APESvsEverybody Blog Posts

Don't Shouldenize, Woodenize It seems that after the pandemic, my students have shown up to APES each fall with fewer and fewer of the executive function skills needed for basic academic success. In these instances, it’s tempting to bemoan what my students should already know. But rather than should-ing on my students (or their previous teachers), I’ve turned to one of my favorite Dave Stuart Jr. strategies: Woodenizing. As one of my colleagues is fond of saying don’t shouldenize, Woodenize. Woodenizing is a term Dave coined for explicitly teaching the BEST way to do a specific procedure or skill in your...

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....