JENNIFER BANEY’S physics classroom at Bedford High School is a laboratory of learning. Her students ask lots of questions, try all sorts of things that might work and solve problems in groups. They also play games.
One year from now, her 12th-grade students might role-play pirates or astronauts in a complex, unfolding story that involves opening envelopes, untangling mysteries and solving physics problems.
“I’ve been a physics teacher now for 20 years and one of the things I’m passionate about is getting kids to see that physics isn’t dry,” said Baney, a computer engineer by training. “The math involved is healthy exercise for the brain.”
Baney, the 2024 recipient of the Christa McAuliffe Sabbatical from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, is about to embark on a yearlong quest to invent four tabletop games that mimic escape rooms and teach physics simultaneously. She said her goal is to grow the skills that high school graduates need to excel in science, work and life.
“In just about every industry you go into, employers value the ability to collaborate to solve problems,” she said.
That’s where escape rooms come in. Groups of people working through a series of challenges, puzzles and hurdles — not as competitors, but as teammates.
“You need them to solve a problem,” Baney said, “and you need to be able to hear from everyone.”
Her vision is still in its infancy, but the essentials are clear. Each escape room-style physics game eventually will be free to science classes — and anyone — for downloading from a website. The games will focus on high school physics concepts such as velocity, speed and acceleration, energy and momentum, sound and electricity, and light and space. Story lines will lead role players through eight to 10 intertwined problems.
“Maybe you need to fix a circuit (on a spaceship) and figure out how much voltage needs to go over it,” she said. “I don’t want this to be screen-based or feel like a video game. You might have to put in a code on a computer. I’m hoping for a lot of physical stuff on the table” for students to manipulate and experiment with.
The games might include getting into a lock box to figure out a code. Invisible ink may fluoresce under ultraviolet light.
“It’s going to be very narrative- based,” Baney said. Through play, “It’s putting meaning to the things you’re doing” in physics. “It’s not memorizing a set of facts or equations. It’s bringing a deeper understanding to students. It’s almost like doing a word problem, but you are in the word problem.”
A door to possibilities
Baney’s classroom at Bedford High is a study in nurturing curiosity. Posters and quotes of Albert Einstein decorate the walls, including the physicist’s famous quote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“A lot of things I do in my classroom are more like play,” said Baney, who studied engineering at the University of Hartford and fell in love with teaching after taking a job out of college as a high school physics instructor. Teaching is about firing passion, she said, about opening the door to possibilities and giving kids the tools.
“There’s something to be said for the kids who play with Lego and blocks and get a circuit-building kit and just play with it,” Baney said. “There’s something to be said for taking the instructions away and having them design things.”
In Baney’s classroom last week, seniors sat at tables in groups of three or four, learning to use multimeters, hand-held devices that resemble thick calculators and measure current, voltage, resistance, temperature and pH.
“This is important if you’re going to be an electrician or mechanic,” said Sophia Rodriguez, a student.
“Everybody has an apartment or a house, which runs on electricity, and has things that need to be charged, like your phone,” said Court McCombs nearby. “The goal of this is to know if something’s going to work or not.”
Spencer Henrichon and Joe Blaine created a battery-powered circuit that lit a tiny bulb in the center and tested the current at different points.
“There’s always static electricity everywhere,” said their partner, Madi O’Donnell. “We’re never going to measure zero.”
At the end of the month, Baney’s class will build little cars powered by solar panels.
