some of the ambassadors had meetings with ministers of education and other policymakers.

In just two years, the Global Teacher Prize has become a big event. This year’s group of top 10 finalists was announced online by Stephen Hawking. And the winner, Hanan Al Hroub from Palestine, was announced via video by the pope during the Dubai conference.

I was able to meet and make friends with an amazing group of people, and I look forward to future work and collaborations with them. This is something I plan to be associated with for the rest of my life.