May102010

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So. January 5 was the last post.  One of my New Year’s Resolutions (of… 12?) was to write regularly here.  Most of my resolutions have gone the way of this one too.  But there’s a REASON.  Its because I’ve felt like the above picture for most of the school year.  In fact, the only reason I can write right now is because a) I have a cold or maybe sinus infection and nasty cough and am waiting for a doctor appt instead of being at work and b) the AP class officially ended Friday.   This is going to be the topic of today’s post, though I created a list of many others to posthumously write about later.  Less real time, more reflecting on a year, let’s say. AP stands for Advanced Placement (found out how to link!).  You might have taken one of these classes - college level courses in high school that terminate in an exam that if you score a 3,4, or 5 on, will result in college credit.   In recent years, there has been an attempt to democratize APs by expanding them to more schools, particularly schools with students of color from low income neighborhoods.  My schools is one such place, where the goal is to offer students these kinds of classes in order to prepare them to be successful in college.  The students that I got in my AP class in September were - for the most part - the students who received the best grades in their classes for the previous two years.  For the first essay that the students wrote, on a nine point rubric, most scored from a zero to a two.  I think maybe two students got a two.  Even at the top of their class, their skills were nowhere near where they needed to be to be in a college level course.  Apparently, as we get to the later part of the story, this was *supposed* to alert me to lower my standards.   However, I had been to a summer institute about how to teach the class with a guy who has taught somewhere in the ‘burbs of Southern California for 15 years and I sort of understood that there was a particular standard to AP. I mean…. there are sample questions to use on exams. There is a RUBRIC for essays and example essays.  I felt like it was pretty clear. I worked these kids hard all year.  And was sometimes mean. Sometimes supportive. Pretty much always relentless.  There were lots of moments throughout the year where they got real annoyed at me when I would do something like assign essays on top of 50 pages of reading and notes.  Or tell them two days before about a certain section of history that they needed to memorize 40 dates from.  At some point in the year, I had them rewrite every essay that they weren’t scoring a five on (this was still most of the class) and we were still doing an essay a week on top of that… so they had a lot of work.  Some kids responded to all of this by continuing to do their best throughout the whole year, even when it seemed like they were stuck.  Others would spend some chunks of time falling into despair and feeling like it was pointless for them to do anything.  In the end, though, every student had at least a few moments where they saw progress.  Saw that essay move from a 1 to a 4.  Had their multiple choice score jump up.  Scored 100 on a quiz.  Or even just an 80 was a big deal for most.  In April, I put up a bulletin board showing their trek throughout the year with our essay writing.  The “marathon” showed my students starting at 0-2 scores and moving to 5-7.  Low and behold, a representative from the College Board - the people who make the AP program, who sponsored this summer institute where I learned what the standard was, and who write the exam - came in to our school.  She looked at information about my class and saw that the kids grades overall had been really low.  She said, “This teacher must be one of the few in the city who is teaching this class the way its supposed to be taught !”  Turns out, this was not a compliment.  This consultant’s overall complaint about our school - and especially around my class - was that our standards are too high.  Her argument was that kids around the city are doing the same or less work and getting better grades, which means that we are unfairly setting our kids up to compete for entrance into college.  Really, my colleagues were told, we have to be realistic about how many of *our* kids from *these* neighborhoods would be able to pass an AP test. In the next breath, though, this woman is talking about how we need to make sure our kids are sent places where they will “have a lot of support” so they aren’t overwhelmed with the work that college requires.  In her formula, the goal is to make sure the standards are low so that they just get into college no matter how prepared they are and then just cross our fingers that they make it.  This sounded to me like it was straight out of some 1980s movie about people who didn’t believe in a group of kids because of where they were from.  There’s a voiceover: Everybody told them they couldn’t do it…. enter shadowy shot of kids entering the front door of a school and slow motion walking to class…. and….You get the idea. But NO. This shit happens in 2010 with a representative from an organization that is supposed to be promoting equity in education. The kids’ AP scores won’t come out until July.  AP US History is the most failed AP in the nation, but most of my kids came out of the testing room smiling (albeit with a large dose of exhaustion).  Even if they didn’t get their 3s and above, I know that putting them through this process and not lowering the expectations of what they COULD accomplish has helped prepare them to do well in college.  And if those scores come back and they passed, I’m gonna fucking rub it in this woman’s face…in a non-violent, don’t you ever question what my kids can do sort of way, of course.

So. January 5 was the last post.  One of my New Year’s Resolutions (of… 12?) was to write regularly here.  Most of my resolutions have gone the way of this one too.  But there’s a REASON.  Its because I’ve felt like the above picture for most of the school year.  In fact, the only reason I can write right now is because a) I have a cold or maybe sinus infection and nasty cough and am waiting for a doctor appt instead of being at work and b) the AP class officially ended Friday.   This is going to be the topic of today’s post, though I created a list of many others to posthumously write about later.  Less real time, more reflecting on a year, let’s say.

AP stands for Advanced Placement (found out how to link!).  You might have taken one of these classes - college level courses in high school that terminate in an exam that if you score a 3,4, or 5 on, will result in college credit.   In recent years, there has been an attempt to democratize APs by expanding them to more schools, particularly schools with students of color from low income neighborhoods.  My schools is one such place, where the goal is to offer students these kinds of classes in order to prepare them to be successful in college. 

The students that I got in my AP class in September were - for the most part - the students who received the best grades in their classes for the previous two years.  For the first essay that the students wrote, on a nine point rubric, most scored from a zero to a two.  I think maybe two students got a two.  Even at the top of their class, their skills were nowhere near where they needed to be to be in a college level course.  Apparently, as we get to the later part of the story, this was *supposed* to alert me to lower my standards.   However, I had been to a summer institute about how to teach the class with a guy who has taught somewhere in the ‘burbs of Southern California for 15 years and I sort of understood that there was a particular standard to AP. I mean…. there are sample questions to use on exams. There is a RUBRIC for essays and example essays.  I felt like it was pretty clear.

I worked these kids hard all year.  And was sometimes mean. Sometimes supportive. Pretty much always relentless.  There were lots of moments throughout the year where they got real annoyed at me when I would do something like assign essays on top of 50 pages of reading and notes.  Or tell them two days before about a certain section of history that they needed to memorize 40 dates from.  At some point in the year, I had them rewrite every essay that they weren’t scoring a five on (this was still most of the class) and we were still doing an essay a week on top of that… so they had a lot of work.  Some kids responded to all of this by continuing to do their best throughout the whole year, even when it seemed like they were stuck.  Others would spend some chunks of time falling into despair and feeling like it was pointless for them to do anything.  In the end, though, every student had at least a few moments where they saw progress.  Saw that essay move from a 1 to a 4.  Had their multiple choice score jump up.  Scored 100 on a quiz.  Or even just an 80 was a big deal for most.  In April, I put up a bulletin board showing their trek throughout the year with our essay writing.  The “marathon” showed my students starting at 0-2 scores and moving to 5-7. 

Low and behold, a representative from the College Board - the people who make the AP program, who sponsored this summer institute where I learned what the standard was, and who write the exam - came in to our school.  She looked at information about my class and saw that the kids grades overall had been really low.  She said, “This teacher must be one of the few in the city who is teaching this class the way its supposed to be taught !”  Turns out, this was not a compliment.  This consultant’s overall complaint about our school - and especially around my class - was that our standards are too high.  Her argument was that kids around the city are doing the same or less work and getting better grades, which means that we are unfairly setting our kids up to compete for entrance into college.  Really, my colleagues were told, we have to be realistic about how many of *our* kids from *these* neighborhoods would be able to pass an AP test.

In the next breath, though, this woman is talking about how we need to make sure our kids are sent places where they will “have a lot of support” so they aren’t overwhelmed with the work that college requires.  In her formula, the goal is to make sure the standards are low so that they just get into college no matter how prepared they are and then just cross our fingers that they make it. 

This sounded to me like it was straight out of some 1980s movie about people who didn’t believe in a group of kids because of where they were from.  There’s a voiceover: Everybody told them they couldn’t do it…. enter shadowy shot of kids entering the front door of a school and slow motion walking to class…. and….You get the idea. But NO. This shit happens in 2010 with a representative from an organization that is supposed to be promoting equity in education.

The kids’ AP scores won’t come out until July.  AP US History is the most failed AP in the nation, but most of my kids came out of the testing room smiling (albeit with a large dose of exhaustion).  Even if they didn’t get their 3s and above, I know that putting them through this process and not lowering the expectations of what they COULD accomplish has helped prepare them to do well in college.  And if those scores come back and they passed, I’m gonna fucking rub it in this woman’s face…in a non-violent, don’t you ever question what my kids can do sort of way, of course.