A passion for helping others launches a student on a new course
As he prepares to teach physics to high schoolers, Joseph Morrison will represent credential students statewide as liaison to a state commission.
Joseph Morrison (’25) started his college journey aiming for the stars. Raised in nearby Escondido, he entered San Diego State University four years ago with the lofty dream of becoming an aerospace engineer for NASA.
Yet as he pursued his studies as an undergraduate in the College of Sciences, a new aspiration — teaching — found its way onto the launchpad.
It all started organically. While he never worked as a tutor in any official capacity, Morrison was the guy his classmates went to for help. Peers found him always amenable to staying after class to explain a difficult concept or show them how to perform a complex function on a graphing calculator.
Before long, Morrison started to discover some answers of his own.
“I was like, ‘Hey, I'm enjoying this,’” he recalled. “I enjoyed seeing that ‘aha’ moment in students. That's when I kind of shifted from wanting to do physics to wanting to help nurture physics."
And so, after graduating in May with a bachelor’s degree in physical science, Morrison opted to bypass an industry career and return to SDSU to complete a credential program in the School of Teacher Education.
“Down the road, I see myself in educational leadership,” Morrison explained. “But as of right now, I want to be a high school physics teacher.”
New challenges
This semester, Morrison is doing just that as part of STE’s single subject math and science teaching credential cohort. He is completing his student teaching at The O'Farrell Charter School in San Diego’s Encanto neighborhood.
But that’s not the only challenge he’s tackling in the service of others.
In October, Morrison will begin his appointment as Educator Preparation Student Liaison for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), the body that sets state standards for educator preparation for public schools. In the role, he will be the voice representing thousands of student teachers at universities all across the state as the CTC meets to discuss policy.
“All that staying behind for my classmates during my undergrad is really what drove me to apply for this position,” he said.
Indeed, it’s about helping people to understand
Morrison said he hopes he can effectively impart the on-the-ground realities faced by credential students. For now, he’s preparing for the yearlong appointment by collecting data; creating surveys to share with teacher education faculty and student teachers at SDSU, before scaling up those efforts to gain insight from students at major institutions across the state.
“We're all trying to pursue the same path and reach the same goal, but we all have so many different lived experiences reaching it,” he said. “I just want to make sure I can communicate that with the commission.”
It couldn’t be too much harder than trying to introduce physics to high schoolers — something Morrison is now doing at O'Farrell Charter in an experience he describes as both “great” and “scary.” At the time of the interview, he was preparing to implement his first lesson plan, crackling with labs, reports and quizzes.
The goal now? Helping his young students aim for the stars.
“I'm excited to see the successes,” he said. “I want to do physics because it's hard to see yourself as a scientist, and especially a physicist. But most students have the ability to do that. Most students are already physicists, they just don't know it yet.”
To learn more about SDSU's teaching credential programs, contact Dalia Corrigan, prerequisite program coordinator, at [email protected] or visit teach.sdsu.edu.
