Teaching

Philosophy

Everyone can do physics, and the physics classroom should be designed with everyone in mind. I approach how I prepare and deliver my courses with this in mind, with the firm belief that students will learn and succeed if they are provided with the tools and support to do so. At the same time, I should acknowledge that not everyone in the physics classroom, particularly at the introductory level, is pursuing physics as a career (and fewer still as an academic career). As such, connecting physics to student interests and values is important for student engagement. My role in the classroom is not to simply dispense knowledge, but to encourage the development in all of my students of their own ways of understanding.

Also important is building trust between myself and the students as well as between students and other students. This means remaining positive and supportive, being transparent about the pedagogical choices I make and why, owning what mistakes I might make, and fostering camaraderie in the day-to-day activities. Someone who feels listened-to and supported is more engaged and more able to learn.

Finally, the atmosphere and attitudes within a single physics classroom can't make changes at a systemic level. It's important that, outside of my courses, I remain engaged in the broader physics community and work with that community in creating a more inclusive and diverse discipline.

Specific approaches

A statement of principle is good; evidence of practice is better. Here are some of the things I do in my courses in pursuit of the ideals mentioned above.

Focus on the person: I open all of my courses with a discussion on "what does physics mean to you?", which leads into a class-wide discussion of where students are coming from and where they hope to go in the context of our class. I ask my introductory students, on their first (ungraded) assignment, to reflect on what they want to get out of our class and what strategies they will employ to achieve such a goal. I have weekly short check-ins with the students, such as a two-sided notecard "what this week was interesting?/what this week was confusing?", which allows me to adapt my delivery. I have a mid-semester survey asking the students about what works for them, what doesn't work, and what other thoughts or concerns they might have. All of these approaches are designed to build a strong working relationship to my students, and to some extent give them a say in how the class develops.

Discussion-focused classes: I keep lecture time to a minimum, and in upper-level courses will only lecture on topics the students specifically request of me. In-class time is best spent talking about and working on the material, in keeping with principles of active learning. This includes small-group work, class-wide discussions, designing and undertaking mini-experiments, and the like. This peer instruction benefits the students more than traditional lecture, and also fosters a sense of belonging and understanding between students.
I ask my students to complete readings prior to class time, and in support of this provide them with my own annotations to the textbook as well as guidelines on how to approach reading scientific texts. We also discuss such approaches on the first day of class and periodically throughout the semester. How to read a textbook, or a scientific work in general, is part of the "hidden curriculum" which we assume students will learn but don't always explicitly teach.

No timed assessment: None of the assignments I give my students have to be completed within a specified block of time (e.g., no in-class exams or quizzes). There are three principal reasons for this.

Accessibility: everyone processes information in different ways and at different speeds, and the stakes and the constrained nature of test-taking is particularly disadvantaging to neurodivergent students. Having all assignments based on due dates allows students to choose the time, pace, and place to complete the work.
Content: a time-limited assessment must either be simple in terms of content (so that the assessed persons can reasonably finish the work), or long in terms of time. In the former case, what are we really testing, then? Take-home work allows for more complex and realistic problems, as well as more time for reflection, which can lead to more insights and absorption of the material. The latter case becomes a question of endurance and connects back to the question of accessibility.
Realism: timed assessment doesn't exist outside of schools. I want to encourage expert attitudes and practices in my students, and in their future careers, an emphasis on collaborative problem-solving, independent research, and developing self-directed work and study habits will be far more valuable.

Labor-based grading schemes: The framework for translating student work into final grades is one of the most important choices an instructor can make when designing a class. Grades are extremely important for students both in the long term (obtaining internships/REUs and jobs) as well as the short term (access to programs, keeping scholarships, membership to academic societies), and as such, the framework chosen dictates student behaviors.
I have experimented with a labor-based scheme, wherein it is entirely the student's documented effort which determines credit for assignments. What is important is not getting the correct answer, but rather expert practices such as framing the problem, documenting steps taken to research and solve a problem, discussing impediments to finding a solution, and suggesting remedies to those impediments. At the upper level, I completely converted a mathematical and computational methods course to a labor-based contract grading scheme, with the "contract grading" portion meaning that students designed their own projects, with clearly-stated goals and deliverables, in order to increase their grade; these projects were in addition to core assignments which all students needed to complete, to the level of documented effort discussed above, in order to preserve their current grade.
The student and teacher outcomes were favorable: the students felt that they could experiment with problem-solving, focus on understanding the material, and pursue their interests, while I was able to give much more in-depth and formative feedback without the pressure of assigning a number to every assignment.

As mentioned above, individual actions can't counter systemic effects. Thus, I stay connected to the larger community and its collective efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion work through my involvement in APS-IDEA, as well as my work on the LISA DEI Committee. Thereby I am given the opportunity not only to work with my peers on broader changes to the direction, composition, and culture of the physics community, but also to learn from a variety of perspectives and incorporate that knowledge back into my classrooms.