Michael Higdon is a physics teacher at Prospect High School. 

Q: “What was your favorite subject while you were in school?” 

A: “Junior year I took physics- I’m a physics teacher, and that is where my passion for physics started. So in high school AP Physics B.” 

Q: “Do you have a favorite memory at Prospect?” 

A: “The very first year we started- I forgot when it was, but when we first started handing out those staff appreciation cards, and I managed to get quite a few. It was at the end of the year and I was a newer teacher, and that just absolutely made my day, made my week, like made my entire year feel like, okay, the relationships I’m building, the things I’m doing, just the day-to-day interactions mean something to a lot of students- that they chose me to write something about. I remember just that first year. Every year it’s still so good to get all those cards, but that’s gotta be one of my favorite moments- I hang onto that.” 

Q: “What would you say your favorite memory from when you were in school is, that has to do with physics?” 

A: “This is the reason I like physics so much, because everything feels like a puzzle- it’s like piecing things together. I like logic puzzles, I like-just doing puzzles. Physics was the very first time I felt like there was a puzzle to solve. Every day in class it was like, okay- what are the pieces I have? What’s the big picture? How can I do this?- and so the very beginning of AP Physics B we started working on problems for the first time. I was kind of having trouble at first, and then I remember it clicking. I had the kinematic equations and I was like- okay how am I gonna solve this problem? I went for it, I found out that it was a puzzle, and from then every extra bit that we learned about physics just built, and built, and built, and built. It was just so incredible to me.”