Top 6 reasons to become a physics teacher

1. Share your passion for physics with others. Inspire students and ignite their curiosity for the subject that you love. Demonstrate exciting experiments  in the  lab. Be creative, fire up your students, and be fueled by them.
2. Advance  Society. Physics teachers see physics as a fundamental science. Physics drives technological developments in all fields. Biology, chemistry, medicine, engineering, and environmental science,  are all grounded in physics. By inspiring and preparing future scientists, physics teachers are able to “touch the future” in ways that few others can.
3. Make a difference in peoples’  life. Open doors to new concepts for your students. Help students from different backgrounds, sometimes with high needs, to develop and grow. I recall that once my father (a teacher, though not of physics) came home saying that “He grew fat from content” (as an Hebrew idiom goes) after a former student told him, many years after leaving school, that he owes his success in life to my father. This is something rewarding that is rare in any other profession.
4. Become a roll model! Make students look up to you, be someone they would like to emulate.
   If you are female, you may become a roll model to girls and convince them that physics is cool and not only ‘for the boys’.
5. Teaching is the number one communication job that is out there.  It really prepares you for any other job you are interested in doing. You learn to collaborate with others really well. You need to be comfortable interacting with any single student, whatever their needs, and work with them.You gain and demonstrate leadership skills. Practice telling others what to do and how to do it, as  a teacher!
6. Be on demand. Schools have a critical need for teachers with physics degrees. Also, many organizations offer scholarships to future physics teachers.

Teaching physics  is not for everyone. Learning the profession requires hard work and strong dedication. Teaching physics to kids can be at times overwhelming and exhausting. School teachers are not just teachers, but sometimes  need to take the roll of almost a superman/superwoman, acting  also as part time psychologists, social workers, and almost parents to their students. Nevertheless, teaching physics can be immensely rewarding. If you have a passion for science, enjoy being around people and kids, have strong determination and a lot of self-confidence, then becoming a physics teacher can be the right profession for you.

The PhysTEC project has produced a video to excite and inspire physics majors to pursue careers in teaching. This fast-paced five-minute video can be screened in university classrooms, physics department open houses, or any other place physics majors meet.