Skip to main content

AP Institute - After

We're in the home stretch... the final afternoon session always seems to be a time when there is a need to do a bit of chatting and goofing around. After four days of intensive AP work, it's a necessity to drain the brain for a moment.

Some good things

  • really organized: each packet of information I've been given fits into a specific category. I can tell what it means in relationship to other packets of information.
  • useful for classroom: not just a packet of graphic organizers, but rather a description of how it work, what it can be used for and specific examples
  • paired works: this is one of the most difficult things for me to find pairs or poems that work with specific works or sections; finding appropriate excerpts.
  • video, music and artwork pairings; again, very difficult and time-consuming
  • essays to score, calibration; it's hard to teach what the readers are looking for when you aren't sure yourself. My AP Lang. course did this on 9 essays-one for each score. Without doing it a few times, it is really hard to explain the difference between a 6 and a 7 or how to really bump up that 4 to a 6.
I'm really inspired to get to work and get more organized for the coming year. Mostly concerning my AP Language course. After taking this course, I'm really feeling cheated by AP Language experience which was not organized, barely helpful and spent a majority of the time explaining the synthesis question. As a result, I believe that my teaching has focused mostly only synthesis type activities... I'm not so sure it's been totally been to the students' benefit.

I'm really excited to be going home and picking up the baby. This weekend is purported to be very nice on the sunshine front. We already have baby swimsuit and a pool! Summer fun!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“They Don’t Get It”

I hear that a lot these days. It used to be mostly from various teens trying to negotiate the drama unfolding in their lives as they wandered into that no-man’s land between adult and child. These days it’s from adults trying to navigate the education scene these days. So many people talking and no one listening. The other day I was reading a post by a blogger I’ve been following for several years. Before there was such a thing as “blogging.” We all know spring is IEP review season. This blogger wrote about his daughter’s. Among the various elements, there was the discussion about the state assessment tests. She did not pass. There was discussion about what this means… and why said student needed to pass this test. Would she be taking a modified test? While reading, all I could think about was what would happen to that child as she entered middle school and high school. A history of not passing the assessment test vs. teachers who will now be evaluated on how many students pass t...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Cruelest Month

I know T.S. Eliot favored April as the most cruel, but we teachers know that May is… even more so these days. Most importantly, it is the final testing month. National ‘assessments, state ‘assessments’, district ‘assessments’, school ‘assessments’… on and on. It’s impossible to actually get anything done. Toss in graduation activities, planning for the upcoming year and the 2011 bonus, lay-offs and transfers, and you have to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to save money by simply shutting down school entirely except for a few test proctors. Meanwhile, there seems an air of hopelessness permeating the education world. Plans to lay-off thousands are coming to fruition. Schools are being closed, despite protests. Charters are increasing where they can whether they should not. Unions have lost a lot ground and teachers are trying to decide if it’s even worth it any more to continue talking about education . ( not that I blame anyone for that, we all have lives to live ) For myself, I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Campaign Promises

While purusing the Sunday paper, I came across an article describing some local candidate forum held over the weekend. Apprently they either weren't able to say a lot or what they said was pretty boring because the article was skimpy on specifics. What caught my eye was a position of Randy Dutton. He wants "higher standards for teachers." My interest was piqued... what kind of standards? In looking at his website, apparently those standards will be raised by carrying a gun to school, finally; "full days of school"-whatever that means - personally I'd love to put in business hours. No more 5 am wake ups; increasing the number of k-8 schools - because those kindergartners don't swear enough; sending disruptive students to placed like Habit for Humanity - babysitting is what people volunteer for; and teaching more American History- too bad that with all the testing, no one ever gets past the Civil War... I'm not sure how any of these apply to teachers, ...
Post a Comment
Read more