The Energon Pub

[Dagon]

I'm a high school teacher, not a student trolling around for free tutoring and this is my first year teaching AP English III. Our exam is coming up May 16th and I'm getting more nervous than any of my students. Just thinking that if they don't do as well as they're hoping to that it will mean that I failed them somehow as a teacher.

Any advice for a first time exam-er and his anxiety? I took AP in high school myself, but on the other side of the desk we all know things are different.....

[Lorekeeper]

Don't worry yourself about how they will judge you. Unless your administrators are horrible. Instead, go over it with a colleague and see what you could do better next time. AP courses are rough...
how many years/degrees do you have under your belt that they let you teach AP this year? If you're qualified, I'm sure you did fine. Stress not about the present, except in that it helps you prepare for the future.

... a fellow English teacher, but thankfully not AP...

[Dagon]

I've been teaching English at my present school for six years and taught a couple someplace else. I'm working on a Masters' degree at present, so my credentials may be a little light, I was selected to teach this class, so it's not like I just stumbled into it. We've done a bunch of work and everything, read a ton of challenging stuff, wrote a ton and a half of work to get ready for the exam, so I think as far as the work load had gone we should be in good shape for the exam. I go to all the confereces and stuff and it seems like we are hanging in the pace with other schools (with better AP programs, like not Chicago Public Schools, where I work) and my kids themselves seem more or less ready. It's just that this having been my first go-round, I worry that I fell flat.
My admisinstration mainly could care less about how we do. If we are successful, it will be naturally due to the 'great assistance and vision' of the main office, but if we do terrible my admisinstration more or less will sit back and figure that it was par for the course, no pun intended. My school has a real low expectations for our AP classes, one thing that I personally would really like to change. We have a new principle coming in September and I had this recruiting blitz for AP going and got the entire school some pretty decent AP class numbers, much to the delight of my incoming principle.
I don't know, maybe I'm overly worried. I know what I'm doing and I love teaching this class, but sometimes I just feel like if my kids don't do as well on the exam as they are hoping I will have let them down somehow.

[Dragonslayer]

I took that test last year and got a 3. This year I'm taking English Lit, Calculus, Physics: Mechanincs, US Government and Politics, and Macroeconomics. So if anyone wants to kidnap me before Monday, now would be an appropiate time