I was further encouraged to find that the AP U.S. History course is moving in the same direction! For the first time ever, the College Board is redesigning the exam for the AP U.S. History course. This also means a redesign of the curriculum. In order to prepare for this I attended a week long training at St. Joseph's College run by the College Board.
Our instructor for the week is an AP teacher in Massachusetts. He has been an exam reader for years and was just recently trained for the redesign. At St. Joseph's, several AP courses run institutes, most had from 4-10 participants. We had 31 in ours, and I'm sure its because of the redesign. I learned so much from this week, but my big take away is that there is now less emphasis on content and a greater emphasis on skills. For me this is good news because I have been teaching this way anyway and just hoping students when memorize content to prepare for the exam on their own. Now, I do not need to implore them to memorize as much.
As is typical with these workshops, the textbook companies all sent a bunch of textbooks for us to take home as sample copies. I have many of them already so this wasn't much help for me. I wish they would give us sample copies of primary and secondary source readers, but I guess they don't because they figure people will just photocopy them as needed.
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| (Just some of the many textbooks the companies sent to give to us) |
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| (even more textbooks visible here) |
During our week we explored how the new exam has changed the way the multiple choice questions are written, now included short answer questions, and have a new method of scoring the Document Based Question as well as the Long Essay question. We also had the chance to design our own questions to help practice with students. We created one lesson, and practiced our skills with some lessons we received from the College Board that we can use in our classes. The College Board requires all teachers to submit a new syllabus to be audited because of the significant changes the course has had. We spent a good chunk of time looking at sample syllabi and discussing the changes we need to make. I'm happy to report that I was able to redesign my syllabus during the week, and it was approved by the College Board less than a week later. Its nice to have that done before school starts.
St. Joe's is a great facility, very quiet and just a beautiful campus. The food all week was perfect to help us recharge after working all day. the highlight was the lobster bake Thursday night. I don't eat much lobster, so I had steak instead and it was exquisite!
I relish these professional development opportunities! I had a chance to exchange ideas with 30 colleagues from around New England (as well as 2 who teach abroad in DOD schools and 1 from California) around this new approach to the AP course. I received a bunch of free resources, and we were well fed in a beautiful setting. There is a cost involved, but the district really gets its money worth. Any AP U.S. History teacher who does not attend a training is really going to be behind in getting their students ready and I just don't see how their students would be able to do well on the exam. There is no way I would feel confident about preparing my students without this training. I would definitely go again in a few years.
Now for 2 weeks of relaxing before I get back at school stuff. We are driving to South Carolina and then camping for a few days when we get back. After this, I have a Leadership Team retreat and I will be working to get my classes ready for the start of the new year. I plan to blog once a week again this school year as I think it really helps me in my planning. I have already looked back at last year to see what I was doing and when. Its nice to have time for vacation, but I am looking forward to getting back on the classroom!!
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