The 2022 National Teacher of the Year is Danielle Buggé of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in Princeton Junction, NJ. Buggé was nominated by PhysTEC institution Rutgers University, from which she graduated.

Throughout her 13-year career, Buggé has created an environment where students develop confidence in science, communication, and collaboration. From her dedication to students and the teaching of physics, many successes followed.

Buggé builds her classroom using the Investigative Science Learning Environment, inquiry-based learning, universal design for education, and productive failure techniques. Her teaching techniques are backed by research, much of which she has performed herself. Students in her classroom, even though they come in nervous and unsure about science, learn to reflect on their own learning, to think critically, and to communicate and collaborate effectively. More often than not, those students at least consider going into a STEM field after high school. Many of them actually do.

Through leading by example as a teacher and winning grants to create real-world opportunities for students, Buggé has improved STEM teaching culture at her school as a whole. Not only have more STEM classrooms in her district adopted inquiry-based learning techniques, but enrollments have increased. She continues to share her knowledge by mentoring new physics teachers in her district and sharing her research with physics education researchers.

Beyond the classroom, Buggé gives back to the teaching community by co-leading a professional learning community of physics teachers from and around Rutgers University. She mentors pre-service teachers and co-teaches graduate courses for teachers at Rutgers. All Rutgers pre-service physics teachers who have been mentored by Buggé and were hired are still employed as teachers. In addition, at least two of her physics students are currently studying to become physics teachers.