What I Wish I Knew Before I Started Teaching Physics Online
Last January, I sat at my kitchen table, my 7-year-old’s half-eaten bowl of Froot Loops still sweating beside my laptop, waiting for my first online student. I’d been a high school physics classroom aide for four years before stepping back to raise my kids, and I’d decided I wanted to teach physics online for a little extra income. I’d set up a free profile on a local tutoring site, answered a mom’s request for help for her 10th grade son who’d failed first semester, bought a $15 stylus for my 5-year-old iPad, and figured that was all I needed. How hard could it be? Physics is physics, right?
Javi logged on 10 minutes late, his camera tilted so I could see mostly the ceiling of his bedroom, a crumpled Cheeto bag visible in the bottom corner of the frame. I pulled up my pre-made digital lesson on force diagrams, drew a box sliding down a ramp just like I used to in the classroom, and asked him to label the forces acting on it. He mumbled something I couldn’t hear, then said “I don’t get why this matters. It’s just a stupid box.” Twenty minutes later, my internet cut out mid-explanation, and when I got back on, Javi had signed off. I closed my laptop, stared at the Froot Loops bowl, and wondered if I’d made a huge mistake.
I went back and rewrote everything for our second session. I’d seen Javi’s skateboard propped against his bed in the background of his first login, so I started there. I asked him to show me the ramp he skateboards on at the local park, pulled out my phone, and held it up to show him the beat up old skateboard I’d had as a teen. Then I asked him: when you’re at the top of the ramp, why do you start moving before you even push? When you stop pushing at the bottom, why do you slow down instead of keep going? He sat up a little, camera tilted down so I could actually see his face, and started talking. We drew force diagrams on his ramp, not some random textbook box, and by the end of the session, he was the one asking why his board always veers left when he goes over a crack. That’s when I figured out the first thing no one tells you when you want to teach physics online: you don’t need to replicate the classroom. You just need to meet kids where they already are.
I’d worried that online teaching would miss the hands-on lab work that makes physics click, but I’ve found it’s actually easier to do low-stakes hands-on than in a crowded classroom. All you have to do is use what kids already have in their house. When we studied pendulums last month with an 8th grade student named Mia who’s obsessed with science fairs, she didn’t need a fancy lab kit. She grabbed a sneaker out of her closet, tied it to a piece of yarn from her mom’s craft bin, and timed the swings with her phone. We graphed the results together right on my Google Slides, and she noticed the pattern between string length and swing speed all on her own before I even pointed it out. That’s way more memorable than any pre-made simulation I could have pulled up.
There are small, concrete adjustments that make all the difference, too. I cut all my sessions from 60 minutes to 50 minutes. It’s not that kids can’t learn for an hour, but staring at a screen is way more tiring than sitting in a classroom. I also build in a 2-minute check-in at the start of every session that’s not about physics—just ask what one good thing happened that week, and that’s it. No long tangents, just enough to make it feel like talking to a person, not a tutor on a screen. For shy kids, I let them type answers in the chat instead of speaking out loud, which is something I never would have done in a classroom, but it makes them way more willing to participate. I don’t bother with expensive whiteboard subscriptions or fancy curriculum, either. The free annotation tool on Google Slides works fine, and I pull most of my practice problems from open-source high school websites for free.
I started this with just one student, and now I have eight, from 8th grade to 12th grade. Some are failing and need extra help, like Javi, and some are ahead and want to learn things their small public school doesn’t offer. Javi ended the semester with a B-, and his mom told me he doesn’t fake a stomach ache to get out of physics class anymore. That’s the biggest win I could ask for.
I’m still figuring it out. Last week, I forgot to share the activity link before a session, and I had to waste 10 minutes while Mia dug through her junk drawer for a battery for our voltage experiment. Some weeks, a student doesn’t show up, or my kid bangs on the kitchen door in the middle of a session needing a band-aid. When I first decided I wanted to teach physics online, I thought I needed to have everything perfect to be good at it. I thought I needed a fancy set up and polished lessons to feel legitimate. Now I know that the best lessons are the ones that tie to the stuff kids already care about—skateboarding, baking, soccer, even messing around with old batteries in the junk drawer. I’m thinking about adding a small monthly group class for curious middle schoolers this fall, but I’m not in a rush. It’s messy, it’s small, and it works for right now. That’s enough.
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