AP Psych Training
I spent this past week doing AP Psychology training through the University of Texas. It was a bummer to not get to visit Austin but a great chance to see someone else lead online learning, also Texas is seeing spiking rates of Covid so it was honestly for the best.
I am collecting my thoughts now while everything is still fresh in my head and am curious to get feedback from people who either teach AP classes or who have experienced online learning from the learner’s end if any of this resonates with you.
AP Training online/distance learning
· First of all I made the mistake of signing up for a session in Central Time….whoops. Had no idea Texas was two hours ahead so starting every day at 6am was rough. Be aware of your time zones.
· After hearing from teachers in different parts of the country it is clear to me that while I still have a lot to learn about online learning, Carondelet in general really did a good job in engaging students while distance learning was going on. I could not relate to the misery (minus missing my students and colleagues) that so many people were sharing.
· It is HARD to sit in a Zoom meetings for hours on end and actually give your undivided attention to a teacher (how did our students do this??). I was DEFINITELY guilty of getting distracted with my phone or turning off my camera to finish chores around the house. In some ways, I would have been better off sitting my but in a conference center for the week. If we are going to be online again next year, I have a lot of work to do to improve what I did last year in order to make learning meaningful. Breaks were very helpful, breakout rooms were a God send, and a balance of asynchronous work time was a MUST.
Teaching AP
· Thinking about teaching AP feels like a totally different beast than teaching Big History. In Big History, we can pause, take longer on something students are in to or need help on, but there does not seem to be much room to deviate from the schedule and I am wondering how AP teachers handle that?? It will be a big learning curve for me.
· Another thing I realize, at least for AP Psych, is that I cannot possible cover all of the content and that students will have to be in charge of learning portions of the material on their own. This feels like a new concept to me, wow. How do you know what they can and can’t do on their own? How do you know how much homework is reasonable??
· Our teacher for the week flat out said that he teaches to the test. I feel mixed about this. On one hand it is honest and real on the other it kind of sucks. Teaching to a test is everything we have moved away from in the past few years. How do you all wrap your heads around this?
AP Psych Folk in general
· Minus the California jokes coming from the Texas teachers every 10 minutes I found people to be extremely generous with their resources. Files and drives were passed around like crazy. This was even more valuable that the lectures we had. I hope that this is a common experience for other teachers at these kinds of conferences. It’s scary to do something for the first time, especially when you are only working from a text book and the internet and a reminder for me to pass it on when I am in the position to do so.
· We received access to a Facebook group where AP Psych teachers offer their Google drives AND mentorship. I had no idea this existed and have already been able to connect with two teachers who have taught 10+ years with the same text book that we have. Why is this not more common??
Anyway I now have a lot of information to go through, but wanted to share my experience and get some feedback from you all about your thoughts on teaching AP and/or how you are thinking about a potential online learning environment should we have to go back to that at some point next year.
It's interesting in looking at the College of the Siskiyous courses that our students take and there is zero face to face interaction with Professors. Assignments are posted, notes are provided, discussion boards are moderated and things are graded….students never see the face or talk live with a Professor. I think that what we found in the spring is the need for that face to face connection….maybe not for loooong periods of time, but creating the ability to talk and process is vital…and creating that connection with students, so important in face to face classes, still needs to be captured online.
Love how you took your experiences as a learner and applied that to thinking about how your students must feel. Yes the attention span on an endless zoom is HARD…. But I know that i have been in some pretty miserable training sessions that have forced me to reconsider how I teach…
Agree about Zoom and attention. However, I have come to believe there is a certain amount of osmosis that just happens when I am at least "there". I began noticing this when I would buy audiotours of museums. I did not always listen as well as I could, but I ended up knowing more than I would without the tour.
I have to admit I am not the biggest teacher fan about AP. But I follow @AP_Trevor on Twitter and he makes many good points about equalizing. Maybe teaching to a good test?