Examiner column for July 2.
Last week I conducted a five-day workshop for teachers new to the Advanced Placement program. Good news: if your children land in any of their classrooms, they will be in wonderful hands.
We hear much about the decline of teacher quality. Clearly the twenty-five in my workshop comprise a small sample, but these teachers—drawn from several Virginia counties and the District of Columbia—were enthusiastic, bright, and quick on the uptake. They were also kind human beings.
I subjected them to several of the activities I have written about in my columns, including taking the Advanced Placement Literature test they will be preparing their students to take. They completed all tasks cheerfully---an attitude I only dream I will find in my high school classroom.
The first morning we all took the wickedly hard multiple-choice section of the test. No matter how many times I take one version or another of this, I always miss several questions. It is a humbling, and necessary, experience.
It was eye opening for the teachers. Suddenly they knew first-hand how closely and carefully their students would need to be able to read poetry and prose. “How many can we miss and still do well?” they asked; that same question will be echoed by their students every time they teach the course.
We were all quick studies when it came to the AP essay questions. The first one we wrote constituted a good try, but our efforts, read anonymously to the class, were not as successful as the best student samples I shared with them. At the end of that essay, we all felt pretty stupid.
But twenty-four hours later when we wrote our second essays, we aced the task. Our writings were as good as the best student samples. The challenge then became: how could we design a course where students can do in eight months what the highly-educated teachers were able to do in twenty-four hours? Luckily for their future students, they came up with many wonderful ideas to deliver high quality instruction in an engaging manner.
Our culminating activity was a writing that we shared with one another, placing the teaching of AP in our own educational journeys. Giving teachers an opportunity to pay homage to those who have inspired them proved to be a powerful activity.
Donna wrote about her grandparents, immigrants who had no chance to go to college, but who asked her continually about the books she was reading as they sipped espresso around the kitchen table. Dan’s own high school AP teacher surfaced again and again in his thoughts and writing, and Randall credited John Steinbeck with drawing him into the world of books.
If an educator’s idea of hell is an interminable faculty meeting, then heaven must be a workshop full of teachers who care deeply about their subjects, and who are likely to become inspirations to their own students.
These teachers will touch the future and, in turn, will encourage our children to achieve their best. Someday they will become milestones in many students’ educational journeys. This week, they became a milestone in mine.
I love the cyclic in your blogs--a veritable garden of teachers nourishing teachers nourishing students...who may become teachers.
Posted by: Bob F | July 01, 2007 at 11:33 PM