Course in Teaching Particle Physics by CERN Experts for 25 Israeli Physics Teachers

Master teachers are at the core of the Trump Foundation’s strategy. They tutor new teachers, lead their peers in the professional community, and develop teaching methods and learning material. One such example is physics master teacher Kobi Shvarzbord, recipient of the Trump Master Teacher Award 2013, member of the Trump Foundation Advisory Council and Master Teacher Award Prize Committee. Kobi is Head of Science and Technology at Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa, and runs a physics teacher learning community for the Weizmann Institute.

Over the past few years, Kobi has led a number of student-teacher delegations to the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. He has reported that his first-hand encounter with issues at the forefront of modern physics has been extremely significant for his teaching and believes that additional teachers would benefit from experimenting with particle accelerators and detectors and expose the subject to their students in turn.

Shvarzbord therefore decided to organize a professional development course specializing in particle physics for 25 physics teachers, taught in December 2015 by visiting physicists from CERN, and to develop a teacher learning community around this topic. He approached the foundation to support this venture, which, in addition to the theoretical knowledge, will address the difficulties students encounter when learning this subject, and will help teachers to integrate curriculum studies with enrichment material in the classroom.

Participating teachers will meet and learn from three visiting physicists and researchers from the CERN laboratory over a two-day residential course at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa. They will prepare assignments ahead of the course and will follow up with a third day later in the year, when they will present the outcomes of class-based activities with students on subjects learned on the course.

* The text above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / Grant 186