APESvsEverybody Blog Posts

As you may have seen me explain in a previous video, I always start out day 1 of my APES class by reading my students Aldo Leopold’s Thinking Like a Mountain essay. It’s a great way to introduce them to the mantra that we’ll use throughout the year to embody the kind of big-picture, interconnected thinking that I hope they leave the course having learned how to do. I also find it refreshing to ask high schoolers to sit on the floor (some do, some pass) and listen to a rich story for a few minutes, amidst the chaos of...

I have to say, I was a bit surprised to see the AP exam score distribution for 2024. It’s essentially a carbon copy of the 2023 score distribution, with a slight shifting of 4s both up to 5s and down to 3s. The breakdown of 2s and 1s remains virtually unchanged.  However, this is in the context of the course continuing to grow, with an unofficial number of 238,000 exams announced at the reading in Cincinnati, up from the official number of 209,757 exams in 2023. Since on average, the expansion of AP course access skews towards historically underrepresented schools...

After my 5th year of grading FRQs for the College Board, here are a few of my key takeaways: My number one takeaway from the reading every year is what a rich and wonderful community we're a part of as APES teachers. If you've never attended an in-person reading, I can't recommend it enough. I always leave with new ideas, but more importantly, new friends. As one of my APES reading friends, Nate likes to put it: the APES reading is like "hanging out with all my best friends that I haven't met yet." Thanks to everyone, in-person readers as...

I need to start this post with the disclaimer that I am not advocating skipping entire topics in the CED or passing judgment on how anyone else has decided to prioritize the pacing of their units.  I'm just trying to share the topics that I feel can be condensed and covered minimally in class in order to allow more class time for topics that are more complex or carry greater exam relevance based on both the weighting laid out in the CED as well as released MCQs and FRQs. Unit 5: Unit 5 is an absolute beast with 17 topics....

Part 1: The Best Pedagogical Book I’ve Read in Years For a number of reasons, both personal and related to my school, last year was a particularly challenging year for me in the classroom. It was a struggle to build the class culture that’s been so central to what I love about teaching APES. Now I’m normally not a fan of getting too caught up in the myriad factors beyond the walls of our classrooms that make our jobs more difficult, but it did really feel like I was battling a distinctly new wave of student apathy and disengagement. I...