Bradford Hill to Receive 2014 Paul W. Zitzewitz Excellence in Pre-College Teaching Award
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
College Park, Maryland, United States, March 13, 2014—The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) announced today that the 2014 Paul Zitzewitz Excellence in Pre-College Physics Teaching Award winner is Bradford Hill, a high school physics teacher from Beaverton, Oregon. This award is in recognition of contributions to pre-college physics teaching and awardees are chosen for their extraordinary accomplishments in communicating the excitement of physics to their students.
Hill earned his BS in Physics at the University of Minnesota. His MS in Physics was earned at the University of Maryland and his MA in Science Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Hill began teaching physics at Montgomery College in 2002 in Montgomery County, MD. He moved to Oregon in 2005 and began teaching physics at the high school level. He has been at Southridge High School since 2006, where he also now facilitates a district-wide collaboration of physics teachers.
Hill was a Knowles Science Teaching Mentor from 2009-2011. He was selected to help draft, align, create and test rubrics for the new Oregon state science Standards in 2009 and currently is on the Oregon Science Content Panel as Oregon considers adopting the Next Generation of Science Standards.
He received the 2013 Outstanding Classroom Science Teacher Award from the Oregon Science Teachers Association. From 2003 to 2008 he was a Knowles Science Teaching Fellow, and from 2012 – 2014 he performed original research in the Physics Department at Portland State University on characterizing dark current in Charged-Coupled Devices, under a Partners in Science Grant from the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust.
Bradford develops, tests, and openly shares a curriculum he calls the Patterns Approach which meets the high standards of the NGSS. This approach introduces students to the power of recognizing patterns to make sense of novel situations from the very beginning of the course and engages them in high level inquiry and problem solving, He was so successful using this approach with ninth grade students, that it was adopted district wide. He has been sharing his work through local, state, and national conferences, publishing in the March 2013 issue of The Science Teacher, and providing extensive, ongoing professional development for teachers in his district and nationwide. He continues to study the impacts of this approach while also collaborating with other teachers across the country to further develop curriculum units for AP Physics, IB Physics, Project Based programs, and Chemistry.
Regarding his selection to receive this award Hill noted, “It is an incredible honor to receive this recognition and believe it affirms the value I have gained from collaborating with so many great teachers to improve my teaching practice.”
About the Award
Established as the Excellence in Pre-College Teaching Award in 1993 then renamed and endowed in 2010 by Paul W. and Barbara S. Zitzewitz, the Paul W. Zitzewitz Award for Excellence in K-12 Physics Teaching recognizes outstanding achievement in teaching pre-college physics.
About AAPT
AAPT is an international organization for physics educators, physicists, and industrial scientists—with members worldwide. Dedicated to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of physics through teaching, AAPT provides awards, publications, and programs that encourage practical application of physics principles, support continuing professional development, and reward excellence in physics education. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.
For more information: Contact Marilyn Gardner, Director of Communications, mgardner@aapt.org, (301)209-3306, (301)209-0845 (Fax), www.aapt.org.