Hello, Parents and Students!

I hope you've all had a lovely, relaxing summer.  I am excited to get to know all of my students and dig into our work for this year. 

For the past two years I have maintained this blog as a way to keep in contact with parents and let everyone know what we are up to in class. I will email you a link to the blog every week (usually!), and it will give an overview of the week's work.  I will give you a head's up about big assignments and an overview of the readings we are doing in class. My hope is that this helps you have conversations with your students about both our course content and how they can best manage their time! As these are Advanced Placement classes, my goal is to mimic a college course while still providing some supports that students need in high school.  For example, work is often given in big chunks (no nightly reading assignments with study guides), but I will help students plan out how to tackle those big assignments in a way that makes the most sense for their personal schedules.  

My goal for my students is that they learn how to take ownership of their work and plan carefully so that they do not become overwhelmed. A student who plans well and works consistently in my class should be able to keep homework to a maximum of 30 minutes a night. Sometimes students prefer to have "no homework" for several nights in a row and then pull an all-nighter to finish something.  That practice concerns me, and I aim to help students avoid it as much as possible.  The mental and physical health of my students is very important to me; I want to send them off to college with the skills necessary to balance a challenging course load. 

This week in class, we will be working on the following:

AP SEMINAR: Today we started class by watching and discussing a Ted Talk called "The Danger of a Single Story." Our research will be built on the ability of students to think about others' perspectives and view issues through multiple lenses. It's a great TedTalk and I'm sure your student would love to chat about it with you!  For the rest of the week, we will talk about the purpose of the course, the unique assessments that are part of the AP Capstone program, and our plans for the fall semester. Students will begin working on developing strong working relationships with their peers because there is a lot of group work in the Capstone program. 

AP LANGUAGE:  Today in class we watched a video called Learn Like a Jungle Tiger and talked about the importance of pushing and challenging ourselves this year. If you have 10 minutes, I'd encourage you to watch it and chat about it with your student. For the rest of the week, we will spend some time reviewing and working with our summer reading and writing assignments early in the week. By the end of the week we will dive into the study of rhetoric--how does a writer craft an argument and for what purpose? 

Next week I'll have separate posts about each class, but for now, welcome! I can't wait to meet you all in person and hope to see you at curriculum night next week.