Episode 72 – Lynn Jorgensen – Teacher of the year, Gender Equity, Adapting to the changing education landscape
Mark talks with Lynn about her introduction to modeling instruction right at the beginning of her teaching career and how modeling works so well with the specific AP physics areas of focus. Lynn reminds us that when we are the only teachers of a certain STEM subject at our school, it is incredibly important to find community beyond the walls of our school. They talk about gender equity in our science classrooms. As always, Mark asks his guest to share her best modeling tips for teachers. Finally, they talk about adapting to the annual requests for doing some new thing in all classrooms.
Guest
Lynn Jorgensen
After graduating from BYU with a degree in Physics Teaching, Lynn Jorgensen took a few years off to raise her family. She then began her teaching career in 2015 at Gilbert High School. As a singleton teacher finding a community of support and relevant PD became her primary focus. These searches led Lynn to the Arizona section of AAPT and STEMteachersPHX. Serving as vice president for AzAAPT for a number of years. She started working with Arizona State University’s modeling instruction program as she earned her Masters of Natural Science (physics) degree. Working with the Modeling community lead her to serve on the executive board of AMTA. She has also served on the K-12 task force with AAPT, as well as a teacher fellow on the InterAmerican Teacher Education Network.
In every opportunity Lynn has looked for ways to strengthen her teaching skills and to try to reach as many students as she can each year.
Highlights
[4:17] Lynn Orgensen “you might know physics, but modeling helps you understand how to actually get your information across to your students.”
[8:44] Lynn Orgensen “modeling really helps fill that gap with AP to really help students understand how things are connected and that there’s these relationships. Not just an equation, but we can focus on the graphs. There’s multiple forms of representation, which is all of the kind of things AP loves to hear and to see”
[18:27] Lynn Orgensen “there is absolutely something to be said for having a community of like-minded people wanting to just help each other be better.”
Resources
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