The testing culture strikes again
Break out the popcorn– it’s movie time in Advanced Placement classes around the city!
It’s common knowledge that after the AP tests, which take place in early May, AP classes become a total joke. At LaGuardia, stories are passed down about the dumbest, most irrelevant movies teachers have shown for the last month of school, or which AP teachers expect you to actually show up in class after the test. It would be a lie to say that some part of me does not enjoy this payoff for hard work, but I do think it reflects directly on the test-prep culture that we all have entered. Though APs are test-prep courses by nature, I’ve learned information and study skills that will be useful for life. And unlike most standardized tests and the SATs, I find the AP tests to be measures of real learning and understanding, not of a student’s ability to test well. Learning how to write essays or speak Spanish for the AP test are skills that I will need, and use, forever. But in these last few weeks of school, when all teaching and learning in AP classes ends abruptly, I wonder if my teachers feel the same way. If the AP skills are life skills, why do teachers stop teaching the day after the test?
It seems to me that when the focus of a year is a test, teachers do not push themselves to go beyond. A month of school is a lot of time to waste just because “we took the test.” We could still be learning: The AP Composition test is over, but I have hundreds of essays left to write in my life, not to mention the other ways I will to need to organize and present my thoughts. There are hundreds of good books left to read and analyze, and hundreds of countries I plan to visit where I will need my Spanish skills.
I think the time after the test should be prized teaching time. To me, it seems like every good teacher’s dream: with no test at the end, teachers can teach whatever they want , however they want, and at whatever pace the students need.
Students and teachers complain a lot about the limits of standardized testing, but why don’t we take advantage of the freedom that comes once the big test is over? I would encourage AP teachers and students alike to take advantage of this time of looseness to teach and learn in new, interesting and creative ways. It’s a luxury we can’t afford to squander.
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No wonder my AP students were so annoyed with me. I used the post-AP time to teach fun and lighter pieces that didn’t fit in to other classes’ curricula. They came around and learned to love Wilde and more modern authors.
I can tell you from past years that not all students want to have post-AP time as “real” class time. Refreshing.
Comment by Rebecca — May 21, 2009 @ 8:21 pm
It’s true…students do love the movie tradition, and it might be hard to get them away from it. But I think the last few weeks are a good time to redefine “real class time” as less about Aims, Do Nows and homework and more about experimenting with how kids can really enjoy learning. I’m glad you decided to teach some fun material during that time, and that at least some students appreciated it.
Comment by Toni — May 21, 2009 @ 9:11 pm
Toni, you’re definitely right that teaching and learning shouldn’t cease just because AP exams have come and gone. On the other hand, good students — those who put in tons of overtime to prepare well for the AP exams — do feel, and rightly so, that they deserve a bit of a break. In the early 1990s, I spent an average of 5-6 hours a night studying in high school, and that average only increased as March and April rolled around each year. I was completely spent by mid-May of senior year (when I had five AP exams). Also, I knew I’d be heading to a four-year college that didn’t accept AP scores, but that didn’t stop me from trying my best on the exams.
But nobody deserves what essentially amounts to a four-week vacation when school is still in session. My own AP teachers mostly did what Rebecca does — use the time for things that didn’t have a place in the curriculum earlier in the year. Should that be a diet of nothing but movies? No. Is the occasional movie to be frowned upon? No again. A good AP Lit. teacher might decide to screen, for example, two or three versions of _Hamlet_ that the class didn’t have time to watch earlier in the year. Dicussions and a low-stakes writing assignment comparing and contrasting the merits of each film could follow. This is meaningful but fun work.
My senior year AP Lit. teacher gave us only one assignment to complete between the AP exam in mid-May and the end of school in mid-June: write an 8-page paper on the works of an author you wish to study in great detail. I chose Dostoevsky. We had read _Crime and Punishment_ that year, and so I took the opportunity to delve into some of his other works (e.g., _Notes from the Underground_, _The Double_, etc.). Every student came up with his/her own topic that the teacher had to approve. A friend of mine wrote on Joan Didion’s short stories. It was probably the first time most of us had any say in what we wrote about — choosing the texts and topics — and we jumped at the opportunity. It hardly seemed like work. (But, then again, we were dorky AP kids.)
An option for AP Composition teachers — if they have mostly juniors — is to spend the last month of school talking about what students should be looking for in colleges. Some preliminary essay writing (for personal statements) can also happen. I know I wouldn’t have attended a small liberal arts college (in New England, of course) if one of my English teachers hadn’t brought the concept to my attention via a Sports Illustrated cover story in 1994 or so. I’m from California, where it seems most people have heard of nothing beyond Stanford, Berkeley and UCLA.
Comment by Justin Snider — May 22, 2009 @ 1:00 pm