At Science High School, all students take physics in the 10th grade, as part of a rigorous four-year science sequence. High academic standards are a given in Richard's honors-level classes, but Richard's students are also expected to develop strong self-management and collaboration skills by taking responsibility for their own learning as well as their individual roles within class work groups. "The class is structured around four member groups with specific student roles and responsibilities within the group,” Richard explains. "Students must monitor and evaluate their behavior and the behavior of other group members as well as working toward mutual academic progress. Group managers submit weekly reports detailing student behavior, performance, and level of responsibility. Students also schedule most of their daily time in class each day and plan each week. Self-assessment and monitoring of progress and performance is also a routine occurrence.” 
Why the focus on increased student responsibility for learning? "This is a basic life skill and one that will enable the students to be lifelong learners and problem solvers, as well as responsible citizens,” Richard says. "Plus, self-selecting assignments makes the students more motivated and more likely to actually complete them in a thoughtful way.”
Richard's course is designed around a number of Problem-Based Learning units that provide the students with a context for the content they're studying. "I think PBL is a natural fit for all the sciences, where there are a large number of situations and phenomena that allow for students to explore using an open-ended format,” Richard comments. "There are a variety of ways to
approach the problem – research, hands-on experiments, etc. that allow for student differentiation and activity design. I have used PBLs to teach sound (an acoustics unit), vectors and projectile motion (a siege weapons unit), kinematics (a traffic flow unit), and thermodynamics (insulated container unit). The units that worked well did so because they dealt with situations that were clearly evident in the students' daily lives or had them build something.” Richard is also very careful that his instructional design is content-based. "You have to be careful that the problem can only be solved by the students learning the curricular content,” he explains.
Problem-Based Learning also provides a good structure within which Richard can develop differentiated instruction at the classroom level: "The course is divided into units and each unit has an activity sheet with a variety of equivalent assignments and assignment types. The students choose from sets of assignments which ones they
will complete to master the unit objectives. After a while groups design their own activity sheets. With PBLs, groups tend to move in different directions as they approach and try to solve the problem and there are different tasks within each group as well.”
With so much going on, how does Richard keep track of individual student progress? "Of course I give frequent quizzes to make sure individual students are mastering the content,” he says, "but I also chat with each group during class to get a sense of what they know and where they feel they are having problems. I then conduct benchmark lessons attended by the whole class or mini-lessons for just those who want to come and cover the points that seem to give the most problems. I structure the groups according to base-line scores, learning styles, and on a gender and ethnic basis as much as possible. I change groups about every eight weeks.” He also asks students for frequent input about their own performances and for feedback about his classroom and instructional design. He also asks students to design specific self-improvement plans based on test and performance data.
Richard was drawn to teaching after working with high school students during his senior year at college. Why physics? "I was always a physics/chemistry major,” Richard explains. "I think there are many openings for teaching any subject through science.”
A sign posted on the wall of Richard Balsamel's physics lab reads: "What you learn in a physics course can be shocking!" That's certainly true in Richard's classroom, where students not only master the curricular content, but also gain life skills that will serve them throughout their academic careers and beyond.