Krystina Williamson, 2018 AAPT Teacher Professional Development Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: Columbia University Barnard College

I am a rising junior at Barnard College of Columbia University. I’m pursuing a major in Physics, with a minor in Urban Teaching. I believe that education is a key component in a person’s journey to becoming the best citizen, the best thinker, and the best person that they can be. I hope to create a world where every student, regardless of background, can gain a comfortability with and an appreciation for physics. My immediate goals are to teach high school physics, but I would love to engage in educational research, educational policy, or educational technology in the future.

When I am not working on problem sets, I tutor undergraduate physics and help my peers edit their essays as a Writing Fellow. I also spend a good portion of my time missing the cuisine and weather of my home, the San Francisco Bay Area. I am beyond excited for the adventures I’ll have and people I’ll meet this summer!

Internship

Host: American Association of Physics Teachers

Project

Abstract

Teachers and students can feel powerless when it comes to their capability to change physics education. However, through my internship at AAPT, I’ve seen teachers and students changing physics education in their classrooms, through local policy, and in research. I experienced, cultivated and participated in education policy, (through the AAPT/AIP Master Teacher Policy Fellows), education technology (through the Computational Modeling Workshop in Physics First), and education research (through Step Up 4 Women). During this internship, I not only learned how to become a strong teacher, but also how to better advocate for myself, my students, and my physics community. I look forward to applying the skills and knowledge I have gained through this internship towards future grant projects, future outreach programs and workshops, and future initiatives at my college to support physics students and physics faculty.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week One: “Hello! Nice to meet you!” Rinse & Repeat

“You’re majoring in physics? Groooossss.” - Friend from Elementary School.

Dear Internet,

My first week can best be described by a baby I met in a Target.

While his mother checked out, he sat in his stroller bewildered at the world around him. For about five or seven minutes he said hello and goodbye to everyone who passed him, only pausing to look around at, what seemed to be, a completely new environment to him.

If Target is D.C.--then I’m the baby.

Not only have I spent this week familiarizing myself with the subway system, I’ve also been familiarizing myself with the people involved in the program. That includes the other 14 interns, the SPS staff, the AAPT staff, education researchers, professors and deans. I’ve probably met more people in the past four days than I would if I were to walk down a busy street in midtown Manhattan. (I’m only exaggerating a little bit!!)

I’ve been struggling to correctly explain what my internship role is--there’s such a wide variety of things I’ve done and will be doing. This week I helped my mentor, Rebecca, edit a grant proposal, I’ve been on conference calls with NASA’s education departments, college deans, and education researchers to discuss future projects with AAPT, I’ve begun organizing for the three conferences I’ll be attending this summer, and I’ve been putting together activities and lessons for future outreach events. I have learned so much, and I have nine weeks to go!

This blog post is a mere attempt to describe my week. Other notable moments are below:

• Meeting and talking to Jack Hehn, who is the retired AIP Education Director, founder of this internship program, a past physics teacher, and one of the most genuine people I’ve ever known.

• The tour of capitol hill Rebecca took me on.

• Learning the origins of the SPS spherical cow logo.

• Traveling across the country with three suitcases and only two hands--each of which had badly bruised and swollen pointer fingers.

• Seeing my first lone firefly.

• The beauty of the forest-swampy areas surrounding College Park, Maryland.

• The many failed attempts to get a pillow in a week where all the other interns of D.C. are also looking for pillows.

• Eating at Roti Mediterranean--twice. :)

• Discovering Sam’s wicked dance moves.

• Making banana bread for my roommates.

I continue to be so excited and honored to be here, and I look forward to turning my new knowledge into better education and policy for the communities I care about. I’ve always felt alone in my passion for physics education. There aren’t many physicists in this world--so you can imagine the number of black women physics educators.

But I think that somewhere between the cubicles of AAPT, the carpeted subways, and the other interns, I might have found home.

Until next week,

Krystina

Week Two: High Ponytails

“Pro Tips for Women in STEM: Sometimes you need to put your hair in a high pony to feel like a cheerleader--because in machine shops full of men you gotta cheer yourself on.”

- Maria Macardle

Dear Internet,

I’ve been thinking a lot about physics and culture.*

During orientation last week Brad half-joked about his fear of his degrees being taken away. The recent graduates in the room agreed--they had also had moments where they asked themselves, “What if they made an error in awarding me this?” “Was my college sure that I earned this?”

During a nighttime outing this week to see the Washington Monument, and again in our group chat, the interns and I agreed that imposter syndrome was rampant throughout the physics community. And that’s just the physics culture alone--there’s also the layers of being a woman, of being a person of color, of being low-income, of being first generation, of existing outside the gender binary--the list continues.

As a black woman educator, I’ve also now begun to ask myself, how does/can the racist and sexist history of science, especially physics, reproduce itself in the classroom? What biases do I have about the capabilities of my students based upon whichever cultures they belong to? How do we battle these biases and toxic cultures, which are often so deeply intertwined with institutions of school, government and academia?

A huge chunk of my time this week was spent editing a grant proposal to support underrepresented physics teachers, and by extension, the communities they teach in. As a black female physics educator--it’s an incredibly important and personal proposal for me.

It was probably the most tedious and (surprisingly?) difficult thing I did this week. But as I edited each word, and began my fifth, sixth and seventh re-reading of the proposal, I reminded myself that this was my small way of dismantling the toxic structures within physics. Hopefully the next generation of physicists won’t have to worry about their well-deserved, hard-earned degrees and successes being taken away from them.

On a lighter note, last weekend I had some amazing ginger eggs with tea-cured salmon when I went to brunch with the other interns. Who would’ve known that that was something you could do with salmon? (And amongst those of you who knew, why didn’t you notify me?) I also went to the Pride Parade (pictured below), and had a couple of movie nights with the interns this week.

Now that I’m fully comfortable with the metro system, I’m going to be a bit more daring in my adventures in the upcoming weekend. This weekend my close friends, Camille and Joy, will be visiting me in D.C. And in about thirty minutes, I’ll be going to the infamous jazz in the park. Essentially, this weekend is gon’ be lit.

I’ll be sure to report back, as always,

Krystina

*Okay, to be honest, I’m low-key always thinking about physics and culture. Sue me.

Week Three: Lively, Lovely, Lots of Food I Didn’t Have to Pay For

“When people come and say, ‘I hate math’, they’re saying, ‘I hate my mathematical experience’, right?...They’re saying, I was devalued in this experience.” - Winger & Young, 2018

Dear Internet,

What moves like a cockroach but is the size of a mouse? I don’t know fam’, but I saw it this past Saturday at midnight.

Although the decision to pick my friends up from Union Station at midnight was a poor one, the decision to have them over this past weekend wasn’t. Showing them around D.C, despite the heat, was a fun break from my work week. I didn’t enjoy the vermin and bugs I saw on a 2am walk, but hey, it was 2am and this is a swamp.

The rest of my week was lively and lovely.

I spent some of my time at SciCon, prepping for Astronomy on the Mall, and learning more about Step Up for Women and the AAPt/AIP policy fellowship. I also spent a good portion of my time with a group called Math Teachers Circles, a group of math educators and mathematicians who develop their math skills through rich and in depth math problems.

One morning we played a game that reminded me of Spock playing 3D Chess. On another day, we explored the patterns in making knots, and connected it to mathematical expressions to then use math to help us untie the knot.

We also had a workshop on Mathematics Equity, which, if you remember my previous blog post, is a topic near and dear to my heart. We were asked to remember how, when and which students we left out in our classrooms. To say that I was touched by the workshop and the subsequent conversations would be an understatement.

I made a lot of good memories over food this week—genuine conversations with math teachers over chicken and waffles, getting to know AAPT staff over sandwiches, bonding with the interns and SPS staff over bougie crab cakes* one night, and other ravioli the next day.

One of my favorite shared meals this week was with my suite mate, Phoebe. We ate at a burger place and shared a milkshake, and talked about how we were going to change the world. I told her about my passions and she shared hers—and we asked each other big questions about our world that no one within the next couple of generations is likely to solve. We mostly thought about what we could do to make this world better.

My mentor, Rebecca, continues to check in on me to make sure my internship is going well, to see if there’s other things I’m interested in doing. She always asks me what goals I have for this internship—and I always give her the same answer; to learn so that I can be the best educator for my community.

I’ve also learned that I’m not alone.

Before this internship, I didn’t completely grasp the depth and/or existence of communities of scientists and educators and mathematicians and women. But in these past few weeks, I’ve seen these communities in action.

It’s given me a sort of ease. Before this internship I felt lonely in my goals—I didn’t know many other scientists, much less science educators. In these past couple of weeks I have met so many people, all working to make education better.

It’s comforting to know that the solutions to the worlds problems won’t fall solely on my shoulders. :)

Anyways, I’ll talk to you later,

Krystina

*Did I mention that these crab cakes were had ON A BOAT? A fancy one, at that. Yeah, that’s right. Let the jealousy sink in.

Week Four: The Calm Before The Storm

“Okay okay okay, so what if, let’s just imagine, that this vase and the orbeez was actually a bowl of cereal and if it was a bowl of cereal and you gave it to me I would be like wait theres’ nothing in here and then I would take a bite and I would be like OH MY GOSH THERE’S SOMETHING IN HERE and then...”

- The joyful babble of a child after experimenting with the optics of water beads

Dear Internet,

This week (and probably next week) was the calm before the storm. I wrote my first grant proposal, and created, printed out and gathered a slew of materials for the upcoming conferences and fellowships I’ll be helping Rebecca with. On Wednesday we had dinner at an Italian Restaurant where I ate a very decadent and delicious tiramisu.

The highlight of my week, by far, was Astronomy on the Mall. This year we had it indoors due to weather, but there was a solid turnout nonetheless. Rebecca and I used orbeez, also called water beads, to explore optics. When placed in a vase with water, the orbeez are almost invisible. Many families passed by our table, wondering why we “just had a vase of water”. Their excitement and curiosity when they reached into the vase and held an orbeez affirmed my dedication to physics education.

One teenager was so shocked by the optics of the orbeez, that he went out into the crowd and brought his 9-person family back. For a handful of minutes each family member preceded to look through the orbeez, wondering why the world became flipped and wondering why they disappeared in the water.

The giggly shrieks of children fascinated with science was a familiar sound that evening.

On Friday, I met up with my tenth grade English teacher, who is visiting DC. We ate at what is becoming my favorite restaurant, Founding Farmers, and saw the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. This might be a controversial opinion, but the Washington Monument doesn’t seem as impressive when right next to the base. I’m much more in awe of it when gazing across the D.C. skyline.

Hasta luego,

Week Five: Highkey Bawled in a Museum

“The outside world told blacks that we weren’t anything...but our schoolteachers said it wasn’t so. They believed in us, and we, therefore, believed in ourselves. " - Marian Wright Edelman

Dear Internet,

This week was a busy week. I almost forgot to tell you about it! On Saturday I went to the National African Museum of Art with my roommate, Elon. We ate delicious ramen and devoured fancy gelato before it melted in the heat. We also had a mini photoshoot in a nearby garden, where passersby cheered us on. On Sunday, Amanda was gracious enough to (1) wake up at 6:30am to get eight tickets to the famed African American Museum of Natural History and (2) ask if I wanted to come along.

Of course, I went.

It was an amazing experience, to say the least. To have a museum dedicated to the African American diaspora means the world to me. I was especially touched by reading the thoughts of Sojourner Truth, Phillis Wheatley, and Benjamin Banneker. I admire their ability and dreams to live and thrive in a country that was so hateful towards them. I got a bit emotional and teared up at least three times while going through the many exhibits.

At work I spent my days hurriedly planning and organizing for all of the events to come in the next weeks, all of which are back to back. For the next two weeks I’ll be in Chicago (and then Miami, and then back to Chicago) for a Computational Modeling Workshop and a Step Up For Women Conference. After that ordeal, I’ll be running around DC with the AAPT Policy Fellows. And immediately after that it’ll be the AAPT Summer Meeting.

I don’t think I’ll be sitting back at my office until August 6th, a full month from now.

On Wednesday there was no work as it was the 4th of July. I generally don’t celebrate Independence day (mostly out of laziness) but I figured if there was anytime to celebrate the 4th of July, it would be now, in the nation’s capital.

Me and a few other interns made our way to the Capitol Concert, where Pentatonix, Welcome to Margaritaville, The Temptations and The Beach Boys performed. Shortly afterward we watched the fireworks light up the sky.

Other notable mentions this week:

• The little boy arguing with his mom at Target on why she should get him fruit snacks. “Porque es bueno para usted...pues, es bueno para mi, y, ES BUENO PARA TODO EL MUNDOOOOO”

• The birds who hang out in the tree next to our dorm, and curiously look into our dorm from the outside windowsill.

• The father in front of us at the concert who danced to every song and every artist (yes, everything from the classical music, country music, pop music and Motown music).

• Purposely pronouncing everything wrong in the Safeway

• Finishing To Kill a Mockingbird--now amongst my favorite books of all time.

Excited to tell you all about my adventures in Chicago & Miami,

Krystina

Week Six: Two Cities, One Week

“Physics is a way of thinking.”

Dear Internet,

On a Sunday evening I found myself being told by google maps to walk across a river.

In the places I’m from, crossing bodies of water via walking typically aren’t the most fun experience. The sidewalks are what I’d colloquially call “janky”, or are non-existent. I was hesitant, but also eager to sleep in the hotel bed that I knew was waiting for me. So I followed Google Maps, and I crossed the river.

I was amazed at the dimly-lit river, the amazement would grow on me in the handful of days that I stayed in Chicago. I’ve been to many cities; San Francisco, New York City, Miami, and recently, Washington D.C.

Out of all of those, Chicago ties with San Francisco for prettiest.

In the brief 2.5 days that I was here this week, I was able to go see Cloud Gate, colloquially known as the Bean. I also visited Lurie Gardens, atte my first deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati’s and ate my first Chicago dog from Portillo’s. I dined at the Chicago French Market (many times) and walked around the city exploring. I walked around 40,000 steps between Monday and Wednesday.

I was brought to Chicago to participate and help organize a professional development workshop that combined physics modeling practices and coding. The first week I shyly got to know the other participants, all of whom taught at least one physics class. The first group of teachers I worked with had one teacher who had one year under her belt—the other had nearly two decades worth.

The first unit was about modeling energy, and so we played with poppers and hockey pucks and roll-back cars. We created a diagram I had never used before, system schemas, to demonstrate what we thought was in the system of whatever phenomena we were observing.

Most of the workshop time was spent writing our findings on a whiteboard, and the other half was spent discussing and sharing our findings with the class. E switched between student mode, where we looked at the activities through the lens of ninth graders, and teacher mode, where we asked deep questions to help us consider how we’d implement the activities in our own classrooms.

On Wednesday evening, I found myself in a new city, about 1,300 miles away from Chicago, at the southernmost tip of the United States.

Rebecca and I flew to Miami for a brief two-week conference for Step Up 4 Women. At this conference, AAPT, APS, the physics education researchers at FIU, Master Teachers, and Ambassador Leaders would meet to present their findings and thoughts on their work for the past year, and to brainstorm next steps.

I wish I could accurately put into words what it was like to have so many people dedicated to thinking about the representation of women in physics. As a woman in physics at a women’s college, I think often about the lack of women in my major, especially in comparison to other sciences, like biology, where the labs are overflowing with students.

I met some of the most dedicated physics researchers, physics educators and physics educators advocators. The education research team included undergraduates, graduate students, doctorate students, post-doc’s, and professors at FIU. This group of people completely changed my perceptions of what researchers were. Before this conference, I didn’t have any strong intentions of going to graduate school—it was something I’d do if only absolutely necessary. But I have since become so enthralled and excited with the questions that physics education researchers ask. When Zahra, a professor at FIU, light-heartedly asked me when I was coming to FIU for my graduate degree(s), I was very close to telling her to expect my application within the next year. Alas, I know that I want to teach physics before I make any big decisions on what further degrees I want to get next (if any).

After Miami, I went back to D.C., where I re-connected with the other interns who I had been out-of-touch with for a week. (Which sounds like a short amount of time, but considering we had been spending nearly every other minute together for the past five weeks, being gone for a week seems like a looooong time.)

It’s been an excellent week, to say the least. I’m thankful for this weekend in D.C, but I’m also looking forward to going back to Chicago, to continue learning about computational modeling, and delve into Pyret.

Krystina

Week Seven: Scientists Get Confused and Frustrated Too

“We are scientists, and often times, scientists don’t know where they’re going sometimes. It’s important to set that tone in a physics classroom.”

Dear Internet,

After being in Chicago and Miami, I came back to D.C. to briefly spend my weekend with the other interns. I spent a majority of those two days getting some much needed rest--I won’t be getting a weekend to myself until August.

Most memorable is the getting Ethiopian food with some of the other interns. For about half of the interns who went, it was their first time eating ethiopian food. I can’t describe the glee and shock on their faces when the piles of food arrived at our table, but I will provide a picture of us all below. That sunday night, after a couple of delays and cancellations of my initial flight, I found myself on a plane ride going back to Chicago to continue the Computational Modeling Workshop.

This time around I had a full week to explore Chicago, delve into modeling and pyret, and connect with the other participants. I listened to healthy debates and theories about the best order to teach physics in (the traditional way of teaching forces first isn’t always the most effective!), and learned different models to represent, say, acceleration.

What surprised me most was how engaging each day was. You would think that I, a physics major halfway done with her program, as well as someone who took a total of four physics courses in high school, would be bored with the physics geared towards ninth grade students. It happened to be the exact opposite--the modeling methods re-invigorated my love for physics, and deepened my current understanding of elementary topics like acceleration, or gravity.

Learning Pyret also pushed me to be comfortable with getting things wrong, and with failing, and with the general unknown. We used Pyret to test out phenomena--and as we were learning Pyret for the first time, the teachers and I struggled a lot with it. But as one teacher noted, and as I quoted above, “scientists don’t know where they’re going sometimes”. This is something I hope to establish in my classroom and in other physics education spaces--failure and frustration is often part of the learning process, and it’s important to be comfortable with that, and use it to propel you forward instead of dissuade you.

I’m excited to bring what I learned in that workshop to my student teaching next fall. But until then, I’m considering test-running some of the language and activities used in this workshop to support the physics workshop/recitation that I run at my college. A lot of the freshman taking first year courses come in with many physics misconceptions (like the direction of velocity vs the direction of acceleration in circular motion, or the idea of equal and opposite forces), so I hope that the modeling ideas can help them better understand physics phenomena.

Two workshops/fellowships/conferences down...and two more to go.

See you later, post the AAPT/AIP Policy Fellowship,

Krystina

Week Eight & Nine: Failing Forward

“Failing forward.” - Matthew Peterie

Dear Internet,

I just want to briefly highlight a phrase I learned this week--it’s called “failing forward.” Failing forward is an engineering principle, it’s the idea that through learning we will make mistakes, but learning from them, and hence, still moving forward. The past two weeks have been so busy, and I haven’t had much time to write, so I’m going to combine them into one. Even so, I’m sure that this blog post won’t be a sufficient recalling of my the past two amazing weeks--so many amazing things have happened!

In week eight of this internship, the AAPT/AIP Policy Fellowship started. I spent Saturday and Sunday getting to know the policy fellows, especially the NYC member, as I served as her temporary partner. (The other half of the NYC team was in India until Tuesday). Education policy is a field that was definitely a little scary for me--and it turns out it’s a little scary for the teachers as well.

During that week we went to so many associations and talked to many people, like the Department of Education, National Association for the Education of Young Children, the National Governors Association--and these are just a handful of places out of the many. I went home each day exhausted (hence this late blog post). I’m so proud of how much the teachers have learned in the past eight days. I’m honored to know them, and to have learned about education policy alongside them.

Immediately after the policy fellowship there was the AAPT summer meeting--the biggest one yet. At this meeting around 1,400 attended between Sunday and Wednesday. I manned the K-12 Teacher Lounge with Alice, author of many digikits, and Justine, the intern in my position last summer. I met teachers from all over the country, and even a handful of professors from countries like Germany. During the summer meeting, I also went to the Step Up 4 Women workshops, and the undergraduate poster session. Although exhausting, it was a great time. If you’re reading this blog post, anonymous person on the internet, you should go to the next AAPT meeting.

After the AAPT meeting, I spent most of my day running errands and sleeping (I’ve been working the past two weekends!) At the end of the week, however, we saw Sam’s presentation, as he’s leaving early for another conference. Unsurprisingly, his presentation was excellent, and definitely set the bar high for our presentations next week. At this meeting we also all got to meet Dr. Mather (pictured below), who gave me some great tips on books to read.

Next week is my last week in D.C., and I don’t know how to feel about that yet...

Su favorito,

Krystina

Week Ten: And So It Ends

“Not only can teachers be great leaders in the classroom, but they can also be great leaders in policy, research, and innovation.” - Me

Dear Internet,

And so, my summer internship at the American Association of Physics Teachers ends. I apologize beforehand about this blogpost--not only have I been only speaking Spanish for the past couple of days (and therefore losing my command of English), the end of this internship is filled with a bunch of feelings that aren’t going to accurately represent themselves through words.

The last week was spent packing, cleaning, and doing last-minute activities with the other interns. We visited the Kennedy Center to see one of their daily free shows, this one with a focused on contemporary music. The interns at American Center of Physics also went out to Busboys and Poets for lunch--that place is delicious. They have some of the best sweet potato fries I’ve ever eaten, without a doubt.

Practice day, the Thursday before our presentations, was nerve-wracking. It was the first time I had cohesively talked about my summer in front of people. I was so excited to talk about it, that I ended up Despite my nerves and mistakes made during practice day, I was told that my presentation during the Internship Symposium went well. To be completely honest, I don’t remember one second of the ten minutes I was up there. All I remember is standing up, and looking for the microphone, and then sitting back down again once it was all over. I’m glad to have a recording of it!

After that I rushedly packed all night, and exchanged goodbyes with the other interns, my mentors, and the various people I’ve met this summer. I may or may not have cried on my uber ride to the airport.

I’m so thankful to have had the opportunity to be in spaces surrounded by people who were so enthusiastic about physics and physics education. It was surreal---almost as surreal as my first physics classroom at Barnard, the first time I had been surrounded by like-minded women physicists. I’m sad to leave, but excited to take what I’ve learned this summer back to my communities so that I can better help them and their physics education.

I’ll be back D.C! Just you wait,

Krystina Williamson

2018 AAPT Intern