Forces In Motion: A feature on two of the six AP Physics 2 students — Reagan Solenberger and John Kislal

Senior John Kislal walked up to the whiteboard with an Expo marker in hand, preparing to explain circuits to his AP Physics 2 students. Scribbling numbers on the board, he explained the equations and asked follow-up questions for his students. 

Kislal circles his final answer and looks out to the crowd of students — all his own age. 

Kislal teaches in Miles Martin’s AP Physics 2 class, a class primarily made up of seniors, some of whom are Kislal’s friends. 

“It’s really fun to let the small amount of power you have get to your head,” Kislal said. “It’s more fun for me than it is for them.”

Students tease Kislal about his oddly written P’s and Q’s on the whiteboard or when he loses his train of thought while teaching the Carnot Cycle. For the most part, however, the four students in the class say Kislal’s presence is helpful.  

AP Physics 2 student and senior Emma Culp compares having Kislal teach the class to watching a friend giving a presentation. She said she enjoys having a teacher who relates to the student’s perspective.

“It’s easier for him to understand what we aren’t understanding because he just learned [AP Physics 2] last year,” Culp said. “He remembers what it’s like to be trying to figure it out.”

After completing AP Physics 2 his junior year, Kislal approached Martin about cadet teaching the class, considering it was all fresh in his mind. Martin happily agreed as Kislal received a 5 on the AP Physics 2 exam — a score only 20% of students received.

Martin has Kislal lead lectures and write notes on the whiteboard, while Martin jumps in to explain various AP-style free-response questions or what he’ll be looking for on upcoming tests.  

Kislal will even send pictures of notes on the class’s GroupMe and verbally test the students about what he writes down. 

“I taught everyone what a calorimeter was and then every single lesson, I randomly asked a random person unprompted, ‘Hey do you remember what a calorimeter is?’” Kislal said. “I asked that question like 20 times.”

Martin can sit back and relax as one of his former students teaches this challenging class. Occasionally, Martin will give Kislal feedback on how to engage students more and how to lecture efficiently. 

“It’s helpful in that he takes on some of the teaching mode,” Martin said. “And it’s interesting watching that and helping him become a better teacher.” 

With her MacBook’s fan whirring and her trackpad warm to the touch, then middle-schooler Reagan Solenberger admired the virtual reality display of exoplanets on NASA’s website — an online program known to put her MacBook on the verge of crashing.

She didn’t care. Her computer took her dozens of light years away, something she couldn’t just look up in the sky and see.

“Fourteen-year-old me had found gold or something,” now-senior Solenberger said. “I was addicted to [the website], and I would just spend hours looking at all the planets.”

Solenberger’s love for exoplanets and space has led to her dream of becoming a NASA astrophysicist. And as the career name implies, Solenberger has to pursue physics in college. 

“It just somehow ended up in my brain that I needed to be an astrophysicist,” Solenberger said. “My family doesn’t really question it anymore because it’s just like, ‘Oh, there’s Reagan she’s gonna go to NASA someday.’”

As a head start, Solenberger is taking AP Physics C as an independent study elective.

Solenberger sits in Miles Martin’s AP Physics 2 hour. During that class, she completes videos, free response questions and practice tests in the AP classroom. 

Martin was able to fill out paperwork consenting to the AP Physics C curriculum, giving him access to the AP Physics C AP classroom, where Solenberger would learn all the material on her own. 

Since eighth grade, Solenberger has been spending countless hours studying exoplanets and researching the best astrophysics undergraduate programs — Washington University in St. Louis being her dream school. 

“She had a definite vision in terms of ‘I want to do physics’ and ‘I want more physics,’” Martin said. “There is definitely a kind of hunger and motivation.”