The AP Exam Season is in Full Bloom

Advanced Placement teachers at PTHS who have been preparing their students all year for the upcoming AP exams this spring recently shared their different methods in laying the groundwork for their courses. Through in-class timed testing, practice sets from AP Classroom, and verbal lectures, they ensure that their students will succeed in AP exams and in their future classes.

With Spring Break just around the corner, PTHS AP students are anticipating the exam season along with a prolonged vacation. No matter the course that the test is distributed based off on, all require intense preparation, dedication, and commitment to the course in order to score a 3 or higher, which is the passing level for each exam on a scale to 5. Teachers and students both play equally crucial roles in the success of the test-takers.   

Many students claim that the most difficult parts of the exam are working according to the timer, applying skills they have acquired throughout the year, and memorizing important content that will appear on their tests. In order to ease some nerves, in the past teachers have held review sessions, some during Spring Break even, in order to assist their students as needed. According to AP Chemistry teacher Mr. Sutherland, "It is a fast-paced course with a lot of work—with that said I will do anything I can to give the students an opportunity to do the best they can in the course." He also mentioned that a useful habit he has kept persistent throughout his time teaching AP Chem is ensuring that the curriculum is completed before Spring Break in order to stretch out the short period of time teachers have to review with their students. During the school year, however, Mr. Sutherland focuses his teaching on lab-based learning, which not only offers hands-on experience to students, but also strengthens their foundation of the course material. 

Mrs. Neumann, an AP World History teacher, professed a very different take on the upcoming exam. Since AP World is, "...a freshmen course... it’s a huge transition for them [the students]. They are going from middle school to high school. The writing is much more structured, and there is a more intense pace, so it takes a little longer for the freshmen to acclimate to it." Since the course requires much more writing than math or science-related AP's, Mrs. Neumann found that giving her classes countless writing exercises throughout the year was supplementary to her students’ success in the past. 

While Mr. Kirkland, the AP Pre Calculus and AP Stats teacher at PTHS, uses similar methods such as timed tests and review sessions, he has a very unique style of preparing his students for the exam. Since, "AP Pre Calc and AP Stats are both very different from each other," he enjoys trying out different styles of teaching in order for his students to comprehend the material they are learning. For example, Mr. Kirkland explained how, "Stats is about data exploration, [so] we use cookie-cutter phrases so that our interpretations hit the points that they are supposed to because the course is very much about interpretation and analysis and conclusion." In a very different perspective than humanities courses, for math AP's, students prefer categorizing knowledge they have collected throughout the year in concise patterns using memorizing devices such as mnemonics. Mr. Kirkland made it a point to commend the usefulness of acronyms in an academic setting, no matter what subject. 

Lastly, in an in-depth interview with Mr. Chorazy, an AP Language and Composition and AP Literature teacher, he revealed a teacher-take on the extensive efforts that teachers put in to ensure their students' success. In order to thoroughly discuss literature, nonfiction texts, speeches, and other works, Mr. Chorazy found that circle-discussions have been extremely helpful along with writing and analysis practices. However, he also shared the unique curriculum of his AP courses in which students are required to read texts during the summer leading up to the class in order for them to build the skills of reading comprehension and reading efficiency, both extremely valuable for the AP exam. Nonetheless, one component that every AP class appears to share is the high-standard of academic performance they all push their students to achieve. According to Mr. Chorazy, "The exam is only three hours, and your [the teacher’s] course is all year. So, to maintain the level of rigor that you want is to have kids engaged and--not only that--to meet the expectations of what they'll see in college--these are college courses, essentially. If you pass the exam and your college accepts your score, you'll get credit. AP Lang is equivalent to your freshman composition course in college...AP Literature would be the equivalent of your second year of English in College."  

So, while the AP exams are a crucial part of a student's academic career, they not only expose high schoolers to a different test-taking environment than they were previously accustomed to; they also pave the way for students' futures, their achievements in life, and their greatest passions, all of which teachers and students have both played extensive roles in fostering.