Teaching Portfolio
I love science, and I also enjoy teaching others about it. I love physics problems, because each is like a riddle. Each problem often has cool tricks to each one that I like to share with others. I also like breaking complicated ideas into "common-sense" chunks, which is an important thing for an effective science teacher to do. I believe I am a very patient person, and I believe everyone has the ability (perhaps not the desire or experience) to succeed, which an important postulate a teacher must presume.
College Teaching
I caught the teaching bug while a graduate student. Since then, I have had a variety of experiences teaching at the college level:
- Introductory Astronomy: I have taught several sevtions of introductory astronomy at local community colleges. My specialization in graduate school was astrophysics and cosmology, so I love to teach astronomy and I have lots of first-hand stories to share.
- Introductory Physics: I've also been the instructor and teaching assistant for introductory physics courses at a community college and state university. I believe my strengths in teaching college physics are my active interest in physics education research, the effort I make to break the material into manageble chunks, and my interest in actively engaging the students during class.
- Laboratory Physics: I have been the head lab instructor for a university's introductory physics lab. I was responsible for updating the lab activities, coordinating with the teaching assistants, coordinating with the lab technicians on equipment, and assisting students. One unpleasant thing I also dealt with was cheating. I followed the official university policy, and had to deal with some really sad dishonest students.
High School Teaching
I taught Advanced Placement physics, regular physics, and remedial science for two years at Southwest High School from 2008-2010. Southwest High is the southernmost high school in San Diego, near my hometown. I was the ONLY physics teacher at the school, an army of one! Of course, the focus is student achievement as measured by test scores, so here are two things I am proud of accomplishing:
- My students ranked #1 in district on 4 of 6 standards on annual CST exam in my first year teaching.
- My students ranked #4 overall in district on annual CST exam in my first year teaching.
In previous years, the school was at the BOTTOM of the rankings for physics. So I think I did something right.
High School Academics Coaching
In the 2009-2010 school year, I was the Academic Decathlon and Academic League coach for Southwest High School. I found myself placed as the leader of one of the best teams in San Diego County. Luckily, I participated in these evens when I was in high school, and was ready to go. We worked hard, usually staying after school for 2-3 hours to prepare for our events. Our amazing team made these great accomplishments:
- Acadmeic Decathlon Third Place overall in San Diego County.
- Academic League Varsity First Place in Metro Division, with 12 consecutive wins.
- Academic League Junior Varsity First Place in Metro Division, with 10 wins, 2 losses.