Just two years out of Buffalo State’s master’s degree program in physics education, Maurice Hayon, ’08, isn’t the only one who has reaped its many benefits. His students have profited, as well.

At Baldwin Senior High School on Long Island, where Hayon has taught since 2004, a dozen of his students who have been inducted into the school’s National Honor Society have formally recognized his influence as a teacher during their induction ceremonies—an influence Hayon credits to the teaching methods he learned in Buffalo State’s program. Another of his college-bound students has honored him as the teacher who has had the most positive impact on his life at the school district’s annual In Recognition of Excellence dinner.

In 2009, Hayon was one of only 10 educators to be honored with a Distinguished Teacher Award from the Harvard Club of Long Island—nominated by former student and Harvard graduate Rahul Prabhakar.

In his nomination, Prabhakar acknowledged “the profound impact [Hayon] has on his current students every year. Their enthusiastic questioning and participation is an influence and a testament to his teaching ability.”

That teaching ability was honed and refined by the techniques and methods Hayon learned at Buffalo State, particularly in PHY 510: Process Skills in Physics Teaching.

“Physics 510 had to be, out of all the classes I’ve taken at Buff State, the best,” he said. “Because we were all either current physics teachers or looking for a degree in physics ed, we’d start out with a problem, we’d figure out a way to solve it, and then we’d explain how we did it. Statistics show student-centered teaching works better than any other kind.”

After graduating from Hofstra University with a B.A. in physics and minors in math and secondary education, Hayon began his career at Baldwin Senior High. He wanted to find a master’s degree program that would enhance his effectiveness in the classroom. As he researched physics education programs in the New York City area, he found that most taught higher-level physics for half the program’s credits and education theory for the other, which wasn’t the focus he wanted. Then he looked at Buffalo State.

“Buffalo State offered a program that was specifically designed for high school physics teachers, which is very rare to find,” he said. “As a high school physics teacher, I didn’t want to take Ph.D.-level courses. There are really no direct applications from upper-level physics to the high school classroom. I also didn’t want to learn more education theory because I felt like I had enough during my undergraduate studies.

“At Buffalo State, we built apparatuses for demonstration or laboratory use; we worked on how we can eliminate common high school physics misconceptions; and we learned, used, and practiced the successfully proven method of modeling to better instruct our students in the high school physics classroom.”

Those lessons have paid off for both teacher and students.

“Probably the most rewarding occurrence,” Hayon said, “is when kids come back from college and tell you how much of a difference you made in their lives, especially the quiet ones. You could be teaching them the entire year wondering ‘Am I getting through to them?’ And when they come back and tell you you actually made a difference in their lives, it’s just an amazing feeling.”