I taught as adjunct staff at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, NH. The courses were "Managerial Decision Making," "Marketing Management," and "Macro Economics." (What a combination for a Ph.D. physicist with an M.B.A.!)

 I also taught full time for two years (2005 - 2007) at Clover Hill High School in Chesterfield, VA. My subjects were AP Calculus BC (I am CollegeBoard certified in this subject), High School Calculus, and Trig./Advanced Algebra. (See what some students have to say about my teaching at ratemytechers.com.)  Teaching is a great experience, especially when you have students who want to learn (or, at least respect others who want to learn). There are few other experiences in life more deeply satisfying than seeing "the light turn on" in a student's eyes. It appeared that one of the biggest challenges of teaching in a public high school is coping with behavior issues. (Perhaps experienced teachers would say motivating disinterested students.) Responding to bad classroom behavior not only wastes valuable instruction time but also wears on teacher morale. It appeared that the successful teachers in my department ("successful" being a personal judgment, of course) were motivated more by a student's success and less by the joy of teaching the subject. I was motivated as much by the joy of teaching the subject and its real life applications as by the student's success understanding and being able to apply it. There is a big difference between these motivations. While I would be silently upset wondering how this Ph.D. physicist would be re-teaching simple fractions to seniors, for example, some other teachers would be delighted to alter their lesson plan to re-teach pre-high school math, and not be upset by the set back. (Of course, I would ask the struggling student to see me for personal instruction after classes. He rarely did.) I gave up the opportunity to teach at this school when my class schedule changed the third year to include four out of five classes with potentially significant behavior problems. Not only would I have faced another demanding year working on yet another lesson plan, but even more of my experience applying math to science and business applications would have been lost to students who, simply, would not have cared to hear it.