My Teaching Philosophy

What my classes look like:

Something different all the time! My "lectures" are a mix of short discussion questions (in the think-pair-share philosophy), students trying and discussing example problems, whole-class discussion, demos and simulations, and me talking. I believe physics is not a spectator sport, and building a learning community where students contribute regularly is the best way for us to learn and have fun doing so.

Tenets of my teaching philosophy:

• Framing students as constructors of knowledge. Young students tend to enter a classroom believing that knowledge is a set of “true” statements handed down to them from “authorities.” But expert physicists generally believe that knowledge is a set of interconnected ideas that can be generated by anyone through appropriate work, and this is something I want my students at all levels to experience and understand. Some examples of what this looks like in my classes:
  • Conversations: Instead of immediately answering a question from a student, I like to ask them what they think first. Usually students have many very good ideas, and it's a lot of fun for me to see what they've already constructed and help them build further.
  • In class: I employ think-pair-share, example problems, and discussion questions that apply ideas to new situations, so students have opportunities to extend what they know. For instance, in a quantum course, after learning about expectation values and repeated measurements, I ask students how they can construct the state emitted by an unknown source.
  • In class: For big ideas, I like to employ well-scaffolded whole-class discussions. For instance, in a course for non-physics students about quantum technology, I asked students whether electrons were waves or particles... but only after spending time talking about wave and particle behavior of light (especially the double-slit experiment) and then showing them a video of single electrons traveling through a double-slit setup and forming an interference pattern. The students constructed the expert-like answer to the question for themselves: not quite a wave, not quite a particle, but something new.
  • Course policies: Many of my classes include pre-class reading and short pre-class assignments. This is intentional: it gives students the opportunity to build the skill of reading technical information, extracting knowledge from it, and applying those ideas.
• Developing metacognition. Metacognition, or “thinking about thinking,” manifests itself in many ways in physics: being aware of your learning habits and study strategies, asking questions about the problem and the answer you get (such as “am I making clear progress toward an answer?”), and deliberately choosing from among possible representations (such as bra-ket notation vs matrix notation in quantum mechanics). Metacognitive activity is widely agreed to be critical for solving complex problems. Some examples of developing metacognition in my classes:
  • Conversations: When a student reaches an answer while working on a problem, I like to ask whether they think their answer is reasonable. They can check units, think about orders of magnitude, or even just have the conscious realization that whatever they're working with (for instance, magnetic flux) is hard to get an intuitive feel for.
  • In class: Developing metacognitive strategies specific to physics is something I like to devote class time to. For instance, what does one Newton of force feel like? If I get an answer to a problem that's 87,000 N, is that reasonable given the context of the problem? We spend explicit class time on these kinds of questions, which both helps students build these skills and signals to them that such skills are important.
  • Course policies: All of my classes include a revisions policy, by which students can earn back points on problems where they made a substantive error. This is aimed partly at developing metacognition. During revision, students must answer reflection prompts such as "What went right the first time, as well as what went wrong?" and "What could I have asked myself the first time around to see that I was making an error?"
• Building growth mindset. Making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn when accompanied by reflection, and I want my students to believe this as much as I do, so that they are less afraid of making mistakes and thus more willing to tackle harder problems and come away with stronger skills. Some examples of building growth mindset in my classes:
  • Conversations: Sometimes, after completing a problem, I'll ask students to redo the problem on a chalkboard and explain to me as they do it. A subset of students gets nervous doing this, but I have found that putting them in control of the chalk in a low-stakes situation (such as office hours or one-on-one conversation) helps students build, amongn other things, confidence in themselves.
  • In class: I regularly use mistakes as a teaching tool. I like to ask students (in low-stakes situations in class) questions where the answers are unintuitive (such as particles interfering in Stern-Gerlach experiments) or where students are known to have difficulties (such as in overgeneralizing the rules of RC, LC, and LR circuits). In these moments I am always explicit that I've made an attempt to ask a hard or unintuitive question, and I try to communicate what we learn from such a question, either by directly stating it or have students articulating it.
  • In class: I make mistakes often! Acknolwedging these, and letting students watch me decide what the mistake is, is important modeling behavior for students.
  • Course policies: All of my classes include a revisions policy, by which students can earn back points on problems where they made a substantive error. Students must not only submit a corrected solution but also some reflections about the first attempt. This is a codification of my belief that making mistakes is the best way to learn when accompanied by thoughtful reflection. The points back helps reward students for this behavior.

One reason I find teaching so fun and fulfilling is the complexity of the process. Each of these goals is related to one another, and they all are best attended to at all levels of instruction, from one-on-one conversations with students to in-class activities to overarching course policies. Implementation also depends strongly on context; for instance, reflections from first-year introductory mechanics will look different from those of upper-division quantum mechanics. This is why I included several examples of what my philosophical tenets looks like in practice.

My Teaching Experience

At Swarthmore College:

• General Physics I: Mechanics (Phys 3) (Fall 2025)—Kinematics, Newton's laws, energy, momentum, rotational motion, simple harmonic motion, and topics in gravitation, fluids, and thermodynamics. Emphasis quantitative problem-solving.
• General Physics II: Electricity and Magnetism (Phys 4) (Spring 2026)—Electric and magnetic forces and fields, potential and potential energy, circuits (involving batteries, resistors, capacitors, and inductors), Gauss's Law, Ampere's Law, Faraday's Law, waves, light, and optics. Emphasis on combining conceptual and mathematical understanding.
• Quantum Mechanics (Phys 107) (Fall 2025, Fall 2026)—Fundamental/Axiomatic quantum behaviors, two-state systems and time-dependent behaviors, entanglement and Bell's inequalities, wavefunctions and continuous operators, square wells, bound and scattering states, the quantum harmonic oscillator, and hydrogen. Emphasis on computational skills and on understanding the structure of QM as a theory.

At the University of Maryland (as a graduate student):

• The Quantum Wave (Phys 137) (Spring 2024)—A discussion of the potential impacts of quantum technology on society. Part of UMD's Big Questions series, aimed at non-STEM majors. Co-developed and co-instructed with Erin Sohr.
• Graduate TA for Modern Physics (Phys 371).
• Grader for graduate AMO seminar (Phys 721).
• Individual tutor for quantum mechanics (Phys 401) and graduate NMR methods (Biochem 669E).

Trainings and programs:

• Faculty Teaching Institute participant (Summer 2025)
• University Teaching and Learning Program, Associate Level, University of Maryland-College Park

Feedback from Students

• "I think this class has done a great job of making quantum mechanics approachable, or at the very least less daunting, which really helped me feel as if I was on track when it comes to being up-to-date on a growing aspect of research engineering."
• "Overall, students are very pleased with the course, curriculum and pedagogy. In the process of sharing feedback, students opened up with one another and learned that even in one class there are different preferences amongst students. Students are very impressed with the organization and care put into the course and mentioned numerous times how lucky they are to have you as a professor. They love the structure of the course and wish more classes in the department put the same thought into the balance of lecture, activities and hands-on practice with the concepts! Students overwhelmingly commend the professor for their teaching excellence, clarity, and empathy. The course is described as engaging, well-run, and rewarding, with a learning environment that fosters both understanding and enthusiasm." --Summary of end-of-semester feedback for Physics 3, written by an independent feedback conversation facilitator
• "Out of my time at Swarthmore, I genuinely think Prof Banner has been the one I have felt the most comfortable to approach, if it be not knowing/understanding something, or if I have any issues in general."
• When asked "If you could change one thing to make this class a better learning experience, what would you change?", one student wrote: "have more hours in a day so we can go more in depth"
• "You lowkey made me consider physics as my major several times. If there was applied physics I would've done that as my double major instead of applied math just because of you. 10/10 class, no notes."
• "This class was so goated thanks for being an amazing professor, thank you for making one of my worst nightmares (course-wise) coming into Swarthmore manageable and enjoyable." --Said about an intro E&M course