Back to the Classroom: Recruiting New High School Teachers

Very few high school Physics teachers in Tennessee have undergraduate degrees in Physics. To encourage Physics majors to consider high school teaching as a career, for a group of Physics majors we organized an intensive 2-day teacher's training workshop on radio astronomy at nearby Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI), a STEM education center and astronomical observatory. At the workshop, students were given intensive training in lesson plan development, as well as a review of the necessary concepts in Physics and Astronomy. These students then used this training as `learning assistants' in an introductory class at ETSU, under the supervision of an experienced faculty member. Third, the students presented this material to local high school classes. The goal of this project is to `break the ice' for many Physics majors, and provide them with the confidence to consider high school teaching as a career option.