Women in physics

Everything I was taught, and many people still believe, about women in physics is wrong. Okay, there's my strong sweeping statement for the blog using the "everything you thought you knew" meme. 

That being said, I get into this discussion often enough for a blog post. Women are underrepresented in physics classes and related careers, and they have been for a long time. It seems to be a common belief that it's due to a difference in abilities. I just don't see that. I never have. I have encountered plenty of women that believe it, too, and that's an easily self-fulfilling prophecy. 

What I have seen is a difference in interest, not ability. At both Leonardtown and Northern, honors classes were 50-50, because anyone college bound generally took it. For all my classes, I posted the top 5 academic scorers. This practice caused a few opinions that didn't seem to come up when track teams posted the fastest times in each event, but that's a discussion for another blog post. From my lists, updated every half quarter, I saw a 50-50 split again. Sometimes classes were full of successful male students, sometimes all the top scorers were female, but the average came out eventually. That didn't translate to equal AP enrollment. When I took over Northern's program, there was 1 female in a class of 15. It took me years to achieve equal enrollment, and I only did it once (male enrollment increased steadily, too). Mostly, I was able to get it to around 30-40%. The difference between my male students and female students was simply that I didn't have to recruit the boys. My strongest guys always signed up anyway. My strongest girls needed convincing. It was the girls that told me physics is a boys' thing. It was the girls that often assigned that to different abilities. When I pointed out all the girls in my current top 5, other girls tended to dismiss each one as an anomaly. Some of my best female students dismissed or ignored their own abilities. Lauren told me in the first month that she's just not good at physics. She was wrong. She's an engineer now. I'm always going to brag about that. Kara hadn't missed a single point all year (well, after she realized the top 5 were posted and she had no intention of being 2nd), and she tried to convince me she wasn't that good. I still lost her to AP Bio, but at least it wasn't because she didn't know physics was a serious option. I wanted the best students for my program, just like every teacher does. My female students needed more convincing than my male students, but the quality of work was just as high. 

Another claim I've encountered many times is that women learn differently than men. I encountered it a lot at IUP, where there were 2 female faculty and 1 grad student in all my 4 years in the physics department. I encountered it slightly less among my US colleagues, and I encounter it noticeably more in the UK. I just don't buy it. "Women are like this, and men are like that" makes for great stand up comedy, but poor educational policy. First of all, half the world population sharing a learning style just sounds far fetched. Secondly, learning is not that easy to describe and predict. My anecdote on this is the fact that I was told repeatedly in college that teaching physics to women necessitates dumbing down the math (though I'm pretty sure the female faculty were not the ones telling me this). Sure enough, I avoided mathematical explanations to my girls for a while. I remember it was Jenny that made me notice the error of this. I failed repeatedly to explain instantaneous velocity until I mentioned the slope of the tangent. "Oh, it's just the derivative" was her response. From that moment on, I found exactly what I should have thought. Mathematical explanations work for some people more than others. No gender trends in my experience there. 

My main job is usually finding the right example or comparison to make a concept click in my students' heads. I have explained gas pressure using mosh pits, radiation using wasps and horses, light using paleontology, and weightlessness using the Demon Drop. I use whatever works. In that way, there may be examples that work more often for women than men. I do find long haired people having more life experience with static electricity, for one. I do remember Celena and Natalie telling me to "use more girly examples." Not all girls think alike, but I took their meaning and varied it up more. They noticed and appreciated it. If someone's into video games, I use that. If they're into horses, I use that. If they're into theater, I use that. In my experience, people learn best by connecting new material to stuff they already know. My job is finding that connection, and it's different for everyone. 

I'm working in a girls school for the first time in my life, so I can't say what all the advantages and disadvantages are, but I am noticing something positive for physics. I don't see girls dismissing their physics abilities or describing the subject as stuff for boys. Every subject is 100% female, so they seem to take whatever they like most and are best at. That is how it should be. 

Try not to assume how successful or not you will be before you try, and try not to assume how successful or not someone else will be before he/she tries. And if you find success, try not to explain it away as a fluke. 

British note taking

Students in the UK and students in the USA, in my experience, are not greatly different.  Kids are kids, after all. There are little things, though, that may be due to my new country or perhaps being in private school. But my kids now are top notch note takers. They take pride in it. They brag about it. I actually saw a girl envying another's clear plastic notebook dividers. The owner of the dividers beamed with pride. When I give notes, I need to be very specific about what they are to write down, because they will write down everything. They ask me what the title of today's notes is. I've never heard that question before moving here, and I didn't initially take it seriously. "Call it whatever you like. What does it matter?" was my thinking. Now, I give them an official title. It makes them feel better.  They want it organized. When I draw diagrams, they take out rulers. No excuse for lacking straight lines. They have massive pencil cases full of every color pen in the rainbow. They rarely use pencils, except on scratch paper they won't keep. Scratch work is fine, but the notebook deserves fully polished and beautiful entries. I give them whiteboards for practice work and brainstorming. They are far braver when they know they can erase. 

One possible reason is that they take far more classes than US students do at one time. Americans take 6 or 7 classes in a year, then they're done with it and move onto another, ideally. My UK kids take twice as many classes over the span of a couple years and take high pressure national exams at the end. Reviewing (or revising, as they say here) for those tests is a big deal. They'll spend weeks going over several years worth of notes from all these classes. It's easy to see why pretty and organized notes are so important. 

So, if you want to praise a UK student, compliment his/her notes. 

Apparently, I'm happy

My voice has always been a point of pride.  It's versatile.  It's loud.  In the UK, it's distinctive.  Also, it conveys my mood pretty effectively.  Even if I'm not aware of my mood, my voice conveys it.  Since I've moved to London, people have told me a few times that I sound different.  I sound happier. When I stop to think about it, yeah, I guess I am.

Most of that must be my school.  If I'm happy at work, everything else is a little easier.  And frankly, I've been loving my school.  The students are great girls.  They respond well to me, and they work incredibly hard.  They embrace every task I set, so my time is largely spent finding interesting tasks rather than chasing up students who haven't done their work.  That makes class so much more enjoyable.  I have been in a class laughing along with everyone more times than I'd expected in the first month.  I can hear myself getting excited about physics more often than I had been last year.  I can be a talker and story teller often times, so the energy of my voice is quite important to me.  When a supervisor observed a class, she said that the students were quite focused on what I was saying.  When a colleague observed informally, she said I looked like I was having so much fun that she might have to change subjects.  

My school has been kind enough to keep my responsibilities light to begin with.  I am an associate tutor instead of a form tutor (similar to a homeroom teacher back in the USA, but with more responsibilities of looking after the students overall), and I am not required to coach anything.  So, I've been able to ease myself into the extra things I loved back at Northern.  I was approached by the drama directors, and I agreed to help out a little bit with the tech.  I haven't done much, but I have helped them brainstorm about using LCD projectors and sound cue software.  I have worked a little with the tech kids and given them what I hope is useful advice and perspective.  It's nothing huge, but it's a start.  I was also approached by students hoping to start an engineering club.  That's right, theater and an engineering club, just like old times.  I shared with these students every engineering challenge I used to do back at NHS, and they had that look of "wow, we definitely asked the right person to sponsor."  Also, I've been asked several times to participate in Friday charity events put on during lunch.  One was a karaoke.  Now, I can't sing, and I've never done karaoke.  My voice is good for many things, but carrying a tune has never been one of them.  But, it was for charity, and I figured the new guy should take one for the team and go embarrass himself.  So, I sang "New York, New York."  I did my best Frankie and made up for my lack of pitch with an abundance of volume.  The kids loved it.  

I am definitely enjoying NHEHS, and after this past week, I'm realizing my colleagues and bosses are happy I'm there, too.  The head of my department and the head of the school both told me that they are very happy with the job I'm doing and are hearing wonderful things from the students.  I was walking around with quite a smile after that. 

So, with a solid base of work, I've been comfortable getting out of the house relatively often. I've done some shows and events, but my most consistent activity has been volleyball.  I found a cool group of people that likes to play at a relatively high level, teaches me skills I obviously need, and goes to the pub after matches.  I was asked the first day if I'd keep score during a game, and they decided that they loved my announcer voice.  They said it makes the games feel more dramatic.  And our pub has one good beer and 5 quid pizzas.  That's a winning formula.

A bunch of other things are contributing to a happy Josh.  I'm going to the gym consistently for the first time in maybe ever.  My roommate is awesome and friendly and respectful.  She showed me where to find good pierogi, which I haven't had outside of Pittsburgh.  I'm riding my bike everywhere and gaining thighs of steel.  I'm learning to be patient enough to air dry clothes when it's not raining.  And my lovely parents sent me smiley cookies and parmesan cheese (which is far more difficult to find in this country than I would have imagined).

Life is good.  And you can hear it in my voice.

Apple focuses on form. Google focuses on function.

I'm not a tech blogger, but technology pervades my life pretty heavily, so I am interested in tech news.  My work, my play, and my travels all involve lots of things that flash and beep.

iPhone 6 was announced today.  New size.  New shape.  And it incorporates several features that Android has had for a while.  Oh, and you can get a Dick Tracy watch.  People already pay several hundred dollars or more for watches, but they usually expect them to last for the rest of their lives.  Apple expects you to rush out to get the new model next year, and it will stop supporting this one.

This has continued a trend I've noticed with Apple.  There are updates every year, and none of them seem to make anything work exceptionally better.  They just keep changing how things look, but they insist it's a revolution that makes the old device obsolete.  iPhone 5 got a little longer.  iPad mini was a little smaller.  iOS 6 or 7 (I can't keep track) made the "revolutionary" move to flat icons and apps that no longer looked like real things. iPhone 5 moved the headphone jack to the bottom and made the plug a little smaller.  Screen resolution improves a bit, battery life improves a bit, and fun little gizmos like Siri and fingerprint sensors get promoted like crazy, but none of these things makes the phones noticeably better at doing anything I need them to do.  

Don't get me wrong, I like my iPhone 4S.  I have no immediate desire to replace it.  Personally, I see no reason why it shouldn't be able to last for years.  It's my first and only smart phone.  My decision to buy it was purely practical, as it was the only Verizon smartphone at the time that could be used on my travels abroad.  This phone is easy to use (my Dad even had no problem with it, which is saying something), logically organized, and amazingly useful.  But in my years of owning it, I've noticed a couple trends.  The first is that Apple fixes nothing.  Their one solution is to buy the new phone.  Of course, they prefer to say "upgrade" than "buy."  The power button doesn't work.  It broke about 12 months and a day after I bought it, which means the warranty was up.  No replacement for me, even though this is clearly a recall item (a simple Google search led me to a huge number of people complaining about the same problem).  The phone was made with a clear defect to a single moving part, and there is literally no way to fix it, according to the folks at every Apple store I've visited.  It hasn't been anything more than an annoyance, but it's a persistent one.  The other trend I've noticed is that as Apple obsesses over form, Google's focus on function makes their products more useful all the time.  Maps started with driving directions, then added walking, biking, and public transit directions.  Google Drive started as a basic cloud drive, now it's a robust one with a built in office suite (only recently done well in phone app form).  Google+ is not a great social network (nor do I really care), but even it has proven to be a useful place to back up all my photos.  I am slow to adopt technologies, as I really just want things to work well and add convenience to my life.  Slowly, I've noticed myself embracing more and more of Google and less of Apple.  First I embraced Gmail, then Chrome, then Google Sites for school web sites, then Google Docs for shared documents on the sites, then Google Drive when the allotted space increased to be comparable to my USB drive, then Blogger to start this blog.  Maps has always been there, and as a traveler I love everything it does.  Everything Google does seems centered on functionality, and then it just gets easier and more convenient to use as the bugs are worked out.  My favorite thing is that there's no sales pitch involved.  I've never bought one thing from Google.  Maybe that's why I have no real emotional investment in them.  I just use their products because they're better for me.  

I've been very happy with my iPhone.  Apart from that button, I'm thrilled with it.  But when I eventually get a new phone, it may very well be running Android and cost half the price. Google keeps getting better.  Apple just keeps changing for change's sake, or actually now to catch up with what other folks are doing.  They focus on keeping everyone excited for their products, but they've stopped doing anything new or better with them.  I see nothing wrong with making a great product and then just keeping it basically the same while making it better than anything else around.  The Heinz ketchup philosophy.  Apple did that with the iPod, and while it gets no press anymore, it's pretty much the only digital music player anyone has, if they have a dedicated one at all.  I still do, as nothing comes close to its capacity.  That philosophy seems to not be applied to their phones.  Google does everything app-wise great.  If Apple can't give me a reason to pay twice as much for their phone as anyone else's, I'll happily move along.  Give me a battery that lasts a week.  Give me a screen that never cracks.  Give me capacity and convenience that no one else can match.  Otherwise, don't expect people to accept 500% markup forever.

Last week, I was riding the tube home from volleyball with a young fellow player that happened to be working for Google in London.  I mentioned my thoughts, and he thanked me, like I was complimenting his work personally.  I casually mentioned that one feature that would be nice in Maps is to visually show bus routes the same way it shows all the underground lines.  He said that there are far more bus lines than underground lines, which makes it difficult, but then he stared off into his thoughts like he was considering just how one might accomplish this.  If these are the minds Google recruits, it explains a lot.

A month of London life

I've only been in London for a month, and I can already see the advantages of living here.

So, I live near here (forgive me for not posting my address).  The first thing you'll notice is that there is much more green around me than one might expect living so close to London.  I've been taking advantage of that.  The parks are good for running, which brings me to my first advantage.

Running
I really do like running, and London is nice and flat.  It's not always fun running along city sidewalks, but it's certainly not boring.  Luckily, I live near enough to Gunnersbury park to run around there a lot.  I can make a 5 mile loop starting and stopping at my home and circling the park.  This, of course, means that I've gotten up to 5 miles running again, which is nice.  I'd like to keep progressing, and as I do I will find more loops.  There is a long waterfront path along the Thames that can offer pretty scenery and longer mileage.  The one downside is that I have to ride my bike a couple miles down to Kew to start the run, and of course I then have to bike home.  That brings me to my next advantage.

Biking
Riding a bike has never been a past time for me.  I don't bike for the joy of it, but I do enjoy the convenience of it if I can actually bike somewhere.  I bought a bike while I lived in Ely, but mostly because I was regularly seeing a personal trainer in Cambridge that was a couple miles from the train station.  I used my bike for shopping at Tesco, getting to my photography group shoots, and the training.  That was it.  It had very specific uses.  Now, I am biking everyday.  There is plenty within walking distance, but London just keeps going, so there's always something just a little farther down the road.  I can make it to the corner store and back in 15 minutes by foot, but I can make it there and back in 5 minutes by bike, so why not?  It's pretty flat here, so I can explore most efficiently by bike.  I made it down to Big Ben in less than an hour.  I have a cinema and a gym less than 10 minutes away.  I have a shopping center about the same distance in the other direction.  I have a mall about 20 minutes away.  If I really need to go somewhere farther than that, I take the tube.

I just kept riding east until I looked up and saw Big Ben.  This particular shot has Big Ben, the London Eye, a double decker bus, and a black cab.  This is as London as it gets.

Gym

I'm not normally a fan of gyms.  They're expensive, they necessitate a long term commitment financially even though my exercise routine never stays that long, and they make me self conscious.  The one thing that I do need consistently is a treadmill, as running in crappy weather or in the dark is not fun.  As it happens, I found a gym just up the road that works for me.  It's called Pure Gym.  It's only 16 pound per month, has no contracts, and allows me to check online to see just how many people are there at the moment.  I am giving it a shot.  It's convenient, and that gives it a much better chance of lasting in my plans.

Entertainment

Obviously, London has more than a few entertainment options.  I've seen Julius Caesar at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a stand up comedian named Anthony Jeselnik (a Pittsburgh native, as it happens), and some live music at a couple blues bars.  To find more social things, I have been a fan of meetup.com for a while.  In London, it's more useful than it's ever been.  There are all kinds of groups around me, and I've tried out a few already, mostly to play some tennis and volleyball.  So, between running, biking, tennis, volleyball, and the gym, I have been more active than at anytime in the past few years.  London has made it easy.  My laziest methods of entertainment are just as easy because of my awesomely fast fiber optic internet.  Since I am no longer on a school intranet, I can use the Chrome extension that allows me to get USA content I otherwise couldn't (Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Pandora, USA Netflix with all my Star Trek).  I also discovered that MLB.tv is only $40 for the rest of the year, and I have the time to spare at the moment.  I watched every Pirates game this past week, and it was awesome.  I hadn't done that in years.  It's a good time to watch the Pirates, too.  

General Convenience

There are so many little things I just like.  I like having food choices again.  I've had Mexican food for the first time since leaving the States.  I have a 24 hour convenience store at the end of the block, with Dominos right next door.  My munchies have already necessitated taking full advantage of that.  Even my gym is 24 hours, though I don't normally get the urge to lift weights at 2 am.  But I could! I am an easy walk from several tube stations giving me access to three underground lines (Piccadilly, District, and Central) and the Overground.  I'm only 30 minutes from Heathrow on the underground, which came in very handy for my trip to Spain.  There are cinemas nearby.  There are multiple microbreweries.  A doctor's office is easily walkable.  I really just like having a convenient life, even if just for a little while.  

And it's only been a month.

My phone's affect on my traveling

I have generally accepted that as long as I have a good map that I know how to read I am never lost.  I still keep a print map with me when visiting a new city if possible, and Streetwise Maps are the best ones for me, but Google maps on my iPhone makes that less and less necessary.  I save all the important locations in town, look up new ones as I necessary (sometimes I just need pizza), and wander aimlessly without ever being lost.  It costs a little to use the data, but if I'd rather not pay that I can just download the maps of the cities before I leave or whenever I find wifi.  The biggest worry is that the battery might run out. I carry my charger everywhere and recharge whenever I can, which is admittedly a bit of a nuisance.  It also shows that my explorations are usually of cities.  However, I hiked all around the Lake District and along Hadrian's Wall using the phone's map to show me where I was.  I got myself a backup battery so I could venture longer and farther.  I make sure to have a print map, but it's become a backup and a planning tool.

During this past trip to Spain, I used Google maps to find food, plan walking routes, find appropriate buses to get me to airports, and even check out street views so I'd know what to look for when I got to the hostel.  Apart from using Google Maps, I also used my phone to check hotel prices when I considered rebooking, check hostel facilities, take pictures, hold boarding passes (only Ryanair didn't allow this), read up on the history illuminated in museums I visited, check opening hours and costs of said museums, and check wikivoyage for more suggestions of places to visit.  Plenty of travelers still swear by tour books and whatnot, and they'd probably call me lazy for relying on my phone so much.  They might be right, but I love the fact that I have the option to be lazy.  It's one reason I can relax so much when I'm traveling, so long as I stay paranoid about keeping an eye on my phone.  Losing that thing would pose an incredible challenge. 

One random advantage I learned about using my phone came when I lost my glasses while hiking in Wales.  I couldn't read a thing, but thankfully I could enlarge the text without scrounging around for a magnifying glass.

Life needs a plan

I did a great deal of thinking as I walked around the cities of Portugal and Spain.  Sometimes it seems I need to move in order to think.  Some of the thinking was about how the past year has gone, and much of it was about how I want the next year to go.  It's quite possible, though not guaranteed, that I'll be returning to the USA a year from now  I need a plan to make the most of this year.  I settled on four main goals.  

1. Be the best physics teacher I can possibly be

This feels like the basis of everything for me.  If I am not teaching well, then everything else feels off.  I want my students, their parents, and my colleagues to feel quite fortunate to work with me.  If I am doing well with my career, then I can relax and get the next goals accomplished.

2. Significantly improve my fitness

This is always a good goal regardless of the situation, but I've come to realize in the past year that I have body image issues.  I don't feel good about myself physically, nor have I in a long time.  I need to change this. So many things in my life outside of work are affected by this, because it seriously affects my self esteem.  I realized in the past year that big changes are possible in my life (I am in Europe now after all), and I tried confronting this issue both physically and mentally.  The time constraints of my job and my general stress level eventually got in the way, but not before I saw the beginnings of real improvement.  It's time to try again.

3. Make the most of living in a big city

I have always lived in the suburbs and dreamed of living in the middle of a big city.  The suburbs are generally where the good schools are, so I have accepted it as part of my chosen career.  Now I am presented with a wonderful opportunity.  I'm in the city.  I'm in my favorite city, London.  I may only be here for a year, so I need to take advantage of my time here.  Right now, that means go to the theater, see live music, and find social opportunities that aren't normally available to me.  I'm sure the advantages of living in London will be clearer to me as the year progresses, but I simply want to embrace them as much as possible. I've already popped over to the Globe to see Julius Caesar on a whim, so this feels like a start.

4. Get Europe out of my system.

I've spent most of the past 8 summers in Europe, and I'm eager to finally move on and concentrate my travels in other areas.  I have yet to see much of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and parts of Central Europe, and it would feel a bit foolish to move back to the USA only to continue planning summer escapes to Europe.  That is, unless I find a city or two that really deserves an extended exploration.  When I move back to the USA, I want to focus my attention on the Western Hemisphere for a while.  

If I can accomplish those four things, I should be satisfied that I've used my time well.