One Class at a Time: Mountain View High physics teacher wins $2,000 grant for lab equipment

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Mountain View High School physics teacher Daniel Gibson received $2,000 in grant funding to purchase new laboratory equipment for his classroom.

The funding includes $1,000 from the “One Class at a Time” program—a joint initiative by MidOregon Credit Union and television station KTVZ—along with a $1,000 matching grant from the Bend La Pine School District.

The grant comes during Gibson's first year teaching physics at Mountain View High School. Since starting the position, he has created much of his course curriculum from scratch while searching for funding for his classes.

The $2,000 total grant will fund hands-on physics laboratory equipment, enabling Gibson to conduct practical demonstrations of abstract mathematical equations. Among the planned purchases are a spinning device designed to demonstrate rotational momentum and a cannon capable of launching objects at designated angles and forces.

Gibson says these visual and physical demonstrations are how he learned advanced physics. "For me and this is kind of like one of the pillars of my philosophy of like how I teach physics. Something doesn't click for me unless I have a physical understanding what's actually going on in the real world. So I might be able to to do the math and get the right answer. But in order to really thread that with the conceptual understanding of what's happening, I just need to physically see what's going on.”