Demographics
I serve as the 11th-grade academy Physics science teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School. The school is in Ward 3 in Washington, DC and consists of approximately 2,000 students. The diverse student body presents challenges for instructional delivery because of persistent achievement gaps within the school. Students have historically tested below grade level in mathematics with only a third of students meeting academic expectations for English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics.1 The socioeconomic issues associated with urban schools are still present (i.e., in-seat attendance, assignment completion rate, etc.). The student body is often segregated due to the number of advanced placements classes offered coupled with minimal opportunities for remediation throughout the year. The two feeder-schools for Woodrow Wilson High School are Deal Middle School and Hardy Middle School which represent two different socioeconomic populations in DC.
The physics department is iteratively refining its curriculum to reflect more project-based study and analysis of phenomena to cultivate critical-thinking in a collaborative forum. Last year, SY20-21, presented novel challenges for students to access authentic learning due to distance learning, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After six years of teaching in the District of Columbia Public School (DCPS), I have learned that students respond best to a positive, dynamic classrooms, with collaborative hands-on activities and enthusiastic teaching. The development of this unit is intended to be implemented for in-person instruction in the hopes of cultivating vigorous inquiry opportunities that center around the electromagnetic spectrum anchored by solar and atmospheric phenomena. The more the student understands the content’s relevance, the more likely they are to gain a greater depth of knowledge and retain it. In addition, this unit will provide individualized learning opportunities for students to select a technology of interest (e.g., TV, cellphone, X-ray, microwave) to study in the context of EM wave utilization.
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