Phebe and Zephaniah Swift Moore Teaching Award
PHYSICS TEACHER
HENRY W. GRADY HIGH SCHOOL
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Nominated by Elias (Eli) Mansbach ’18
When he first walked into Jeff Cramer’s physics classroom, Eli Mansbach ’18 had no idea what a profound impact that semester would have on his life. But “within the first few weeks of the course, I was hooked and inspired. Mr. Cramer’s blend of crystal-clear teaching and relevant demonstrations kept our class attentive and willing to learn more.” And Cramer’s demonstrations were truly special, often performed using apparatus that he had built by hand, such as “a homemade bed of nails to demonstrate the equations for pressure, or lights attached to a rod to help us see how the center of mass of an object moves,” Mansbach writes in his nomination. “They helped us visualize the equations in our textbooks and see how our physics concepts were applicable to everyday life.” Before becoming an educator, Cramer had worked at a juvenile detention center, where he would hear young people complain about their teachers. Finally, he realized, “if I taught in a school, the troubled kids would come to me, not the other way around.” His dedication to teaching and motivating young minds has inspired physics major Mansbach to follow in his footsteps.