Feeling isolated? Looking for other teachers to connect with outside of your building or district? Learn how we built a thriving, local physics teacher network from scratch in the Columbus, OH region. We’ll share recruitment strategies, intentional norms, and organizational tools used to sustain our community for the last two years. Join us to get some ideas and support—if we can do it, you can too!

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will hear about how we approached building and sustaining a community of teachers we did not know, and walk away with strategies for how to do it in their own context.

SPEAKERS:
Amy Pochodylo

Quantum science-related career paths are rapidly increasing and reshaping curriculum needs. High school students need access now to quality quantum resources to be prepared for their future. Engage in a hands-on introduction to the PhET Interactive Simulations project’s Quantum Education Initiative, which includes a growing suite of free, research-based simulations and classroom-ready activities designed for high school physical science. Participants will engage as learners with newly updated simulations (Photoelectric Effect, Alpha & Beta Decay, Models of the Hydrogen Atom, Quantum Wave Interference, and others), then work through two model activities from the initiative database. Leave with lesson plans, student handouts, and implementation tips you can use next week. You will also learn how you can join the community for this multi-year effort.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will leave ready to bring quantum science into physics, chemistry, or Earth science classrooms using free, classroom-tested simulations and ready-to-use activities from PhET’s Quantum Education Initiative.

SPEAKERS:
Brett Fiedler, Katherine Perkins

"This session will demonstrate a classroom-tested approach for teaching series and parallel circuits through hands-on materials, mathematical reasoning, and digital simulations. Participants will experience how a simple circuit kit can introduce key concepts such as brightness, current distribution, and the effect of removing a bulb in a series circuit. The session will also highlight how students use calculations to determine total resistance, voltage drops, and current flow. The presenter will show how the PhET Circuit Construction Kit simulation supports verification, modeling, and deeper conceptual understanding. The session will end with a look at a culminating engineering design challenge where students design and build a functional house prototype using series and parallel circuits. An optional competition format where students present their prototypes to judges for evaluation will also be discussed. "

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn a complete, classroom-tested way to teach series and parallel circuits using hands-on kits, math reasoning, PhET simulations, and a student house‑prototype design challenge.

SPEAKERS:
JOANNA MARIE DE BORJA, Kelly Feille

Join us for an engaging workshop that brings cutting-edge particle physics into your classroom. Explore how scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN tackle fundamental questions about the universe—and how their discoveries connect to high school science. Through hands-on activities from the NSF-supported QuarkNet program, you'll experience ways to integrate real data, current research, and core physics concepts into your curriculum, all aligned with national science standards.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will leave with examples of standards-based classroom activities that link cutting-edge physics research to core concepts taught in high school physics and physical science.

SPEAKERS:
Kenneth Cecire, Shane Wood

Contact forces might be all around us, but the juicy nuggets in this unit help them make sense. This session helps you uncover key features in Carnival of Collisions that make it easier to plan, teach, and guide students through puzzling ideas like balanced and unbalanced forces, motion, and collisions. We will walk through the built-in teacher tools, prompts, and routines that support deep thinking and epic classroom moments. Whether students are knocking down bowing pins or smashing watermelons, you will leave with ready-to-use moves that help the learning stick.

TAKEAWAYS:
Discover classroom-ready tools in Carnival of Collisions that help students explore contact forces and investigate what really happens when objects crash, bounce, or come to a sudden stop.

SPEAKERS:
Spencer Martin

PhET Interactive Simulations are free, high-quality, interactive science and math simulations that are perfect for any science classroom. Whether you are new to PhET or a seasoned user, this session will help you explore and navigate the extensive PhET resources, including activities, teacher guides, teaching strategies and more. Presented by U.S. PhET Simulations Fellow Vanessa Wentzloff, attendees will walk away with a deep understanding of all that PhET has to offer. Teachers will be able to select a simulation aligned to their curriculum and begin planning an engaging lesson centered on inquiry and discovery that they can use in their classroom right away. This session is perfect for teachers looking to boost student engagement, simplify complex topics, and walk away with something practical they can use immediately.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will learn how to effectively navigate and use the full range of PhET resources, including simulations, activities, teacher guides, and instructional strategies and leave with practical ideas for integrating these tools into their classroom.

SPEAKERS:
Vanessa Wentzloff

Do you teach multiple subjects (we do!) want an easy-to-implement tool that works for all your classes? Wish every student could explain the thinking behind their work? Do you spend way too long giving feedback that isn’t read? Need students to spend more time on areas they haven’t mastered yet? Or maybe administrators are telling you “use AI,” but you’re not sure what to do? Two tools can do just that – Snorkl and Brisk Teaching! Snorkl allows students to submit their work and gives you the option to have them verbally explain their thinking - Snorkl’s AI will provide the feedback! Brisk Boost uses an AI chatbot to question students until they’ve met their learning targets, based on an artifact (video, PDF, image, etc.) you’ve uploaded. You’ll get (A) a quick overview of what the tools do (and what they don’t that I wish they did!), (B) examples of student work from multiple disciplines, and (C) time to try activities we’ve created and to create your own to use in your classroom.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn to leverage Snorkl and Brisk Boost to automate meaningful feedback and deepen student reflection. You'll discover how each tool uses AI in different ways, from using student-written and verbal work to provide feedback, to using AI chatbots to ensure mastery of learning targets.

SPEAKERS:
Brandi Argentar, Andy Fitz

This is a poster I am working with the DESC STEM group: Poster explores how cognitive dissonance can transform student misconceptions into powerful learning opportunities in 9th grade physics. The implementation began with a “failed” free-fall lab in which students strongly argued that heavier balls fall faster than lighter ones. Rather than correcting students immediately, the lesson leveraged prediction, experimentation, and evidence-based discussion to challenge deeply held beliefs about gravity and motion. Students conducted investigations using balls of different sizes and masses, then analyzed surprising results showing that objects fall at nearly the same rate. The session also highlights how connecting physics concepts to physical therapy careers increased relevance and engagement through the use of weighted balls and household resistance tools. Attendees will learn how productive struggle, scientific argumentation, and career connections can deepen learning.

TAKEAWAYS:
Students learn physics more deeply when evidence challenges their misconceptions. In this investigation, cognitive dissonance transformed a “failed” lab into a memorable learning experience, increasing engagement, scientific reasoning, and conceptual understanding through hands-on experimentation.

SPEAKERS:
Eileen Malick

NSF NOIRLab’s educational programs serve to inspire future professional scientists, engineers, and technologists and to engage the general public in a deeper understanding of our Universe. The goal of NOIRLab’s education programs is to enhance the science literacy of all students and to demonstrate the value of astronomical research to society. NOIRLab’s educational staff have developed a variety of educational resources that are available free to educators and the public. Learn about our programs including the Teen Astronomy Cafe To Go, 88+ Constellations, and the Multiwavelength Universe. These programs bring authentic astronomical data and images to the classroom. Our citizen science program Globe at Night lets students gather data about light pollution that is used in authentic research. All educator materials have been designed to support the Next Generation Science Standards and are available in multiple languages.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn about a variety of free educational programs and online resources available for their classrooms that bring the excitement of NOIRLab science to their students including using authentic data in the classroom and citizen science.

SPEAKERS:
Robert Sparks

In this session, we will share our motivation for adopting competency based grading and the reasons we will never go back to traditional, “average of total points,” grading. As part of the session, we will ask participants to consider what they believe grades communicate and examine their current grading practices to determine if their stated priorities match their grading practice. We will offer advice and suggestions for a smooth implementation of a competency based grading system including how to use generative AI to reduce your workload and make the writing process more efficient, and win over colleagues, administrators, and parents. Finally, we will share our standards for our chemistry and physics courses as well as examples of how our integration of the 3D NGSS standards with and have improved our classroom instructional practices, homework alignment, and assessments.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn the advantages, philosophy, and basic mechanisms of 3D, competency-based assessment and grading in the high school science classroom utilizing the NGSS and generative AI

SPEAKERS:
Gary Pritts, Amanda Horan

I'm a Physics teacher, and over the last six months I've been building something I didn't realize I would be capable of building. This 1-hour session is a chance for other teachers to see firsthand what is possible before deciding whether to invest the time and small expense to set the tools up themselves. Most teachers do not yet realize the kind of tooling that has become accessible through AI coding agents that take instructions in plain English rather than in code. I have built a small but growing curriculum platform that generates problem sets, analyzes my course through different pedagogical lenses, and writes narrative feedback for each of my students after every assessment. I built it on my kitchen table with an AI coding agent called Claude Code and plain-English prompts. For the full hands-on installation experience, see my 2-hour workshop.

TAKEAWAYS:
This 1-hour session is, honestly, the demo I wish someone had shown me before I went down the AI rabbit hole alone. This is the working-teacher version of AI tools, not the marketing. See what is actually possible right now in a real classroom—no AI slop here.

SPEAKERS:
Brendan Wischweh