Zeke Kossover
National Science Foundation
Office of Legislative and Public Affairs
California, High School Science
Marc “Zeke” Kossover has been teaching high school science for the last 18 years, most recently at The Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco where he is also the Dean of Math and Science. He previously taught at The Hockaday School in Dallas, Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, and Westbury High School in Houston. For 17 of those years, Kossover has taught courses in physics ranging from Conceptual Physics to Advanced Placement Physics. Kossover has also been teaching AP Environmental Science for the past decade and has taught every other science discipline except geology.
Kossover earned a B.A. in Philosophy, Anthropology and History of Science from Rice University. He received his teaching certification from the University of Houston.
Kossover is a graduate of the Exploratorium Teacher Institute and is a member of the Exploratorium Leadership Institute where he has mentored more than 100 new science teachers and presented pedagogy workshops. Kossover served as staff on a National Science Teachers Association Toyota Tapestry grant in 2000 and was awarded an A+ for Energy grant by BP in 2006. He and won a Low Cost Apparatus Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers in 2002 for designing a new kind of optics apparatus that can be made for less than $50 and received The Herbst Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2007. In 2010, Kossover worked to find the mass of the neutrino as the Gratta Lab Fellow at Stanford University. As the Clemens Research Fellow and visiting scholar at Stanford University in 2007 and 2008, he researched ways to store hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cell cars. He has presented at the American Association of Physics Teachers National Conference in 2001-02 and 2007 and at Teach For America in 2009.
Zeke believes the goal of science teaching is to help students see the world through the eyes of science. “To do that, I have my students make mental models of how the world works through an iterative process where they predict the results of a carefully selected experiment, do the experiment, and then adjust their mental models to take into account any incorrect predictions. Working through the series of activities changes students’ worldview helping them to both see the world in a new way as well as helping them to understand how scientists construct their understanding of the world.”
For fun, Zeke likes to do physics demonstrations and interactive exhibits at science cafes and festivals. He has recently participated in the California Academy of Sciences, the Maker Faire where he won an Editor’s Choice Blue Ribbon in 2009, Ask a Scientist, How To Night, Down to a Science, and Mensa. In 2008, Kossover founded a project called Sidewalk Science where science experiments are brought to Ocean Beach and Golden Gate Park. His online physics video “Seeing Where the Microwaves are in a Microwave Oven” gained notoriety and has been viewed more than 460,000 times.
Kossover is serving his fellowship at the National Science Foundation, Office of Legislative and Public Affairs.