Hi Wafami,

Thank you for your response. I appreciate productive disagreement, and it’s invigorating to meet a physics teacher who’s against physics first. You mentioned that your science teacher colleagues are also against physics first. Are you interested in having a Zoom call together sometime to share perspectives?

Since it’s relevant to your response, here’s some additional context on my students: I teach in East Harlem, New York, in a traditional public school. The vast majority of my 9th grade students are 2-3 years behind grade level in math and reading, and many of them take introductory algebra during both 9th and 10th grade in order to master enough algebra content to pass the New York State Regents exam. Because my students have competing obligations outside of school, attendance is often low and I am unable to assign homework. All 9th graders in my school take physics first with me, and they do learn the basic concepts of calculus and leave my class being able to explain the relationship between energy, forces, and motion.

I agree with you that rigor is imperative. Your examples ending in, “Yay, science!” are indeed embarrasing and definitely NOT what physics first should be. I would only engage in such projects if they led to thoughtful construction of theoretical models that students could defend based on prediction, testing, etc. in a repeated cycle. (My approach here is largely inspired by the Modeling Theory of instruction.)

To take your other points in order:

1. Regarding the potential lowering of standards in biology classes: in my experience, biology teachers meet the students where they are and teach the most rigorous biology classes possible — whether they’re 9th graders or upperclassmen. I think a standard high school biology course has plenty of deep material for students to engage in, and if those students are prepared for a bigger challenge because they had physics first, then the school can up-level their course or offer AP biology to students who haven’t taken intro biology (which is fine to do).
2. I agree with you that we should not (indeed, we cannot) take the math out of physics. That said, we should think deeply about what we mean by “math.” My students often struggle to manipulate fractions or solve for a given variable; however by manipulating vectors and by analyzing graphs they can draw sophisticated, meaningful conclusions about our physical world. An example: my students coherently and correctly infer the displacement of an object by using the area under its velocity-time graph. But then they struggle when the graph has decimals instead of whole numbers on its axes. Would you say my students now don’t understand the connection between displacement and velocity, because they struggle with decimals?
3. Regarding the physics-math connection; I believe they are one and the same. In physics, we learn the physical significance of mathematical representations, and we use mathematical representations to illustrate physical phenomena.
4. Physics is both incredibly hands-on and incredibly abstract. (The same goes for math.) We cannot model the world without a hands-on understanding of how it works. I agree with you that some experiments are very hard to do in the classroom. Fortunately, there are myriad computer simulations out there now, though there are caveats when using them.
5. A. See above. B. Yes, I teach my 9th graders basic quantum mechanics (standing waves, energy levels, photon-electron interactions). Our general conversations about types of energy feed directly into chemistry, and I agree that the quantum lessons are key prerequisites for chemistry. C. I disagree that “opposite charges attract and like charges repel” is the only piece of physics that is necessary for chemistry. To me, deep understanding of chemistry requires a sophisticated understanding of energy. In physics, we talk about how, for example, when a ball is falling, gravitational energy converts into kinetic energy. Or when a book slides across a desk, kinetic energy converts into thermal energy. All chemical interactions are exchanges of electromagnetic (chemical bond) energy with heat. Well, there’s also entropy, which students discover in chemistry class, though I briefly address it in physics when we study chaos. D. See above.

I wonder if our disconnect arises because perhaps it’s hard to imagine how physics first might look in practice? I’m happy to share my lessons, and I’d love to learn how you teach, too. As I mentioned above, it’d be great to connect live. Let me know.