Teaching Physics to my Mom: An Introduction

I have decided to attempt a great feat. I fear I may fail, but I also feel an irresistible compulsion to try. I know of no one who has come close to succeeding in almost half a century. It's a little scary, but the potential rewards are high.

I am going to try to teach physics to my mom.

My mother is a brilliant woman. She earned a PhD in political science back in the 80's. Later, when her kids were getting older, she went back to her true favorite subject and earned a music teaching degree. Since then, she has directed school choirs all over the world, overseen district music programs, only pausing now and then to teach IB history and philosophy classes.

The author's mother in her element. That's about to change.

And yet she is just awful at physics, and even worse at math.

When she went back to school for her teaching degree one of her worst recurring nightmares came true and she had to take a college-level algebra course. I was in middle school at the time and I remember sitting up at nights helping her with her math homework. My older sister and I would take turns trying to help her. My father, an economist, was not allowed to help as all his attempts led to, shall we say, frustration.

The last time she tried to learn physics was her first time though college. Here are her words:

I took my first test.  There was a question about a fly and a truck having an encounter.  I know I was supposed to use numbers and a formula of some sort but my trick of memorizing problems didn't work because we were supposed to write out what we understood as we were solving it.  Fortunately, for me there was a lot of room on the paper.  I remember drawing the windshield of the truck, the fly, its smashed remains slowly moving down the windshield leaving a squashed streak.  And I actually thought I had answered the question.  Imagine my surprise when I got a U-- a U!-- on the test.  I had never seen a U in my life.  I didn't know it was possible. 

So why try again? Well, we each have our reasons. For my mother's part, she's older now, hopefully wiser, and no long being graded or judged. She's recently started to consider herself retired, and one of the things she wants to do with her time is to learn things. She's already learned to play the organ, done in-depth research on World War I, and become a certified hospice-worker. Since stuff all comes naturally to her(!), she's ready for a challenge.

As for me, I like physics, and I like math, and I like to teach. I've spent the last 6 years setting myself on a career track that is likely to include a lot of teaching physics to people who are bad at physics so I could use some good practice. Also, unlike with the 100-level college classes I teach as a grad student, I will have complete freedom over the syllabus here. That means I can experiment with teaching techniques and conceptual approaches. I spend a lot of spare time thinking about effective ways to understand the most basic concepts in physics, but I rarely get to see if my ideas help anyone but me.

Besides, my mom taught me how to read, how to sing, how to wipe my butt, how to make friends, how to bake, and even how to teach, so if there's something I can teach her I guess I owe it to her. Plus, it might be really funny when she screws up.

The author demonstrating that he really owes one to his mother.

This blog is where I will document our attempts. We'll have lessons approximately weekly, and I will share my lesson plans here, along with commentary on how they went. Hopefully Mom will chime in from time to time with thoughts on what she thinks she is learning (or not learning!)

Next post: Teaching philosophy and learning goals