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John Burk

Physics Teacher, Assistant Debate Coach, Physics PLT Facilitator


2010-11

Lifelong learners
1. How do you stay current with evolving teaching strategies and methodologies,
model reflective practices, and seek opportunities to grow in your content area
and/or grade level?

Last year, I wrote that I read voraciously and built a strong network with physics
teachers at Westminster and at other schools. I would say I have increased these two
things tremendously in the past year, I now regularly read the blogs of over a dozen
math and science teachers, as well as many other blogs about science, technology and
other topics. Since the creation of the Atlanta Metro Physics Teacher Network, I met
many new colleagues in the Atlanta area, and through twitter and the teaching blog
I’m now keeping, am in touch with more than a dozen physics teachers around the
nation. My work with colleagues at Georgia Tech has also developed into a grant
proposal for a research project to explore new ways of teaching mechanics to physics
students in high school and college using computer modeling.

2. Describe an experiment that demonstrates your willingness to take risks and


openness to engage new ideas.
I think I’m doing this on an almost constant basis, since I am always finding new
ideas through my contacts with other physics teachers and blogs about teaching and
science. It’s rare that I go a single week without implementing something new in one
of my classes.

Three particular new ideas I am working on this year are:


a. Brain Based Research Program for High School Students: Anna Moore and I are
working to develop a research program that will use high school students to
conduct psychology experiments on students in the elementary school to test how
various forms of praise affect risk taking and academic performance. We hope
that this project will captivate some of our ninth grade students, who are very
passionate about science, but not yet able to work in a college lab. We plan to use
this project to take them all the way through the experimental process: developing
and writing a proposal, developing protocols, evaluating data, and presenting
their findings.
b. Student Stress reduction: I discovered the trailer to the film Race to Nowhere,
which describes the overstressed lives of high school students who are jockeying
for admission to the most competitive colleges with little sense of purpose or
enjoyment in their work. I am now working with Jim Justice and other members
of the faculty to raise discussions around this issue, possibly hold a screening of
the film with the director here on campus, and design follow up conversations to
address the issues raised by the film.
c. Innovation Incubator: related to my interest in getting students to focus on leading
innovative lives of reduced stress and greater engagement, I am working on
creating an innovation incubator, which would be an organization designed help
students identify and explore their deep interests, and then develop and
implement projects based on these interests that are innovative and have a lasting
impact on the student and community.

3. How do you collaborate with students and colleagues to further knowledge and
understanding?

I think the Brain Based Learning Research Program I am starting with Anna More
will be a fantastic way to collaborate with students, as they will become our
research partners in this project, and I am excited by the new discoveries we will
make together.

Another way I collaborate with students is the website I’ve created for my classes.
Last year, I simply kept a blog for my classes, this year, I’ve set up a full-blown
learning network, which features a common class blog, but also gives students
their own individual blog. The primary goal of this blog is to get my students
exploring science outside the classroom, by trying challenge problem, writing
about topics that interest them, and generally keeping our discussions going
outside the normal classroom hours (Student participation in the blog does not
factor into their grades at all). So far, the network is a pretty big hit with about two
dozen posts and almost 100 comments so far, students have found everything
from fascinating plant research that suggest plants might be able to recognize their
kin, to a recent discovery that a ringworm shares a brain structure very similar to
humans.

Finally, I collaborate with faculty at Westminster and beyond in many


multifaceted ways. I’m the facilitator of our PLT, which is launching this week,
and has begun some good conversations among the physics teachers about what
we see as essential understandings for our courses. I am constantly meeting
individually with other teachers in physics to share ideas, everything from helping
a colleague to set up the computer to developing a new approach to teaching
pendulums. I have also begun to establish a strong dialogue with other members
of our department, including a couple with whom I have significant pedagogical
differences, which has led to a number of thought provoking conversations. Our
Metro Physics Teacher Network is now more than 40 members strong, meets
monthly, and many useful collaborations have grown out of this, including hires
for both of my paternity leave subs, and a research collaboration with faculty at
Georgia Tech.
Master Teacher Reflection
I continue to be fascinated by Dweck’s Mindset research and the role that metacognition
has to play in my classroom. I think I am now well on my way to re-orienting all of my
teaching practices and curriculum so that it both teaches and encourages students to
develops a growth mindset regarding their intellectual ability. This year, I am developing
a more complete metacognition curriculum consisting of selected readings and follow up
questions on webassign. It is my hope that in so doing, these ideas will have a more
lasting impact on my students.

In addition, I have now fully turned over grading in my classroom to encouraging the
growth mindset. Homework is for practice only; it is assigned, and I give feedback, but it
does not factor into a student’s grade. Grades are based solely on the understanding a
student demonstrates, and they can attempt to demonstrate understanding in a variety of
way and are given a near-unlimited number of attempts to do so, with only the most
recent attempt to demonstrate understanding counting toward that student’s grade.

Community Member
1. I think I’ve already described in detail the many ways in which I collaborated with
colleagues last year. I think I am trying to do this even more by attending
meetings of the Campus Corps, and working with Jim and Frances
to discuss issues of student stress and intellectual engagement.
2. I am continuing to coach the novice debate team this year. With a year under my
belt I feel much more confident to instruct the novice debaters, and think that I
will begin to take more of the day-to-day responsibility for instructing the novice
debate team.

Strengths
• Passion for learning new ideas and engaging students by doing science.
• Desire to teach students a love of learning that empowers them to make a positive
difference in the world right away.
• Ability to connect ideas across disciplines and use technology to accomplish my
goals.

Challenges
• Maintaining my energy level and all of these projects with the impending birth of
a baby daughter in October.
Last Year’s goal
Last year’s goal was to set up a class blog and get my students to be active users of it. I think I
mostly accomplished this goal, though participation died off near the middle of the second
semester. I think part of my problem in accomplishing this was not giving my students enough
freedom to explore ideas of interest to them, and instead requiring them to document things from
class discussion.

Primary Goal
My primary goal for 2010-11 is to develop my personal teaching blog as a place to document what
I’m doing in the classroom, raise questions about my teaching, and collaborate with teachers
around the globe. I’ve already written ~40 posts, and found the blog to be an incredible resource
for helping me to explore ideas for lessons and reflect upon my teaching.

This blog can be viewed at:


http://quantumprogress.wordpress.com

Secondary Goal
I would like to continue to develop the learning network I’ve set up at burkphysics.com, as well
completing some of the other projects I’ve listed above (brain research group, innovation
incubator, metacognition curriculum).

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