In my previous school district, I was the only teacher teaching a physics course with set, district-wide learning outcomes. These same outcomes were also taught in physics classrooms at the other high school in our district. But at our school, I was one of the 2 physics teachers. The other teacher taught the AP-level physics courses. So, in many ways, I had opportunities to incorporate strategies I believed were best for learners and that I found worked best for them without being seen as out of alignment with anyone in our building. My amazing friend and one of my teaching philosophy goddesses, Katie Novak, stated the following misconception about alignment: All teachers must deliver instruction in the exact same way. True alignment, she says, is about shared goals, rigor, and outcomes. Thank you, Katie! Katie has taught me to truly believe that learner variability is the rule, not the exception. I encourage you to take 10 minutes to listen to Katie Novak explain it in the ...
We are a few days away from spring break. When we come back from break, I will have 4 weeks with my AP Physics students before they take AP Exams in Physics 1 and 2. After the exam, we will have roughly 5 weeks together before the end of the school year. Now, I will have no problems covering the content before the AP Exam in either class. I will definitely be able to teach them all the content. The issue I have is that there will not be enough time for them to actively learn the content before the exam date. If all of my students were taking the AP Exam, it would be easier to focus the students on a common goal of this exam. But, only about 50% of my students are taking the exam. It would be my dream to be able to create multiple paths in the AP classroom, but I’m not there yet. So really the frustration is coming down to two areas. The first is the amount of content students need to master in a short amount of time to be read...