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Re: [Phys-l] Increasing student enrollment in Physics



Randy Kelch wrote:

My question is: how can our science department, guidance department and administration improve the amount of interest in physics? I don?t want to create a dog-and-pony show to entice students to take physics; nor do I want to create the Bill Nye effect of a surface understanding. I want to develop true interest among the student body.

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This is my sixth year teaching at a rural school in PA. When I was hired there was only one college prep physics class of 28 students. I also taught math. In time the number of students increased. By my third year I had added a second year physics course, and gave the option of students taking the AP exam. Currently, I have 3 sections of college prep physics, 1 section of AP physics. Next year we will be offering an honors level of physics I, and I expect to have a full teaching load of physics.

I am not sure that I did anything extra special to increase the number of students taking physics. As a science department, together with the guidance department, we started encouraging students to take more than one science course each year. I guess this may not work with block scheduling. Also, we did not restrict specific science courses to a certain grade level, rather we gave our courses prerequisites. For example, my college prep physics course is open to 10-12th grade students that have successfully completed Algebra II. I'm not sure what the exact reason for the increase in physics students, but I am not complaining.

Well anyway, I hope this helps!