Dr Will Newton

In the US, less that half of high school physics teachers have a degree in physics, and some don’t have STEM degrees. Physics teachers are on of the most urgent highest needs for high schools. I founded and physics education group in 2013, with a focus on supporting the physics content knowledge of existing teachers, and preparing more, excellent physics students. We also do research on practices that effectively support and improve student learning.

Here’s a Spring 2017 article I co-wrote for the APS Forum on Education about our activities.

In 2013 I started developing from scratch graduate level physics courses for high school teachers. For two years I taught them face to face; high school teachers enrolled under the “Funding you Future” program that paid their tuition and is sadly defunct. At the encouragement of a former Dean of the College of Science, I started to make entirely online versions of the classes, to make them accessible for many more teachers. Over the next couple of years, my colleague Dr. Robynne Lock and I developed, from scratch, 6 online Master’s in Physics classes and a complete online MSc in Physics with Teaching Emphasis to house them. This program has been in operation since 2015, and as of Spring 2013 has graduated 60 students. Around 60 students are enrolled at any given time, the vast majority of whom are in-service teachers from across the US, and occasionally beyond.

We wrote an article for the APS Forum of Education describing our Master’s program.

I am PI on a Noyce Scholarship Grant which offers $11,500/year to students who demonstrate outstanding potential to be STEM teachers. We have had the honor of working with a number of talented cohorts of future teachers. We facilitate Noyce scholars attending education conferences, and participating in events which bring together our community of STEM teachers in North-East Texas. We arrange in-service teacher mentors for them from that local community. Graduates of the program regularly receive honors such as teacher of the month or teacher of the year in their districts. The program started in 2018; we guided our student teachers through COVID and as of Spring 2013 we have graduated over 10 new STEM teachers who are all working in local high-needs school districts.

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PhysTEC is a national project run jointly by the APS and AAPT aimed at improving the quality of physics teacher preparation and recruiting and supporting more students to enter the teaching profession. We are active members and partners in many of their activities.

I am PI on the Texas PhysTEC Regional Network which aims to create a community of teacher preparation experts in Texas to tackle some of the substantial state-wide problems that face teachers and their preparation. We developed a website promoting university physics teacher preparation programs, designed to compete with for-profit teacher preparation companies.

In the early 2010s, I helped foster a community of physics high school teachers from rural and urban schools in Northeast Texas. We named the community CAPE - the Community for the Advancement in Physics Education. With the widening of our focus to all STEM teachers, we created the overarching COSINE TX community (the Community Os Science Instructors in NorthEast TX, new acronym days are the most fun days in our physics education group!) We get together 3 times a year for one-day workshops and a summer conference to collaborate on STEM education activities, exploring best teacher practices, developing lesson plans, and making contacts to support each other for the rest of the year. Middle school, high school and 2-year college teachers are welcome.