Every year for this now the 12th year, high school physics teachers have worked together in particle physics research at the University of Notre Dame. Eight weeks each summer of full time research, followed by weekly meetings throughout the academic year. Of course there are teachers who have come and gone, some after a number of years, but there are seven teachers at least who have been involved since the first invitation.
You could look at this as (40 hrs/week x 8 weeks/year x 12 years = 3840 summertime hours, plus 1.5 hrs/week x ~30 weeks/yr x 12 years= 540 academic year hours, for a total of) somewhere near to 4400 hours of professional development. Or you could look at it as professional transformation. From either perspective, this is a different way of being a teacher. It’s a different way of being in the particle physics community.
These teachers are gathered to prepare the way for their summer research and for the research activities of their high school student colleagues who will join them in two days. They’ll work side by side in research collaborations for six or seven weeks this summer.
You could look at this as a particle physics course for high school students. Or you could look at it as having nothing much to do with school. Either way, this is a different way of being a student. It’s also a different way of being in the particle physics community.
When these teachers invited those students to join the particle physics community, there was something going on that doesn’t typically happen in schools. Issuing effective invitations into a community to which they themselves belong seems more like recruitment, more like coaching, more like collaborating than what teachers typically do in classrooms.
Why should this be so?