This article describes the New Physics Teacher Workshop (NPTW) program of Southern California. These workshops have been going on for about 10 years now, organized by the Southern California Section of AAPT,1 and have reached over 500 teachers and professors. In this article, we would like to share what we have learned in running such a program in hopes that other AAPT sections or similar groups might create similar programs. This program was initially directly inspired by the PTSOS program2,3 of Northern California but has taken on its own style and philosophy.3
Southern California is a rather large and populous area, so about 5 years ago, we broke our project into the Los Angeles and San Diego areas. Each year, we put on a total of six workshops (three in each area) with 20–30 participants in attendance (Fig. 1). These are 1-day workshops, always on a...