Anthony+Thomas,+Noyce+Fellow


 * Anthony Thomas,**
 * Science Teacher**
 * University City High School**
 * athomas@u-city.k12.mo.us**

 It was May, 1984 and I was both excited and apprehensive. I had just graduated UM-St. Louis with a B.S. in Applied Physics and was happy to be out of school but I was also without a job. Not that it mattered much. My father kept asking me what kind of job I was going to get with a physics degree but I had no answer for him. I just didn’t know, I didn’t get a degree in physics to get a job, I got a degree in physics to learn physics. I just liked, and still do, physics Now that I am a father of a son about to enter his final year of college, I believe I feel my father’s pain.

 To pay for school, I worked as a salesperson at Sears and I continued to work there for about a year after graduation. In my senior year of college, I took up recreational cycling, which led to competitive cycling, which led me to quit my job at Sears and to take a job as a salesperson in a local bike shop. I wasn’t making more money at the bike shop but I was spending a lot less on equipment so it was like getting a raise. I worked at the bike shop for about two years but I didn’t get to race very much as I had to work most weekends. I needed a job where I had the weekends off, better yet, how about the whole summer off! I could be a physics teacher.

 Dad had been suggesting that I go into teaching for years, even while I was still in college, but I was hesitant, to say the least. I did a little teaching in college as a teaching assistant for the freshman physics classes and I really enjoyed those experiences. What really put me off of teaching was the education classes. I could always spot the education majors on campus, they carried the poster projects and the recorders, the musical kind. I guess I was something of a snob - I was taking courses on quantum mechanics so why would I have to learn to play a musical instrument to teach physics, how would those classes help me be a physics teacher.

 Obviously, I ended up taking those classes, some were quite helpful and interesting, Adolescent Psychology comes to mind. Most were not very helpful and I entered my student teaching experience not fully prepared, but then, who is? I did my student teaching at University City High School and I loved it. I had never worked so hard before, not even in the quantum mechanics classes, but for some reason I felt like I was where I was suppose to be.

 Although the 2010-2011 school year will be my twenty-second year of teaching at U-City High School, the years have flown by and it doesn’t seem to have been that long. This past year I started looking around at my colleagues and realized that I am one of the most experienced teachers at the school, less than ten of the 90 people on staff have been in the education field longer than me. I don’t know where the time went.