CTL Interns Gain Experiential Rewards While Providing Key Organizational Support
The internship program at the New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL®) provides a valuable behind-the-scenes opportunity for students to hone their ability in the field of physics and to acquire an educator’s perspective of the day-to-day involvement of running a lab.
But interns are also critical to CTL’s day-to-day operations. They development content, grade work and help with lab set-up, supporting CTL’s mission of integrating professional development, curriculum, pedagogy, technology and assessment to improve STEM outcomes.
“Bottom line: Our interns improve our full curriculum, as well as teaching CTL’s professional development teacher-learner graduates,” said Timothy Panebianco, CTL Director of Technology and Planning.
At Bergen County Technical School in Teterboro, NJ, CTL’s summer interns are doing just that.
Jason Kim
Rising junior, Bergen Tech
Jason Kim, a rising junior at Bergen Tech, who has taken AP Physics and works with CTL on physics curricula and lab development, says honing his ability is key to achieving his professional goal of becoming a high school physics teacher.
“When I first came to this high school as a freshman, I barely knew what physics was, but I became interested because I saw Physics as something that can explain the practical world—and I felt confident that I could speak the language in a way that people would understand,” Jason said.
This summer, Jason is designing a variety of new labs in preparation for Physics I and II—discovery-based labs that allow students perform the lab and find their own conclusions.
“We want our labs to prepare students for these new AP (advanced placement) problems,” Jason said.
In part, Jason is working to establish a foundation for physics honors, designing labs that can be taught in the schools that have Physics I and II. His work includes preparing instructional presentations, which are incorporated into open, online instructional materials.
Aside from helping to build curriculum, Jason said another goal is to better understand the process that teachers go through as they teach and the process behind creating the materials that students get to see throughout the entire school year.
Jason has begun looking at his options after high school and said he has started to narrow down a college application list, while thinking even further toward graduate school and pursuing a doctorate. But, he added, he is even more focused on being able to apply his experience at Bergen Tech as a CTL intern to any future endeavor.
“I just want to know that I can take along this experience and apply it in college and continue the work I’m doing,” Jason said.
“Not only does this experience provide me with the opportunity to work with other teachers and interns who aspire to be physicists, but it allows me to interact with them and give me further perspective on what goes into that thought process of teaching—understanding what the students want out of a lesson,” Jason said. “I feel this is such a great preparation for what I want to do.”
Philip Vendola
Incoming Freshman, Lehigh University
Philip Vendola, who will begin his freshman year at Lehigh University studying physics this fall, is drawn to the fact that in the lab provided for him at Bergen Tech as a CTL intern, he’s given a task that he’s able to solve on his own.
“It’s a different experience from the classroom where you’re given a problem and you solve it with an answer key,” Philip said. “Here, when we have a task, it’s up to us to get it done—there’s no one looking over our shoulder or holding our hand.
“Because I want to devote my career to research rather than in a classroom, there’s a new feeling of responsibility and independence that is really invigorating,” Philip said. “This is something that you don’t get to experience in school.”
The independent, do-it-yourself element is what allows Philip to better understand the benefit of producing CTL’s screencast lessons. “I’ve made over 50 of those videos and they’re a lot of fun to make. The reason why I enjoy it so much is because they represent a different form of teaching where a student doesn’t have to feel lost or alone when they are home doing their homework.
“When I was in high school, I’d be stuck on a problem and there’d be no one there to help, no resource available to walk me through a difficult area,” Philip said. “I’d feel lost—particularly if it was in advance of a test and I hadn’t gotten a chance to ask the teacher. These screencasts, however, walk you step-by-step through a problem.” Like CTL’s courseware, screeencasts are free and open to any interested viewer, 24-7.
While Jason and Philip are aiming for different roles in physics—Jason in the classroom working with students and Philip in the lab conducting research—both have benefitted from serving as CTL interns. The CTL sensibility, Philip said, will inform his work at Lehigh.
“When I went to tour Lehigh I met with a physics professor there who walked me around and showed me one of the laser and optics labs. In the lab, there were two students working in the dark (because it’s an optics lab) and when we arrived we were going to leave them alone, but they encouraged us to stay and observe,” Philip said.
It was only later, however, that Philip discovered that the students were there on their own volition, doing experiments outside of class time.
“There wasn’t anyone there to help them with their work—it was something they were trying to do on their own. These students made their own tasks and were trying to discover their own things,” Philip said.
“That had a big effect on me,” he added.
Philip has his eye on the fields of astrophysics and condensed matter. At Lehigh, if you maintain a 3.75 GPA, you get a fifth year of study for free. During that extra year, Philip said he looks forward to staying on campus and doing the research he wants to do.
Speaking with Philip, achieving that grade point average is clearly a foregone conclusion, and he credits the knowledge and perspective learned working with CTL as a major factor in preparing him for the next level.
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