25 years of Educational Outreach

“The purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”

—Sydney J. Harris, American journalist and author 

At Central Hastings School in Madoc, Ontario, Danica Donald is the math department head and the only physics teacher for miles around. 

Many students travel by bus, some for nearly an hour, to get to the K-12 school. The closest university is Queens, an hour and a half away by car. 

Needless to say, it can be professionally lonely to be a physics teacher in Madoc. But thankfully, throughout her teaching career, Donald has had one constant resource at her side: Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

From its inception 25 years ago, Perimeter has made educational outreach to teachers across Canada and around the world one of its three foundational pillars, along with research and training of graduate students.

This work is recognized globally. Last year, the American Physical Society (APS) awarded its 2024 Excellence in Physics Education Award to Perimeter Institute’s educational outreach team. There have been many other such accolades over the years.

Maïté Dupuis, director of the training, educational outreach and scientific programs, says Perimeter has an “amazing” educational outreach team consisting of teachers and scientists.

“They are all passionate about physics and chose to come to Perimeter because they want to explain science and physics to students, teachers, and the general public,” Dupuis says. “Being able to explain theoretical physics at that level is not a skill that all scientists have, but our outreach team can do that.”

For teachers who don’t really have a lot of time, the resources they create are invaluable, bringing interesting and exciting science activities to the classroom, she adds.

Donald has been using Perimeter’s educational resources ever since they were developed in the old form — booklets and CDs — years ago. Now, they’re online and available to everyone in the world, for free. The resources help teachers like Donald make physics and science education more interactive and accessible.

She was introduced to Perimeter after she got an engineering degree at the University of Waterloo, and she became one of the teachers who “field tested” some of the resources, using them in her classrooms and providing feedback.

Those resources have inspired many of her students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), Donald says. But even if those students don’t go into STEM careers, “it’s great for brain development and great for critical thinking,” she says. “I think everybody should study physics,” she adds.

The classroom activities are designed to engage students and reinforce their normal curriculum, no matter where they live or how rural the community is. They may not have a university next door, and they may be far from a city with a large and extensive library collection, but no matter. They have access to a stupendous education in classical and quantum physics, and science in general, thanks to Perimeter’s educational outreach.

There have been tens of thousands of downloads of the resources over the years, in 137 different countries, according to Marie Strickland, associate director of educational outreach and scientific programs.

“When they can see it, experience it, then when they are doing the math part of it, it makes more sense,” Donald says about how the classroom resources have helped her students.

Perimeter also provides professional development workshops for science teachers, both online and in person. It is estimated that about 55,000 teachers have benefitted from these workshops over the course of 25 years.

The flagship in-person teacher workshop is EinsteinPlus, which is typically attended by around 35 teachers from around the world each year. But the impact is exponential. Many of the teachers who attend EinsteinPlus become part of a large, worldwide, teacher network. They, in turn, lead professional development workshops for other teachers in their home regions and countries. Consequentially, millions of students in every part of the world have been reached.

Some of the team’s most popular programs are the online and in-person GoPhysics workshops for students, planned and developed in co-operation with teachers across Canada. The in-person workshops take Perimeter’s educational outreach team on the road, visiting classrooms in far-flung parts of the country.

Meanwhile, the Inspiring Future Women in Science event held on site at Perimeter encourages young people of all genders (but especially young women who are still underrepresented in physics) to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers.

Another student-facing program is Physica Phantastica, which enables teachers to bring their classes into Perimeter for engaging lectures by Perimeter’s outreach scientists.

Past student-focused outreach efforts included the International Summer School for Young Physicists (ISSYP), which was a two-week educational enrichment program to inspire Canadian and international high school students with an interest in physics. Although that program no longer operates, many of the high schoolers who attended in the past have gone on to have stellar careers in physics.

A good example is Alexandra Amon, who was part of the ISSYP class about 15 years ago and is now an assistant professor in astrophysics at Princeton University. She was recently back at Perimeter to give a lecture at the Cosmic Ecosystems conference. She mentioned, how, as a young person growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, a country in the Caribbean, she had absolutely no idea that astrophysics could even be a career. But after the ISSYP program at Perimeter, she went home absolutely determined that this would be her path in life. That is the kind of life-altering story is that is told many times over about Perimeter’s educational outreach programs.

Perimeter is grateful to the many private supporters who have helped educational outreach programs grow and flourish.

Teachers-in-Residence deliver science education across Canada

These programs are only possible because of the talented teachers and scientists Perimeter has on staff. One of them is Dave Fish, a former physics teacher in Waterloo who is now a teacher-in-residence at the institute.

Fish began coming to Perimeter not long after its inception, eventually joining the staff full-time.

As a teacher-in-residence, he helps build the educational outreach resources and update them as modern physics progresses forward. He helps deliver workshops in various parts of the country.

Delivering science education to schools in remote areas is a big part of what Perimeter does, says Fish, who has recently run programs in places like Cranberry Portage, Manitoba, and in Yellowknife, NWT.

“With our GoPhysics program, we’ve really tried to make a concerted effort to get to the smaller communities, and especially the communities that have a significant Indigenous population," Fish says. “If a student lives in Toronto, there are lots of enrichment opportunities. There are universities nearby and they run programs. But if a kid lives in Timmins or in smaller communities, the chances of the students finding enrichment outside of the internet is not that great, so we make a big difference in those places.”

Lorraine Blackwell, educational outreach program manager, says one of the most valuable aspects of Perimeter’s programs is that they are designed to not just target the super-keen students who might have many opportunities for enrichment programs, but all students.

“Its fun to see the enthusiasm, both amongst the students and the teachers,” Blackwell says. For some of the teachers, “it’s their first opportunity to connect with other physics teachers and it helps them feel less isolated,” she adds.

Dupuis adds that the Perimeter educational resources and programs are not simply about the lessons. It’s not just about creating interesting ways to teach students about Newton’s laws. It’s also about the process of science, and how scientists go about finding the answers to complex questions, she says.

“I think that is important, especially in the world in which we live where there is so much information and it’s difficult to check what is true and what is not true. What we help teachers bring to the classrooms is what it means to be a scientist, to have a theory and to test the theory, how to test your question,” Dupuis says.

A global model for teacher training in science

On the international stage, Perimeter’s educational outreach has become a model, influencing related programs at places like CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), home of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe; and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States. Fish was recently in Netherlands to help run a teacher camp there.

It’s a rewarding task. The team regularly receives feedback from teachers, students, and former participants, grateful for the inspiration that they got from Perimeter’s educational outreach over the years.  

Of course, not every student can or will be a physicist or end up in a technology job, but it’s not just about showing them a career pathway.

Feeding Curiosity 

“One of the things we are doing is feeding curiosity in kids,” Fish says. We are helping them grow as humans by becoming more curious. But another, more practical component is that they will become taxpayers, and we want people in our society who appreciate the value of science.”

“When I was teaching about climate change, I would say to students, ‘not all of you are going to become climate scientists, but we need people who understand climate science, we need economists who understand climate science. Whatever field you go into, it is important to understand how science works.’”

Ashley McCarl Palmer, another teacher-in-residence at Perimeter, taught in local high schools for 15 years and became involved in testing the educational outreach materials in classrooms and in teacher training at EinsteinPlus workshops before she joined Perimeter full-time.

She says the team is constantly updating the educational materials as new discoveries are made. Good examples include the discovery of the Higgs boson or the historic picture of the M87 black hole from the Event Horizon Telescope. As these big discoveries happen, the classroom content gets a refresh.

McCarl Palmer loves the role she is in now. “I'm a lifelong learner, so I do really enjoy learning the content as we develop it. But my favourite part of the job is helping teachers take that next step. We often talk about students having those ‘lightbulb moments,’ but I think it is even more powerful when teachers have those lightbulb moments, because then you are not just impacting one person but a whole classroom of 30 students, who will have content that is going to be so much better and richer. That is exciting for me,” she says.

Outreach scientists as translators

Alongside the Teachers-in-Residence, Perimeter also employs outreach scientists, including Damian Pope and Kelly Foyle. Many of the Perimeter researchers also contribute their expertise to making sure the information is accurate and up to date.

Foyle was an astrophysicist and postdoctoral researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton who volunteered at  the W.J. McCallion Planetarium before joining Perimeter in 2014, and she designs many of the educational outreach materials, particularly in cosmology.

Pope was working as a postdoctoral researcher in the field of quantum foundations and quantum information at Griffith University in Australia when he happened upon the job opening at Perimeter.

He applied, not thinking that he had a chance, given that he was in Australia and not Canada. But he got the job in 2005, and he never looked back. He loves mixing science with the human element of teaching.

“I see myself as a science translator in the broad sense,” says Pope, who also helps to ensure that the institute’s outreach materials (both print and video) are accurate but still accessible by teachers and their students.

“We get to take all of these ideas about quantum or dark matter or other physics content, and we translate it and help fit it into the school curriculum. We are translating it in a way that the other 99 per cent of people in the world can understand so that we reach the next generation of students, teachers and physicists,” Pope says.

Perimeter works with teachers directly to make that happen, he adds. “We are making sure that the science is correct, which is important, but also that the materials are relevant and can be used in the real world and are at the right level and using the right language. We partner with experienced teachers who know their students and know what works.” 

Pope says that since he began working at Perimeter, the number of teacher workshops and the educational outreach has grown enormously. Many universities and other science research institutes try to do educational outreach as well, but few, if any, have the scope and the focus in physics that Perimeter has.

In a world beset with many challenges, understanding physics and science in general is good training, he says. “Whether you become a theoretical physicist or a lawyer or a plumber, it is useful to have that in your toolkit.”

In this age of misinformation on the internet, and in a world full of fast-paced technological change, Pope says this kind of educational outreach is more crucial to society than ever before.

“The more you understand about science, or at least how it works, the better you can navigate and participate in the world, even just in the democratic sense,” Pope says. “Also, it’s just cool, and it’s fun,” he adds.

Learn more about Perimeter’s educational outreach programs and resources here.