The first day of high school is usually packed with icebreaker activities, such as the classic “two truths and a lie.” The two truths and a lie I usually share with my students are:
- I am a physics teacher
- I hate science
- I love dogs
The lie, unfortunately, is that I love dogs, they're fine, but I'm not a pet person. In this case, I'm actually a physics teacher who… In a momentI used to hate science; in fact, I spent most of the last decade trying to escape it. But let me clarify that I don't feel the same way anymore.
Although I was never bad at science, I was not interested in it, I had no point in it, and I never got involved in it. I never considered that this might be the root of my disinterest; I just unconsciously assumed that science was discovered centuries ago by old white men who did not look or think like me.
Regardless of my feelings on the matter, when I was in college, my parents pressured me into studying engineering with the promise that it would give me a steady income and a competitive salary. Needless to say, I had a hard time keeping up with the courses and began to hate it. Not only was I not prepared for the levels of math and study skills that were required, but as a 17-year-old with a sensitive heart, I wanted to do something to help my community.
Shortly after, I fell in love with education and volunteered to teach English as a second language outside of my classes. Upon graduation, I attempted to leave science and gain real-world work experience by working in consulting, but ultimately decided to pursue teaching full-time. Because of my engineering background, I was selected for a teaching credential program in physics instead of my first choice, English.
Ironically, it has been through my teaching experience that I have finally come to see the way science drives our daily lives. If I had learned in high school what a motor and a generator were, and seen that they are simply wires around magnets, I think I might have chosen to continue in engineering and spent more time loving science instead of hating it. Not to mention, my experience struggling to like science gives me a unique perspective on a parallel problem I am observing among students in my class.
Many of my students have a deep sense of curiosity, great creativity, and an awareness of the world that I lacked when I was in school. These attributes make them ideal candidates to thrive in science, but the curriculum demands a level of math and reading that makes science itself difficult to grasp. This led me to wonder: what’s so fun about science? Why should my students be interested in it? And what would make them interested enough to see themselves as scientists one day?
The magical world of science
I should point out that I am not the only one asking these questions. Many educators, such as Stanford University Professor Bryan BrownThey have long advocated for a change in the national approach to science education and have worked to develop curriculum content to promote those goals.
Meanwhile, science teachers like me are largely forced to independently modify and introduce standards as schools transition through textbooks and curricula. For example, a performance expectation in our district's program Next Generation Science Standards-The aligned curriculum says:
Students who demonstrate understanding can evaluate the validity and reliability of claims in published materials about the effects that different frequencies of electromagnetic radiation have when absorbed by matter.
During my first year of teaching, I realized that these standards depended on algebra and reading skills that were still beyond the reach of most of my students. Seeing my students’ bewilderment and frustration, I began to reflect on my time in college, when I lacked the foundational math skills and vocabulary to understand the material. I learned to adapt my expectations to what it actually means to teach high school science.
One day during class, I asked my student a question about a topic everyone was familiar with: cell phones. Specifically, I asked: “Can cell phones cause cancer?”
In our initial survey, classes were fairly evenly divided. Most, but not all, had heard of the They claim that their mobile phones could cause cancer. About half of them believed it and the other half weren't sure, so we launched a research unit to understand how cell phones use microwaves and radio frequencies to communicate.
We learned about ionizing and non-ionizing radiation and practiced evaluating Internet sources for credibility. This culminated in a written article Claim, evidence and reasoning Letter explaining his findings to a family member. I loved the enthusiastic discussion and the fun, bright letters this unit generated, but I was nervous about teaching the next unit: electricity and magnetism.
Electricity had always been my weak point when studying physics, and I could never understand things that happened on a scale too small and at a speed too fast to see. After much research, I had the atom models, vocabulary worksheets, and circuit diagrams ready, but I had no way to make this interesting for my students. Rummaging through our old, cluttered science supply closet, I unearthed a dusty box labeled “fun fly stick” that functioned as a Miniature Van-de-Graff Generator.
I started with a demonstration. Then I let the kids take turns with the wand that seemed to magically transform a flat sheet of mylar into a floating, glowing, three-dimensionally patterned orb. I watched their excitement as they tossed it into the air, only to touch it and watch it collapse back into a flat sheet.
After the demonstration, we worked together—over a week of brainstorming, models, labs, and notes—to discover that the magic behind this trick is just electrons. While they are too small for us to see individually, we can still observe their effects and come to understand that it is their movement through wires and magnets that drives much of our daily lives. I focused on making this apparent to my students as we built a speaker, turned a nail into an electromagnet, and used a hand-cranked electromagnetic generator to power light bulbs.
Although I included math and vocabulary, I was more interested in their ability to explain the main idea. To finish the unit, we studied the local electrical grid and analyzed utility bills for a typical apartment in our community, something the kids loved, in a strange but passionate way.
It was during this demonstration that I really began to love science, when I realized that a science teacher could be something like the opposite of a magician. Through this experience, I worked to convince my students that science is not just something that explains the natural world around us, but something that continues to affect the way we live, work, communicate, play, and exist.
Exit ticket
Nearly a decade after my own experiences in high school and college, feeling unenthusiastic and unfazed by the prospect of a career in STEM, I have come to believe that it is vital for my students to learn the real meaning of science and see themselves as future scientists.
Today, I openly share with my students why I hated science and why I now love it. They know that my focus is more on learning how to think and work like scientists than on memorizing formulas. Instead, I lean into questions about climate change, microplastics, PFAs, artificial intelligence, and the future of Earth and space exploration—topics that will undoubtedly be important for students to understand and know about long after they leave my classroom.
For me, the goal of high school science is for students to leave my classroom with the curiosity to ask questions about the world around them, the perseverance and ingenuity to find the answer, and the confidence that they can contribute to shaping the world they inherit. If teachers and caregivers can point out the relevance of science to the world around them, I am hopeful that we can move toward more inclusive and representative decision-making and inquiry.
