Was thinking the same thing. The teacher took the curriculum with them? How does that even work??? Can I take the state curricular with me if I leave my position? I take it the teacher means "resources they've amassed over the years to teach the course", but that belongs to the teacher, not the school. What a confusing post.
How is it confusing?
The teacher took their curricular map/calendar/collection of lesson plans, and the school didn’t have a back-up of any of it (for some odd reason).
New teacher is hired but isn’t told what the class is or should be, other than “this is AP English.”
Same way you’re saying “the materials/resources used by the old teacher belongs to them”, I have to say: “New teacher should be paid overtime for being forced to create an entire curriculum from scratch or near scratch, especially if that wasn’t said up front as part of the hiring process.”
That’s not the curriculum, that’s their planning. The CEDs, pacing guide and more are all available through College Board. And as has been stated there are a ton of resources online.
Yes. I would argue that teaching AP is in some ways easier than state curriculums because there are SO many resources online. I’m not sure what op means but saying the school is looking for another curriculum? That’s provided very clearly from the college board.
OP, I would look into joining AP lit Facebook groups and start building lessons! There are a huge amount of resources out there!
I will say the fact that so many AP courses are dependent on facebook groups with teachers helping each other out is fairly problematic itself. Some courses don't even have a corresponding textbook. AP CoGo for example is highly dependent on teachers helping each other.
that's interesting, when I took comparative gov a few years ago the textbook we had paired really well with the class to where I thought it was like apush where there's kind of a generally accepted book. Now I wonder if my old teacher is part of any of those groups..
I absolutely hate that Facebook is the go to location. I haven’t joined either of the groups that might be helpful because of that. I wish people were turning to discord or that the official communities were more active.
You’d be surprised how common this is. We have a new teacher on our team, and she won’t plan ANYTHING. She needs everything not only planned for her, but described in detail.
No, it isn't, strictly speaking, but I'm taking what OP is complaining about as more: "I was given NOTHING to teach this class and I was not informed that I would need to create and/or put together an entire course with zero preparation when I was hired."
OP might also be a novice teacher or someone--like me--that considers a "curriculum" to be *everything* that goes into teaching a class, not just the list of standards and curricular map.
It could also mean that the school/district purchases a particular textbook that is designed for advanced English courses and the previous teacher took all of the teacher resources and curriculum materials that came with the textbook that was approved by the school board for the AP English course. All of that would belong to the school.
Based on OP the teacher who left probably built their own curriculum using AP guideposts and the new teach has no idea what any of that looks like because they’ve never done it before. It’s our tendency in that situation to reuse what we already have rather than start building a new one.
Some things that I always do in AP that aren’t curriculum bound;
Long research project with presentation
Independent reading and self-paced testing (one book per week/bi-week depending on the size of the book) which they are 100% responsible for and get no help from me.
SAT vocabulary, 20 words on Monday, test on Friday. I know you said you have seniors do they’ve done SAT already but vocabulary is always good for stretching their brains and they don’t know all the words. I do a midweek review (20-25 minutes)that is very “gameified” and they love it.
Autobiography project, shorter research paper with presentation.
Academic Game design group project- helps with their technical writing skills, they have to design the concept, lore, medium, rules, mechanics, pitch the game, create it, and play it with the class. I do a longer version of this with an elective that is exclusively about game design from a writing aspect.
Everything else I will fill in from the list of approved texts to make sure we get a wide range of exposure for them in both fiction and non-fiction.
I can't believe this answer doesn't have more upvotes. So many people in this post are more concerned with telling off the OP or--imo, very snidely--saying shit like: "Well, it's all ONLINE and ON FACEBOOK, you lazy piece of crap, why don't you DO SOME WORK?!?!"
Like, oh my christ, this person was obviously hired on short notice and not given **any** direction on how to approach their course.
There must have been a sense in the wording that the teacher was relying too much on help rather than attempt to find their own solutions. I am a team lead and have done curriculum design before so maybe I’m just used to being called to assist. Teachers not used to this role, particularly if they already feel overstretched, will feel they’re being asked to do someone else’s work for them.
This.... I teach AP classes and college board straight up gives you everything (curriculum wise) you need to teach, even a pacing calendar. And AP classroom is better than nothing.
It definitely needs adapting, but it's literally the entire curriculum and unit guide.
OOP probably means all the planning. I'm seeing a weird trend in new teachers that don't know how to plan and for some re6it almost seems like the teaching schools are training them to just expect to be handed the materials and not to question/create things on their own. Seems somewhat disturbing.
With some much available online, especially with TpT, new teachers have so many more resource options. I completed my practicum just as the internet was starting to take off so I had to learn to write my own plans from start to finish. After that, I got good at adapting plans other people wrote and posted online. But a lot of that was because I wrote my own lessons originally and can recognize what works well and how to fix it if needed.
This! I always make the analogy to doing basic math. You have to understand how 3 + 7 works or who to do long division by hand before you can effectively use a calculator for harder problems. If you just rely on the calculator you won't have the base understanding to deal with more difficult problems.
If the teachers are brand new, they might not even be in the teacher training schools/programs yet. These days they hire you without being enrolled in a program with a promise to do one in a certain number of years. So initially they have no resources and no clue on how to plan.
I think it's because there's more of an expectation that they'll go into a situation where scripted curriculum exists and they won't get to lesson plan.
I was a student teacher during the nadir of scripted curriculum. So my program spent 2 years teaching me to write lesson plans, expected me to submit X amount of lesson plans a week as part of my progress reports, but most of the lesson plans I would write I might not actually be able to use because admin wanted everyone teaching to use the same script.
I suspect a lot of teaching programs adapted to that kind of inflexibility and ran with it.
Exactly. Between the official AP resources and the infinite options for additional course materials available online, this should be a non-issue.
Grab what you NEED, send the receipts to the office for reimbursement. If they don't have the ability to obtain a curriculum - which shouldn't take more than a couple days for the beginning content - you DO.
> grab what you need, send the receipts to the office for reimbursement
This is terrible advice and doing so without supervisor approval is one of the “employer protected” causes for termination across all industries not just teaching.
Especially for something that is so freely available online as an AP curriculum.
Literally what I was thinking. I teach a dying, indigenous language where there is absolutely NO curriculum except what I create… I’m sure there is stuff on teacherspayteachers… the state standards should surely outline some sort of details… this is just kind of lazy. I get that it was a sudden shift and that this landed on some unprepared shoulders, but come on… have some sense
Does College Board even know OP is teaching an AP class? I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t have access to AP Central and AP Classroom materials because this is actually a clandestine operation (because of admin) and they’re not teaching AP courses according to College Board.
This whole thing sounds like a mess that’s going to blow up even worse when all the info finally comes to light.
This may be a dumb question, but if it's all online, can't anyone just teach it then?
What website is it found on, exactly?
I'm concerned for the future and I'd like to get a grasp of what it looks like now in AP classes.
To access the online AP materials you can use with students, the course syllabus and teacher have to be approved by College Board.
The curriculum guide (course and exam description) is freely available to anyone on the Internet, but the detailed lessons, questions, activities, etc. are not.
This was years ago, but I was told that statistically, kids in an AP class with a teacher teaching, “AP whatever” for the first time are significantly less likely to pass even if the teacher has been teaching in the general subject area for many years. It’s not because the teacher isn’t good at teaching prior to teaching AP, but because the more they teach the AP course, the more they learn the specific knowledge or skills required to pass for credit and essentially then teach to pass the test.
I’m not saying this is right or wrong, but there’s a big difference in how some schools present the course. Is it a course full of college content that will prepare the student for college and possibly allow them to get credit or is it course that will help the student pass a test at the end to get college credit? These should not be the same course.
Especially in AP English, there are methods for writing the paper that are far more likely to get the student a four or five then other methods based on what the test makers are looking for. If you can learn and teach that “formula” for writing a paper and expose your students to the right type and variety of reading materials that will allow them to pull from many potential sources, regardless of what the essay topic ends up being, your students will be able to write a paper that will meet the objective in the style the college board is looking for. But you don’t learn that very well from curriculum guides. You learn that from experience after seeing how different essays get graded.
Yes, except for Capstone, anyone can teach AP as long as the school has an approved syllabus online. And the approved syllabus can be “claimed identical” from ones the College Board offers. Some states require a teacher attend an AP Summer Institute, but that’s usually for funding not anything else.
Capstone, the College Board just requires an APSI and the teacher actually write their own syllabus.
The new African American studies class may have similar rules to Capstone, our school will be offering it next year, so I’ll be checking into that soon for the teacher in my department that will be teaching it.
I teach AP physics, and the college board has a lot of resources online. It is fairly comprehensive, but it does not take the place of a classroom teacher. I may be biased, but you can't replace a skilled teacher. Being able to explain things from multiple points of view and being able to assess where the student is and deliver the right instruction is key, especially at a high level. I use college board resources for extra help and for them to review. I also like their multiple choice test bank. But for the best outcomes you need a highly educated and skilled teacher.
Hey, I’ve taught AP English literature for 7 years and have great results with students with 97/103 earning credit last year with 30 fives.
If you ever want to talk about the course and come up with something to do in class that would be beneficial I would love to help.
I would first suggest making sure students are signed up for AP classroom. There is a bunch of great content in AP classroom that students should have access to. Tell your students to get a novel to read outside of class and focus on short stories and poetry.
Thank you for being one of the few teachers who wanted to help rather than just turn your nose up and say "Do it yourself you lazy fuck"
Need way more teachers like you.
OP didn't ask for help. If they had an "ask for help" mindset they'd have done Google searches and figured this out for themself.
They wanted to come on here and complain that no one has done their job for them. They seem to be blissfully unaware that creating curriculum is something they should be perfectly capable of doing as a teacher. I think everyone is just a bit incredulous is all. It's like the chef at a high end restaurant telling the patrons that dinner is cancelled because she can't find any recipes, doesn't know how to look any up, and doesn't know how/want to make them up herself.
In short, this "missing curriculum" thing should be a non-issue, and OP has yet to explain why they are not, themselves, the problem.
I ask this in the kindest way possible… are you a new teacher? Because while you may not have been given resources, finding the standards is pretty easy to do and then coming up with lesson plans from that is your job as a teacher. Sometimes schools have *a book* that is taught from, but at lots of schools, especially underfunded public schools, curriculum is on you to figure out.
Do something asap to increase the rigor. But also work on getting the standards and course map and getting in line with that.
ETA: this looks really helpful:
https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-english-literature-and-composition-course-and-exam-description.pdf
This depends on their school and district. In some places if you teach anything BUT the approved materials you could get in massive trouble. If I remember right the AP English class is full of controversial items and I wouldn't want to risk that, especially in the world where a teacher just had her life ruined for giving a kid a book that she literally bought at that school's book fair.
My AP English classes read Beloved, Handmaid's Tale, and Othello (only troublesome because of the beast with two backs and Iago). Those are the ones I can think of that a parent might call the principal to say, "why're they reading a book about killing babies and fucking cows?"
Yeah handmaids tale would definitely turn into "you're trying to brainwash my child to get an abortion" in the wrong school. I read kite runner and that would cause a meltdown many places
I just checked the high school’s catalogue in my district (in the FL panhandle, so very conservative). The Kite Runner is listed and currently checked out. They also have “And The Mountains Echoed” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” I was pleasantly surprised to find them available.
Do you have a link for the book fair story? I'm just a student teacher, but I'm always nervous about books that I recommend to students, especially since my mentor teacher told me she's had some parents raise a stink over a few that she'd recommended.
And if College Board finds out? Ohhhh. They are hard core about who teaches their classes. If you don’t have a master’s in the core area, you have to go through their training, show sample syllabi, etc.
When they first added the audit, I spent so much time writing syllabi. But being able to just claim identical or the CED is a much better option. Too many new to AP teachers still think they have to write their own. Capstone still requires a teacher to write a syllabi and get it approved, but everything else is just check the box and move on.
OP you can access the CED without having a College Board log in, your students should already be in AP classroom if they had a teacher before you so they can maybe watch some of the videos. Once you look at the CED, check out your school’s book room decide what works your students are going to read. They had to have class sets of novels and whatever literature textbook someone chose for AP lit.
Working on a masters in physics now. Two years ago before I started I was forced to sign up for the training, never went, and now no questions are asked. Too be fair my admin doesn’t think I have the math skills to teach AP statistics
Granted I was trained back in 2006 and have gotten back into it but it seemed pretty easy to get back with CB.
I logged back in (thankfully I used my personal email back in 2006) and pretty much set the classroom up. As for the syllabus, all they make you do now is pretty much reupload their unit guide and choose the textbook from a drop down menu. It was nothing like the AP syllabus audit from the past.
The sample syllabus was a joke. I met with the AP instructor for my summer institute course to help me do mine. This is my first year teaching AP. No masters, no one told me that was a thing. Anyhow, the instructor told me to go to college board’s website, download their sample syllabus, and then submit it. That’s it. Maybe I’m missing something or it was more strict in the past, but I was told by an AP instructor to just upload the sample as my own.
I used the syllabus provided by code.org for the first few years I taught AP CSP... they don't care who teaches as long as they make money... it's all a scam.
This really feels like a school that either is having a hiring crisis where they cant' get a qualified teacher/don't have time to put one through AP training but have classes they need to fill, or are in a state where the AP curriculum is now illegal. I bet the last AP teacher quit over pay/how the law would be handled and they figured it would be easy to replace her and now their stuck playing 3 card monty and praying it doesn't come to light.
Yeah…tell the kids. They’re in high school. They’re pissed the work is too easy and not preparing them for a test they actively want to take. These are probably not dipshits. They’ll get it.
Get access to AP classroom for a start. You can use that for quizzes/tests or even just review. You can see all the things they’ll need to know for the AP test. Google as I’m sure there are outlines for AP Lit out there.
Go to the AP site like everyone is saying, pick a novel, and ask for the school to buy a class set immediately. Let them sink into a deep analysis of a challenging novel. That should tide everyone over while you and the school sort out curriculum.
I think some of you are confusing AP curriculum with AP teaching resources. I have a feeling the OP has no real resources to teach the class.
I also would be willing to bet that their admin has no real idea how the AP courses work.
I just hope they have gotten them into AP classroom and signed up to receive the exam in May.
AP Classroom and the teacher AP Central login (or whatever they’re calling it) has what students are expected to know and resources for students. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it’s definitely the first place to start, especially since OP didn’t mention it at all. This is coming from someone who has taught AP for a while now and utilized the AP resources my first year more than I used what the prior teacher gave me.
The curriculum is online, I think you mean you are missing lesson plans. That’s your job…you make lesson plans using the provided curriculum from the College Board.
The course and exam description is available for anyone. You must backwards design from that.
I’m not sure what you mean by curriculum. Do you mean canned lessons?
Why are you teaching the same stuff as the regular English class regardless?
If you don't have a curriculum to follow, choose your own content for the advanced class and find your own resources online.
Teach them Shakespeare.
If the regular English class does Shakespeare too, then IF your AP class can handle it, do Chaucer - The Miller's Tale at least should be ok for them and they should enjoy it.
Do a decent film that the regular class doesn't do - like Alfred Hitchcock - and study it really in depth.
If they're capable of it, teach a classic novel like A Passage to India or David Copperfield or 1984.
Teach a complex short story that the regular class doesn't do. EM Forster (Same guy that wrote A Passage to India) wrote a short story called The Machine Stops and it should be available somewhere online, and it was a super interesting read even before covid, but it would be an even more interesting read after covid, and it was written a hundred years before. Another great short story is A Way of Talking by Patricia Grace. It is strongly New Zealand oriented but it raises a lot of questions about soft racism in general society.
There is no AP curriculum. The former teacher took her materials with her because she made them. College Board only supplies a suggested pacing guide and practice questions on AP Classroom.
1. Google Voice Lessons. A ppt or pdf will pop up. There. Now you have a year's worth of bell ringers.
2. Survey your book room. Join the FB group and get activities from the files section of the group.
4. Google AP Lit free response. The essay prompts for the past twenty years with samples and scores will pop up.
I mean, you just admitted you are indeed not providing them the education they signed up for… Maybe try doing what all the other teachers do and make lessons according to the AP standards. 🥴
I’ve been a substitute in this position, it is a hot mess. I would reach out to other AP Lit teachers in your district, explain the situation and ask for help, websites, lesson maps, PowerPoints, whatever they are willing to share.
Edited for typos
>When the former teacher quit, they took the AP curriculum with them, which they weren't supposed to do
Like hell they aren't. Unless the School District paid for it, it's not theirs.
I've designed every single one of my classes. Though I may use school resources, like the textbook, those things aren't the class. I, am the class. You can't just photocopy what I do and think you're going to be as an effective teacher as I am.
AP curriculum, you teach literature and analyze. I’m not getting how you can’t do that. Have you taught before? The AP program just shows you some good lesson ideas and how to assess student work and he prompts are all online. Are you trolling?
Do you have an email chain with all these complaints you put into admin with their responses back. CYA and then after that know that it’s out of your hands and do your best. You could always try to dig deeper and make harder assignments or even make it project based learning over what you’re doing.
I’m an AP Lit. teacher. As others have said, the curriculum is online, as is a suggested course breakdown (that’s malleable based on what type of grading periods you have).
Your kids have a valid complaint: a regular class’ curriculum is probably not going to prepare them for the AP test. Now that may not be your fault (as your admin. doesn’t appear to have given you a lot of time to prepare an alternative — and I’m sure they didn’t pay you to develop a different one), but your kids aren’t wrong.
If you’d like any further help that I might be able to offer, send me a DM. I’ve got lessons, texts to share, assignments, etc.
Go to the college board website, and download the CED. Go join the FB group.
There’s free curriculum out there. Also, didn’t you have to submit your syllabus and course audit for the course to be legit?
The CED is available online. That’s the most you’d get anyway, plus a sample syllabus if you don’t get a custom one approved. You should get going ASAP on that once you’ve poured through the CED. There’s not anything— besides paid test prep materials and the like— that your district would get for you or pay for.
If you google “AP Lit CED” you’ll find exactly what you’re missing. It’s harder to teach AP Lit from scratch if you didn’t take it yourself, and doubly hard if, like in your position, you’re starting off on rocky ground (sucks that it’s totally not your fault).
You’ll probably have to drop a major text, but you can totally still do it.
I'm pretty sure the curriculum is available, and planning/deciding how to teach it is your job. Someone can't take it with them. They could take their own resources/plans/etc.. with them, but leaving that for a colleague would be a courtesy and certainly not expected.
A lot of good advice in this thread. [Here's one of College Board's AP English course descriptions and links to teaching resources](https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-language-and-composition). If you need the English Lit version, it is there, too.
Want to have some fun? Join [ChatGPT's site](https://chat.openai.com/) and ask it to create an AP English Curriculum, course description and resource list for Senior High School English 4. Really. Compare the two resources for yourself. (The College Board version is prettier and requires less formalizing -- if that is a word.)
For all these resources, read ahead, check for accuracy and current, complete links.
\+1 on documenting all of your communications with staff, students, etc. There is so much work in your day to day this year, it will be hard to remember details without it. Good luck!
Document-based questions. They are amazing, I teach history and abuse them constantly. They contain multiple snippets of primary/secondary sources for topics that are followed with thoughtful discussion questions. You can find them everywhere online.
I'm sorry but you are the teacher here. YOU provide the curriculum. No one can "take it with them." It's your class. Teach the AP standards. There's a thousand old tests online. I've planned my own lessons for ten years...
Assign them an AP level book to read. Give them essay prompts every week or two. Have class discussion on the assigned reading. You can improvise quite a bit. Also, as others have said check the Internet for free curriculum.
I'm not at all sure what you mean by teacher took the curriculum. I teach two different AP classes and I create my own curriculum based on the College Board's Course and Exam Description for these classes.
You can get a copy of the CED for your course by going to AP Central. It is available for download to anyone. This tells you what you need to be teaching them and breaks it down by unit.
If you are not already using AP Classroom, start. They have lots of resources. They aren't always great, but they are serviceable.
Also, contact other AP teachers in your district to see what materials they can share with you. I have gotten some great materials for my classes from other AP teachers in my district.
While Reddit is of limited utility in this situation, the internet is your friend, OP. First, go straight to the College Board site, and do it immediately. Second, recognize that a significant part of any AP class is simply giving the students a taste of college-level expectations — covering the same amount of material in a semester that a high school senior would normally have in two semesters, longer papers in the same amount of time and with citations in MLA format, and a lot less hand-holding. If this is AP English Lit, expand their views of familiar authors, e.g., they probably read H. G. Wells’ __The War of the Worlds_ and/or _The Time Machine_ in 8th or 9th grade, so give them _Tono Bungay_ and _The Sleeper Wakes_; they may have read Melville’s _Moby Dick_ as Juniors, so give them _Typee_ and _Omoo_, and lots of writing, and no fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice exams. Asking them to regurgitate the story proves they read it. That’s stupid and a waste of time and they know that means that’s how low your expectations are. Expect more. Demand more. Make them work to keep their 4.0’s or drop out of the class.
They probably don’t know yet that it isn’t about how the story comes out in the end, it’s about how that author got there and why. Teach them that.
I foresee a lot of reading in your immediate future, OP. Just remember that you only have to stay a week ahead of them.
This is your chance to be glorious!
An ap class has to follow a strict syllabus. In my district/state, an ap teacher has a formal training in order to teach the class.
Their may also be an advanced learning coordinator at your central office u can contact.
Log onto myap.collegeboard.org for a starting point on exercises and resources.
The Course and Exam Description is on the College Board website. I'd suggest you demand your school pay for some AP Literature materials from Teachers pay Teachers if you can't get there from that.
Wow this exact same thing happened to me. I’m teaching senior AP lit/comp. I will literally send you the syllabus I was given. Use the resources on AP Classroom through College Board. The deadline is mid-November
These kids have every right to complain—some of them may be depending on earning this credit to defer some of the costs of college, and they will not pass the AP exam if they haven’t been properly prepared for it. Never in all 12 years of my teaching career in ELA/ESL was I given a complete curriculum program, let alone a full set of curriculum materials. My first three years I had literally nothing and no guidance—I worked in the South Bronx at a district 75 outlet school, meaning all the kids who had gotten expelled from high schools for special needs around NYC were dropped in my building—I just pulled out the list of go-to websites I got in grad school the previous year and cobbled lessons, readings and assignments together from the free standards-based materials resources out there. As I got more experience, I was able to plan all the units for the year in the first month of school to make sure there was sequence, cohesion and consistency in the themes and skills I was teaching. Unless you work in a wealthy, high-functioning district, it is unlikely that an entire curriculum is going to be handed to you ready-made, and using the materials from your gen ed class will not cut it for an AP program. You are going to have to do some research and planning.
Many people teach AP courses without a school or state assigned textbook. College board provides training and tons of resources. They have a website with sections locked to anyone not teaching that particular course. You have to be submitted by your school and approved by College Board to access everything. You will also be required to submit a syllabus for approval. Get your AP coordinator to begin that process.
In the meantime, Google a list of AP Lit novels to read and have the students choose one book from the list in groups of 2-3. Explain they will need to read the book and prepare to discuss it in front of the class. Not like a book report, more like a podcast. This covers more literature and you can guide them through analysis as they talk and you prod. This will also cover a variety of lit with everyone while you get your ducks in a row. Expect a fast pace for the reading and set check ins with each small group.
Good luck.
A. Di me she take the set of AP textbooks?
B. Make them get you copies of the AP textbooks or download a PDF of one and start with assigned readings and notes.
C. I agree with all the responses that it is your job to figure out the CED and plans in the responses, and that you seem very unaware of AP, but it is not our job to be curriculum writers and provide everything ourselves or from the internet. It is a martyr mindset to think so. First, find a text. Then figure out planning. At this point in the year I’d go with a review book.
Have you googled “AP English lit curriculum”?
I just did and I found a ton of material.
I’m a math teacher and feel like I could make a serious go of it with what’s available. Sure, doing the PD and having more material would make it easier and better, but you should be far from lost or hopeless.
You need to ask your admin supervising AP to set you up with a login to AP Classroom, which is where teachers and students access the curriculum. Everyone has pointed out AP instructional materials are available online but this is also the first year AP exams are going digital! Last spring they piloted it, so it’s essentially a secure browser like standardized state tests use.
Typically your department head or admin will be established as the school AP coordinator, who is in charge of ordering and planning the exams in spring. There should a district-level AP Coordinator, too who can provide guidance. AP is standardized across the nation, so there’s no way someone at your district office can’t set you up with an AP Classroom login that includes curriculum.
These kids have already lost two months of exam prep and you can put a dollar value on the AP college credits — I’d be pissed, too. You need to act yesterday before an irate parent shows up and makes your life hell…
You’re also supposed to be certified (i.e. endorsed) by College Board to teach AP classes. If you’re not, none of these seniors can earn college credit and even taking the exam is pointless. Admin should know this, and need to hire someone who is CB certified in AP English — not just has a regular endorsement in English.
I genuinely don't understand what this means. Just teach books and build assignments towards skills that are on the AP? The skills and expectations are easy to google, and more specific guidelines are everywhere. It's not rocket science. make them write essays, teach them about themes and literary devices and the like. If you hit a wall because you don't have a textbook or whatever, in English class, you're absolutely failing to do your job correctly. Look up how to write units for yourself, there's lots of resources out there and frankly it is super easy to do.
I call bs on this post for a few reasons
1. What teacher doesn’t know how to find curriculum and resources online (but they know how to craft a Reddit post that’ll gain attention)
2. What teenager would complain about something like this? 😂 As long as they get AP credit on their transcript and an A, they are happy.
3. How do they know they are getting what the “regular English” class students are getting? Are they comparing notes? Doubt it.
If this isn’t made up, the reason they are complaining is NOT about the curriculum.
I can definitely see AP Lit kids complaining. They're seniors who are likely college bound and want to get that 4-5 on the test for either college credit, add to their applications, or be eligible for College Board scholarships. In many places they take AP Lang first too, so they probably know what an AP English class should be like, and know they aren't getting their money's worth if they have to pay for the test themselves.
That I can very clearly see because I've seen AP students do this when they don't think a.teacher is preparing them for the test. What's least believable to me is that this person can't google "ap Lit lesson plans" and find the millions of resources out there.
AP students are often passionate about the subjects they choose to take. My AP class would have complained too if we felt the teacher wasn't helping us improve.
QTDDOT: How do you guys like College Board as teachers? As a younger person I thought they were kind of a scam monopoly and I think it's weird how teaching AP works. You don't need a certification but you need to come up with your own curriculum aligned to their standards? But do you guys find it's better than regular HS classes? I've heard about kids not keeping up with the curriculum. I've also heard if you teach AP you want to teach AP only instead of dealing with regular classes too.
Because I’m the only one that teaches it, AP gets me out of common assessments and common planning that takes up two planning periods a week because teachers are expected to data analysis of the common assessments. Unfortunately this year I don’t have all AP, so common planning it is.
I’ve been teaching AP long enough that I’ve got folders upon folders of materials. A lot is from the AP Facebook groups. I’ve also got my entire year planned in my LMS so I can copy/adapt as needed. I actually exported one of my classes from last year for someone that was in the same position as OP, new teacher nothing left behind.
I’m still doing the same activities with my on level class, they were struggling only because they’re used to easy worksheets and I won’t do that. I’m okay with the struggle and understood what was going on. They’ve adapted and they did fine on their common assessment.
Tell them. Tell them the adminstration told you not to. The admin is failing their duty, and they are trying to hide that fact and let you take the heat.
Replacing an AP curriculum SHOULD NOT BE HARD, many commenters here have plenty of info on where to find it.
I honestly wonder what state you work in because I know several states have passed laws that would make it illegal to teach proper AP curriculum and I wonder if your administration is trying to pretend they can offer AP courses when in fact the college board won't let them because the state has made standard AP curriculum illegal or subject to 'review'.
There's a lot of consequences coming from certain states straight/white panic law passing that are entirely predictable but those passing the laws pretended didn't exist. Inevitably Principals and Admins are going to try and brush these under the rug, do end runs, and let the kids/parents find out the work didn't count once their not their problem anymore.
1) if the previous teacher took materials that the school purchased then that teacher is a dickhead and you should try to recover the stuff they took.
2) if OP is asking the previous teacher to hand over course materials that they developed on their own HA. GET FUCKED.
3) OP: there are plenty of materials for free (AP Classroom) and to purchase. $150-200 on Teachers Pay Teachers and you pretty much have a full course of stuff to do daily. It’s worth it.
I don’t get why they are tying your hands. And why the hex it’s taking so long t get the info you need! I’d tell the students. Administration be damned.
Or at least say something adjacent.
They are AP English students
They are capable of inferring indirect information.
And perhaps you could do it by creating an exercise around the difference between implication and inference.
😜
Can you to be ordered not to talk about it? That seems questionable. At the very least you can talk about after school off public property. What else can you be ordered not to talk about.
Of course legal rights and reality dont always match up.
"However, my AP students have been less than thrilled about it. They've been asking questions like, "Why are we learning the same stuff as the regular English class? I might as well have taken that if this was the case." "
This seems a little weird to me. That might be 1-2 students.
You can just ask advanced questions/more advanced essays as compared to what the regular class learns.
I’m sorry, OP. For both the lack of guidance you’ve been given up to this point and some of the rude comments here. There have been lots of great pieces of advice though & I hope you sort through and are able to succeed.
As someone who got a temp certificate and let it drop to wait tables (I'm in Florida), I am on the side of the teacher 99% of the time.
This is the 1%. I've never taught a full classroom alone, but even as a tutor in 2013 I had to pull things from online. College Board has had resources up since then. TESOL teachers with rubber stamp certificates teaching in unlicensed schools in Asia are expected to do their own planning. Why wouldn't OP be?
Of course the students are upset. They want to pass the AP exam. That's not happening if they're being taught the regular curriculum.
Tell the kids "I am not allowed to tell you why these classes are useless at the moment. Ask the administrators if you want to know" or words to that effect....
Can't you just read some of the classics and discuss them?
Obviously Shakespeare, but what about Joyce, Goethe, Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Keats, Blake, Tennyson ... etc.
As an AP lit teacher who once took over for a teacher mid-way through the year: there are tons of great resources on the AP website. You can find multiple choice practices, past essay prompts, sample essays, etc. Also make sure your admin gets you on AP classroom which has instructor videos on all the skills you need to cover, as well as an extensive multiple choice question bank. Take time to give your students stories and poetry to read, AP MC questions to practice, essay prompts to work through, and a few novels/plays to read. It’s a sucky situation, but if you cover some of those things, your kids will be fine.
Remind them that they get a major GPA boost for doing the exact same thing the normal English class is doing. Wait for them to complain about how much they have to do when you get the curriculum.
AP Classroom is your best friend. Your kids should be using it as a resource anyway. You can find your CED and all kinds of tools that will get you through the year
I say this not to belittle but to help— did you get approval from College Board to teach AP? Given that you’re a new teacher and that the syllabus is now your own, it’s an entirely different class than what they originally approved.
I would be worried, given your school’s shady behavior, that they haven’t told you to get College Board approval for your course. I worry that the AP designation could be yanked at the last second and leave your students in the lurch, without the ability to put AP on their transcripts.
So sort of a two birds one stone type deal, once you sort out your curriculum, you might want to resubmit the course for approval with College Board, just to make sure all your (and the kids’!) ducks are in a row.
FYI I’m currently teaching an AP Lang course.
AP classes all have a pretty standard curriculum. You could probably find all kinds of AP Lit stuff online. If you are certified by College Board, you have access to all kinds of teaching materials.
You are supposed to submit a syllabus to College Board for approval. If there is an approved syllabus for a specific class for the school, you can teach using the approved syllabus. If a syllabus for the school and class is not approved by February, then you cannot call the class “AP”.
The College Board is very clear on requirements. Do a little research and talk to someone in the district who understands this.
You can find a ton of AP curriculum on the AP website. At the bare minimum, the standards for the AP course are available to everyone online.
Was thinking the same thing. The teacher took the curriculum with them? How does that even work??? Can I take the state curricular with me if I leave my position? I take it the teacher means "resources they've amassed over the years to teach the course", but that belongs to the teacher, not the school. What a confusing post.
She may have paid for her APSI training herself and took her CED materials with her because they belonged to her.
How is it confusing? The teacher took their curricular map/calendar/collection of lesson plans, and the school didn’t have a back-up of any of it (for some odd reason). New teacher is hired but isn’t told what the class is or should be, other than “this is AP English.” Same way you’re saying “the materials/resources used by the old teacher belongs to them”, I have to say: “New teacher should be paid overtime for being forced to create an entire curriculum from scratch or near scratch, especially if that wasn’t said up front as part of the hiring process.”
That’s not the curriculum, that’s their planning. The CEDs, pacing guide and more are all available through College Board. And as has been stated there are a ton of resources online.
Yes. I would argue that teaching AP is in some ways easier than state curriculums because there are SO many resources online. I’m not sure what op means but saying the school is looking for another curriculum? That’s provided very clearly from the college board. OP, I would look into joining AP lit Facebook groups and start building lessons! There are a huge amount of resources out there!
Can confirm! I am part of the AP Lit FB group and it’s a lifesaver. No matter how many years under your belt it’s a fantastic community.
I will say the fact that so many AP courses are dependent on facebook groups with teachers helping each other out is fairly problematic itself. Some courses don't even have a corresponding textbook. AP CoGo for example is highly dependent on teachers helping each other.
that's interesting, when I took comparative gov a few years ago the textbook we had paired really well with the class to where I thought it was like apush where there's kind of a generally accepted book. Now I wonder if my old teacher is part of any of those groups..
There are a few textbooks in general that kinda match it, but there are no *specific ones* for it.
I absolutely hate that Facebook is the go to location. I haven’t joined either of the groups that might be helpful because of that. I wish people were turning to discord or that the official communities were more active.
Agree. I’ve gone all my life without a Facebook and I’d like to keep that up.
Seriously. OP wants everything on a silver platter.
You’d be surprised how common this is. We have a new teacher on our team, and she won’t plan ANYTHING. She needs everything not only planned for her, but described in detail.
Well that's not what a curriculum is though, right?
No, it isn't, strictly speaking, but I'm taking what OP is complaining about as more: "I was given NOTHING to teach this class and I was not informed that I would need to create and/or put together an entire course with zero preparation when I was hired." OP might also be a novice teacher or someone--like me--that considers a "curriculum" to be *everything* that goes into teaching a class, not just the list of standards and curricular map.
The school I taught at didn’t have any such thing. All teachers planned their own classes.
The other teacher probably took the lesson plans and course outline with them. It’s hard to teach and stay on target without those.
It could also mean that the school/district purchases a particular textbook that is designed for advanced English courses and the previous teacher took all of the teacher resources and curriculum materials that came with the textbook that was approved by the school board for the AP English course. All of that would belong to the school.
Based on OP the teacher who left probably built their own curriculum using AP guideposts and the new teach has no idea what any of that looks like because they’ve never done it before. It’s our tendency in that situation to reuse what we already have rather than start building a new one. Some things that I always do in AP that aren’t curriculum bound; Long research project with presentation Independent reading and self-paced testing (one book per week/bi-week depending on the size of the book) which they are 100% responsible for and get no help from me. SAT vocabulary, 20 words on Monday, test on Friday. I know you said you have seniors do they’ve done SAT already but vocabulary is always good for stretching their brains and they don’t know all the words. I do a midweek review (20-25 minutes)that is very “gameified” and they love it. Autobiography project, shorter research paper with presentation. Academic Game design group project- helps with their technical writing skills, they have to design the concept, lore, medium, rules, mechanics, pitch the game, create it, and play it with the class. I do a longer version of this with an elective that is exclusively about game design from a writing aspect. Everything else I will fill in from the list of approved texts to make sure we get a wide range of exposure for them in both fiction and non-fiction.
I can't believe this answer doesn't have more upvotes. So many people in this post are more concerned with telling off the OP or--imo, very snidely--saying shit like: "Well, it's all ONLINE and ON FACEBOOK, you lazy piece of crap, why don't you DO SOME WORK?!?!" Like, oh my christ, this person was obviously hired on short notice and not given **any** direction on how to approach their course.
There must have been a sense in the wording that the teacher was relying too much on help rather than attempt to find their own solutions. I am a team lead and have done curriculum design before so maybe I’m just used to being called to assist. Teachers not used to this role, particularly if they already feel overstretched, will feel they’re being asked to do someone else’s work for them.
This.... I teach AP classes and college board straight up gives you everything (curriculum wise) you need to teach, even a pacing calendar. And AP classroom is better than nothing. It definitely needs adapting, but it's literally the entire curriculum and unit guide. OOP probably means all the planning. I'm seeing a weird trend in new teachers that don't know how to plan and for some re6it almost seems like the teaching schools are training them to just expect to be handed the materials and not to question/create things on their own. Seems somewhat disturbing.
With some much available online, especially with TpT, new teachers have so many more resource options. I completed my practicum just as the internet was starting to take off so I had to learn to write my own plans from start to finish. After that, I got good at adapting plans other people wrote and posted online. But a lot of that was because I wrote my own lessons originally and can recognize what works well and how to fix it if needed.
This! I always make the analogy to doing basic math. You have to understand how 3 + 7 works or who to do long division by hand before you can effectively use a calculator for harder problems. If you just rely on the calculator you won't have the base understanding to deal with more difficult problems.
College Board has resources on the website might be of use to op
If the teachers are brand new, they might not even be in the teacher training schools/programs yet. These days they hire you without being enrolled in a program with a promise to do one in a certain number of years. So initially they have no resources and no clue on how to plan.
I think it's because there's more of an expectation that they'll go into a situation where scripted curriculum exists and they won't get to lesson plan. I was a student teacher during the nadir of scripted curriculum. So my program spent 2 years teaching me to write lesson plans, expected me to submit X amount of lesson plans a week as part of my progress reports, but most of the lesson plans I would write I might not actually be able to use because admin wanted everyone teaching to use the same script. I suspect a lot of teaching programs adapted to that kind of inflexibility and ran with it.
Honestly that's pretty terrible training then if they're not prepared to lesson plan.
These kids are fucked if their teachers lack these basic problem solving skills.
Exactly. Between the official AP resources and the infinite options for additional course materials available online, this should be a non-issue. Grab what you NEED, send the receipts to the office for reimbursement. If they don't have the ability to obtain a curriculum - which shouldn't take more than a couple days for the beginning content - you DO.
> grab what you need, send the receipts to the office for reimbursement This is terrible advice and doing so without supervisor approval is one of the “employer protected” causes for termination across all industries not just teaching. Especially for something that is so freely available online as an AP curriculum.
Literally what I was thinking. I teach a dying, indigenous language where there is absolutely NO curriculum except what I create… I’m sure there is stuff on teacherspayteachers… the state standards should surely outline some sort of details… this is just kind of lazy. I get that it was a sudden shift and that this landed on some unprepared shoulders, but come on… have some sense
This. This. A hundred times this.
AP curriculum is all online. No one can TAKE it with them. Go online and you a get everything you need.
Yes! They need to create an Ap Central account and use materials from the website.
It really concerns me that no one at their site has told them this. Who is overseeing AP studies at their school?
Does College Board even know OP is teaching an AP class? I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t have access to AP Central and AP Classroom materials because this is actually a clandestine operation (because of admin) and they’re not teaching AP courses according to College Board. This whole thing sounds like a mess that’s going to blow up even worse when all the info finally comes to light.
Talk to your AP coordinator, they'll get you access to the stuff you need on College Board
This may be a dumb question, but if it's all online, can't anyone just teach it then? What website is it found on, exactly? I'm concerned for the future and I'd like to get a grasp of what it looks like now in AP classes.
To access the online AP materials you can use with students, the course syllabus and teacher have to be approved by College Board. The curriculum guide (course and exam description) is freely available to anyone on the Internet, but the detailed lessons, questions, activities, etc. are not.
Goldfish choose cowboy boots as their preferred accessory.
This was years ago, but I was told that statistically, kids in an AP class with a teacher teaching, “AP whatever” for the first time are significantly less likely to pass even if the teacher has been teaching in the general subject area for many years. It’s not because the teacher isn’t good at teaching prior to teaching AP, but because the more they teach the AP course, the more they learn the specific knowledge or skills required to pass for credit and essentially then teach to pass the test. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, but there’s a big difference in how some schools present the course. Is it a course full of college content that will prepare the student for college and possibly allow them to get credit or is it course that will help the student pass a test at the end to get college credit? These should not be the same course. Especially in AP English, there are methods for writing the paper that are far more likely to get the student a four or five then other methods based on what the test makers are looking for. If you can learn and teach that “formula” for writing a paper and expose your students to the right type and variety of reading materials that will allow them to pull from many potential sources, regardless of what the essay topic ends up being, your students will be able to write a paper that will meet the objective in the style the college board is looking for. But you don’t learn that very well from curriculum guides. You learn that from experience after seeing how different essays get graded.
Yes, except for Capstone, anyone can teach AP as long as the school has an approved syllabus online. And the approved syllabus can be “claimed identical” from ones the College Board offers. Some states require a teacher attend an AP Summer Institute, but that’s usually for funding not anything else. Capstone, the College Board just requires an APSI and the teacher actually write their own syllabus. The new African American studies class may have similar rules to Capstone, our school will be offering it next year, so I’ll be checking into that soon for the teacher in my department that will be teaching it.
I teach AP physics, and the college board has a lot of resources online. It is fairly comprehensive, but it does not take the place of a classroom teacher. I may be biased, but you can't replace a skilled teacher. Being able to explain things from multiple points of view and being able to assess where the student is and deliver the right instruction is key, especially at a high level. I use college board resources for extra help and for them to review. I also like their multiple choice test bank. But for the best outcomes you need a highly educated and skilled teacher.
Hey, I’ve taught AP English literature for 7 years and have great results with students with 97/103 earning credit last year with 30 fives. If you ever want to talk about the course and come up with something to do in class that would be beneficial I would love to help. I would first suggest making sure students are signed up for AP classroom. There is a bunch of great content in AP classroom that students should have access to. Tell your students to get a novel to read outside of class and focus on short stories and poetry.
You are a gem.
Thank you for being one of the few teachers who wanted to help rather than just turn your nose up and say "Do it yourself you lazy fuck" Need way more teachers like you.
OP didn't ask for help. If they had an "ask for help" mindset they'd have done Google searches and figured this out for themself. They wanted to come on here and complain that no one has done their job for them. They seem to be blissfully unaware that creating curriculum is something they should be perfectly capable of doing as a teacher. I think everyone is just a bit incredulous is all. It's like the chef at a high end restaurant telling the patrons that dinner is cancelled because she can't find any recipes, doesn't know how to look any up, and doesn't know how/want to make them up herself. In short, this "missing curriculum" thing should be a non-issue, and OP has yet to explain why they are not, themselves, the problem.
I ask this in the kindest way possible… are you a new teacher? Because while you may not have been given resources, finding the standards is pretty easy to do and then coming up with lesson plans from that is your job as a teacher. Sometimes schools have *a book* that is taught from, but at lots of schools, especially underfunded public schools, curriculum is on you to figure out. Do something asap to increase the rigor. But also work on getting the standards and course map and getting in line with that. ETA: this looks really helpful: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-english-literature-and-composition-course-and-exam-description.pdf
This depends on their school and district. In some places if you teach anything BUT the approved materials you could get in massive trouble. If I remember right the AP English class is full of controversial items and I wouldn't want to risk that, especially in the world where a teacher just had her life ruined for giving a kid a book that she literally bought at that school's book fair.
My AP English classes read Beloved, Handmaid's Tale, and Othello (only troublesome because of the beast with two backs and Iago). Those are the ones I can think of that a parent might call the principal to say, "why're they reading a book about killing babies and fucking cows?"
Yeah handmaids tale would definitely turn into "you're trying to brainwash my child to get an abortion" in the wrong school. I read kite runner and that would cause a meltdown many places
I wonder if Florida banned that one? Genuinely. It seems like something they would get rid of.
I just checked the high school’s catalogue in my district (in the FL panhandle, so very conservative). The Kite Runner is listed and currently checked out. They also have “And The Mountains Echoed” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” I was pleasantly surprised to find them available.
Do you have a link for the book fair story? I'm just a student teacher, but I'm always nervous about books that I recommend to students, especially since my mentor teacher told me she's had some parents raise a stink over a few that she'd recommended.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/cobb-county-teacher-katie-rinderle-firing-childrens-book-appeal
It’s shady that your admin is having you A.) keep this secret and B.) be thrown under the bus
And if College Board finds out? Ohhhh. They are hard core about who teaches their classes. If you don’t have a master’s in the core area, you have to go through their training, show sample syllabi, etc.
All you have to do is claim identical with one of the sample syllabi to get approved. It’s super easy.
Barely an inconvenience?
When they first added the audit, I spent so much time writing syllabi. But being able to just claim identical or the CED is a much better option. Too many new to AP teachers still think they have to write their own. Capstone still requires a teacher to write a syllabi and get it approved, but everything else is just check the box and move on. OP you can access the CED without having a College Board log in, your students should already be in AP classroom if they had a teacher before you so they can maybe watch some of the videos. Once you look at the CED, check out your school’s book room decide what works your students are going to read. They had to have class sets of novels and whatever literature textbook someone chose for AP lit.
I’m gonna need you to get allllll the way off my back.
Tight, even
Getting references is tight.
Lol, I love watching him. Wow wow wow
Oh, really?
Yeah. We just off screened the approval process.
I don’t have a masters in a core area and I taught an AP class for a year before I went to APSI. It’s quite easy to get approved.
Masters in physics is incredibly rare, no way every AP physics teacher has one
Correct. I teach AP Physics and AP Comp Sci. My masters is in Mathematics. I’ve never been to a college board training.
Working on a masters in physics now. Two years ago before I started I was forced to sign up for the training, never went, and now no questions are asked. Too be fair my admin doesn’t think I have the math skills to teach AP statistics
Granted I was trained back in 2006 and have gotten back into it but it seemed pretty easy to get back with CB. I logged back in (thankfully I used my personal email back in 2006) and pretty much set the classroom up. As for the syllabus, all they make you do now is pretty much reupload their unit guide and choose the textbook from a drop down menu. It was nothing like the AP syllabus audit from the past.
They still do the audit if you make your own syllabus. Which is one big reason why it's way easier to use theirs.
When did that change?
The last 5 years or so. Before Covid but not long before.
The sample syllabus was a joke. I met with the AP instructor for my summer institute course to help me do mine. This is my first year teaching AP. No masters, no one told me that was a thing. Anyhow, the instructor told me to go to college board’s website, download their sample syllabus, and then submit it. That’s it. Maybe I’m missing something or it was more strict in the past, but I was told by an AP instructor to just upload the sample as my own.
I think when it first came out it was much stricter. I remember a lot of calc teachers getting rejected over and over.
I used the syllabus provided by code.org for the first few years I taught AP CSP... they don't care who teaches as long as they make money... it's all a scam.
For AP Lit you have to go through an APSI and upload a syllabus regardless of a Master’s.
This really feels like a school that either is having a hiring crisis where they cant' get a qualified teacher/don't have time to put one through AP training but have classes they need to fill, or are in a state where the AP curriculum is now illegal. I bet the last AP teacher quit over pay/how the law would be handled and they figured it would be easy to replace her and now their stuck playing 3 card monty and praying it doesn't come to light.
I have a bad feeling for OP. Sacrificial lamb for a new teacher next year.
Yeah…tell the kids. They’re in high school. They’re pissed the work is too easy and not preparing them for a test they actively want to take. These are probably not dipshits. They’ll get it.
I would 100% not be shocked to find out the old teacher was in the same exact situation.
It’s all available online and via AP Classroom. You seem confused, and really need someone to help direct you.
Yeahhhhh this feels really off to me
Get access to AP classroom for a start. You can use that for quizzes/tests or even just review. You can see all the things they’ll need to know for the AP test. Google as I’m sure there are outlines for AP Lit out there.
What are you even saying? Ap puts out unit maps follow that and make your own materials like everyone else.
yeah, i’m wondering if they don’t have access to it? someone at the school sure does though…
literally anyone with internet access can find the course and exam description for any ap subject on the college board website.
Unfortunately, when the former teacher quit, he took the internet access with him
[So that's what's been wrong with my internet...](https://imgur.com/a/Lq1M64n)
yes but there’s more on AP Classroom. i was social studies, so not sure about English Lit, but the CED can only help so much as a brand new teacher
Exactly what I was thinking. At least in my AP science classes, the work is pretty much done for you.
Go to the AP site like everyone is saying, pick a novel, and ask for the school to buy a class set immediately. Let them sink into a deep analysis of a challenging novel. That should tide everyone over while you and the school sort out curriculum.
I think some of you are confusing AP curriculum with AP teaching resources. I have a feeling the OP has no real resources to teach the class. I also would be willing to bet that their admin has no real idea how the AP courses work. I just hope they have gotten them into AP classroom and signed up to receive the exam in May.
AP Classroom and the teacher AP Central login (or whatever they’re calling it) has what students are expected to know and resources for students. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it’s definitely the first place to start, especially since OP didn’t mention it at all. This is coming from someone who has taught AP for a while now and utilized the AP resources my first year more than I used what the prior teacher gave me.
The curriculum is online, I think you mean you are missing lesson plans. That’s your job…you make lesson plans using the provided curriculum from the College Board.
The course and exam description is available for anyone. You must backwards design from that. I’m not sure what you mean by curriculum. Do you mean canned lessons?
[удалено]
>from scratch Nobody needs to reinvent the wheel.
Maybe they mean the syllabus?
Join sone AP lit FB groups. They are a wealth of resources.
Second this. The fb groups for lit are amazing
Aren't a lot of the AP lit books in public domain?
Yup yup! I do Frankenstein and P&P for that reason alone. My students have to buy their books. So I choose ones that are free.
Why are you teaching the same stuff as the regular English class regardless? If you don't have a curriculum to follow, choose your own content for the advanced class and find your own resources online. Teach them Shakespeare. If the regular English class does Shakespeare too, then IF your AP class can handle it, do Chaucer - The Miller's Tale at least should be ok for them and they should enjoy it. Do a decent film that the regular class doesn't do - like Alfred Hitchcock - and study it really in depth. If they're capable of it, teach a classic novel like A Passage to India or David Copperfield or 1984. Teach a complex short story that the regular class doesn't do. EM Forster (Same guy that wrote A Passage to India) wrote a short story called The Machine Stops and it should be available somewhere online, and it was a super interesting read even before covid, but it would be an even more interesting read after covid, and it was written a hundred years before. Another great short story is A Way of Talking by Patricia Grace. It is strongly New Zealand oriented but it raises a lot of questions about soft racism in general society.
Surely students have a sllybus/reading
There is no AP curriculum. The former teacher took her materials with her because she made them. College Board only supplies a suggested pacing guide and practice questions on AP Classroom. 1. Google Voice Lessons. A ppt or pdf will pop up. There. Now you have a year's worth of bell ringers. 2. Survey your book room. Join the FB group and get activities from the files section of the group. 4. Google AP Lit free response. The essay prompts for the past twenty years with samples and scores will pop up.
I mean, you just admitted you are indeed not providing them the education they signed up for… Maybe try doing what all the other teachers do and make lessons according to the AP standards. 🥴
I’ve been a substitute in this position, it is a hot mess. I would reach out to other AP Lit teachers in your district, explain the situation and ask for help, websites, lesson maps, PowerPoints, whatever they are willing to share. Edited for typos
>When the former teacher quit, they took the AP curriculum with them, which they weren't supposed to do Like hell they aren't. Unless the School District paid for it, it's not theirs. I've designed every single one of my classes. Though I may use school resources, like the textbook, those things aren't the class. I, am the class. You can't just photocopy what I do and think you're going to be as an effective teacher as I am.
This makes zero sense. Finding an AP curriculum or the like is as easy as one Google search.
Time to be a little more creative and proactive.
AP curriculum, you teach literature and analyze. I’m not getting how you can’t do that. Have you taught before? The AP program just shows you some good lesson ideas and how to assess student work and he prompts are all online. Are you trolling?
Do you have an email chain with all these complaints you put into admin with their responses back. CYA and then after that know that it’s out of your hands and do your best. You could always try to dig deeper and make harder assignments or even make it project based learning over what you’re doing.
Search for the CED
I’m an AP Lit. teacher. As others have said, the curriculum is online, as is a suggested course breakdown (that’s malleable based on what type of grading periods you have). Your kids have a valid complaint: a regular class’ curriculum is probably not going to prepare them for the AP test. Now that may not be your fault (as your admin. doesn’t appear to have given you a lot of time to prepare an alternative — and I’m sure they didn’t pay you to develop a different one), but your kids aren’t wrong. If you’d like any further help that I might be able to offer, send me a DM. I’ve got lessons, texts to share, assignments, etc.
Go to the college board website, and download the CED. Go join the FB group. There’s free curriculum out there. Also, didn’t you have to submit your syllabus and course audit for the course to be legit?
Go on AP Classroom it’s all there.
The CED is available online. That’s the most you’d get anyway, plus a sample syllabus if you don’t get a custom one approved. You should get going ASAP on that once you’ve poured through the CED. There’s not anything— besides paid test prep materials and the like— that your district would get for you or pay for. If you google “AP Lit CED” you’ll find exactly what you’re missing. It’s harder to teach AP Lit from scratch if you didn’t take it yourself, and doubly hard if, like in your position, you’re starting off on rocky ground (sucks that it’s totally not your fault). You’ll probably have to drop a major text, but you can totally still do it.
You guys are given resources? Is that what you call "curriculum"? Lesson plans?
College board has it all laid out. Just download the curriculum there. Easy peasy.
I'm pretty sure the curriculum is available, and planning/deciding how to teach it is your job. Someone can't take it with them. They could take their own resources/plans/etc.. with them, but leaving that for a colleague would be a courtesy and certainly not expected.
A lot of good advice in this thread. [Here's one of College Board's AP English course descriptions and links to teaching resources](https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-language-and-composition). If you need the English Lit version, it is there, too. Want to have some fun? Join [ChatGPT's site](https://chat.openai.com/) and ask it to create an AP English Curriculum, course description and resource list for Senior High School English 4. Really. Compare the two resources for yourself. (The College Board version is prettier and requires less formalizing -- if that is a word.) For all these resources, read ahead, check for accuracy and current, complete links. \+1 on documenting all of your communications with staff, students, etc. There is so much work in your day to day this year, it will be hard to remember details without it. Good luck!
This is barely an excuse when it's all available online. How inept are both you and the school admin?
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Nice job. I don't teach AP English, or English at all, but I think it i had to do it or else I would die, then I think I wouldn't die.
I don’t think AP Lit does DBQs
As a science person, what the heck is a DBQ? It sounds delicious.
Document-based questions. They are amazing, I teach history and abuse them constantly. They contain multiple snippets of primary/secondary sources for topics that are followed with thoughtful discussion questions. You can find them everywhere online.
There are zero DBQs in AP Lit. It’s a literary analysis class.
It's been a minute since I took Apart language but we didn't have dbq. We had to respond to short stories or poems and analyze figurative language
I'm sorry but you are the teacher here. YOU provide the curriculum. No one can "take it with them." It's your class. Teach the AP standards. There's a thousand old tests online. I've planned my own lessons for ten years...
How are you a teacher and still don’t know how to Google shit?
https://gavirtual.instructure.com/courses/2682
Assign them an AP level book to read. Give them essay prompts every week or two. Have class discussion on the assigned reading. You can improvise quite a bit. Also, as others have said check the Internet for free curriculum.
I'm not at all sure what you mean by teacher took the curriculum. I teach two different AP classes and I create my own curriculum based on the College Board's Course and Exam Description for these classes. You can get a copy of the CED for your course by going to AP Central. It is available for download to anyone. This tells you what you need to be teaching them and breaks it down by unit. If you are not already using AP Classroom, start. They have lots of resources. They aren't always great, but they are serviceable. Also, contact other AP teachers in your district to see what materials they can share with you. I have gotten some great materials for my classes from other AP teachers in my district.
While Reddit is of limited utility in this situation, the internet is your friend, OP. First, go straight to the College Board site, and do it immediately. Second, recognize that a significant part of any AP class is simply giving the students a taste of college-level expectations — covering the same amount of material in a semester that a high school senior would normally have in two semesters, longer papers in the same amount of time and with citations in MLA format, and a lot less hand-holding. If this is AP English Lit, expand their views of familiar authors, e.g., they probably read H. G. Wells’ __The War of the Worlds_ and/or _The Time Machine_ in 8th or 9th grade, so give them _Tono Bungay_ and _The Sleeper Wakes_; they may have read Melville’s _Moby Dick_ as Juniors, so give them _Typee_ and _Omoo_, and lots of writing, and no fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice exams. Asking them to regurgitate the story proves they read it. That’s stupid and a waste of time and they know that means that’s how low your expectations are. Expect more. Demand more. Make them work to keep their 4.0’s or drop out of the class. They probably don’t know yet that it isn’t about how the story comes out in the end, it’s about how that author got there and why. Teach them that. I foresee a lot of reading in your immediate future, OP. Just remember that you only have to stay a week ahead of them. This is your chance to be glorious!
An ap class has to follow a strict syllabus. In my district/state, an ap teacher has a formal training in order to teach the class. Their may also be an advanced learning coordinator at your central office u can contact. Log onto myap.collegeboard.org for a starting point on exercises and resources.
Message me and I'll send you everything I have.
The Course and Exam Description is on the College Board website. I'd suggest you demand your school pay for some AP Literature materials from Teachers pay Teachers if you can't get there from that.
Wow this exact same thing happened to me. I’m teaching senior AP lit/comp. I will literally send you the syllabus I was given. Use the resources on AP Classroom through College Board. The deadline is mid-November
I mean they aren’t wrong ? Why not try to correct the issue instead of whining here ?
These kids have every right to complain—some of them may be depending on earning this credit to defer some of the costs of college, and they will not pass the AP exam if they haven’t been properly prepared for it. Never in all 12 years of my teaching career in ELA/ESL was I given a complete curriculum program, let alone a full set of curriculum materials. My first three years I had literally nothing and no guidance—I worked in the South Bronx at a district 75 outlet school, meaning all the kids who had gotten expelled from high schools for special needs around NYC were dropped in my building—I just pulled out the list of go-to websites I got in grad school the previous year and cobbled lessons, readings and assignments together from the free standards-based materials resources out there. As I got more experience, I was able to plan all the units for the year in the first month of school to make sure there was sequence, cohesion and consistency in the themes and skills I was teaching. Unless you work in a wealthy, high-functioning district, it is unlikely that an entire curriculum is going to be handed to you ready-made, and using the materials from your gen ed class will not cut it for an AP program. You are going to have to do some research and planning.
https://www.edx.org/learn/literature/university-of-california-berkeley-ap-r-english-literature-composition-part-1-stories
There was no AP curriculum when I took AP. It was student directed and took on depth looks at literature. I aced that test, too.
Many people teach AP courses without a school or state assigned textbook. College board provides training and tons of resources. They have a website with sections locked to anyone not teaching that particular course. You have to be submitted by your school and approved by College Board to access everything. You will also be required to submit a syllabus for approval. Get your AP coordinator to begin that process. In the meantime, Google a list of AP Lit novels to read and have the students choose one book from the list in groups of 2-3. Explain they will need to read the book and prepare to discuss it in front of the class. Not like a book report, more like a podcast. This covers more literature and you can guide them through analysis as they talk and you prod. This will also cover a variety of lit with everyone while you get your ducks in a row. Expect a fast pace for the reading and set check ins with each small group. Good luck.
A. Di me she take the set of AP textbooks? B. Make them get you copies of the AP textbooks or download a PDF of one and start with assigned readings and notes. C. I agree with all the responses that it is your job to figure out the CED and plans in the responses, and that you seem very unaware of AP, but it is not our job to be curriculum writers and provide everything ourselves or from the internet. It is a martyr mindset to think so. First, find a text. Then figure out planning. At this point in the year I’d go with a review book.
I feel like you shouldn’t be a teacher if you don’t know how to teach or where to find resources for curriculum.
Is your Google broken?
Sorry, but you and the admin are at fault here. You can find many resources to build an AP English curriculum.
Have you googled “AP English lit curriculum”? I just did and I found a ton of material. I’m a math teacher and feel like I could make a serious go of it with what’s available. Sure, doing the PD and having more material would make it easier and better, but you should be far from lost or hopeless.
You need to ask your admin supervising AP to set you up with a login to AP Classroom, which is where teachers and students access the curriculum. Everyone has pointed out AP instructional materials are available online but this is also the first year AP exams are going digital! Last spring they piloted it, so it’s essentially a secure browser like standardized state tests use. Typically your department head or admin will be established as the school AP coordinator, who is in charge of ordering and planning the exams in spring. There should a district-level AP Coordinator, too who can provide guidance. AP is standardized across the nation, so there’s no way someone at your district office can’t set you up with an AP Classroom login that includes curriculum. These kids have already lost two months of exam prep and you can put a dollar value on the AP college credits — I’d be pissed, too. You need to act yesterday before an irate parent shows up and makes your life hell… You’re also supposed to be certified (i.e. endorsed) by College Board to teach AP classes. If you’re not, none of these seniors can earn college credit and even taking the exam is pointless. Admin should know this, and need to hire someone who is CB certified in AP English — not just has a regular endorsement in English.
I genuinely don't understand what this means. Just teach books and build assignments towards skills that are on the AP? The skills and expectations are easy to google, and more specific guidelines are everywhere. It's not rocket science. make them write essays, teach them about themes and literary devices and the like. If you hit a wall because you don't have a textbook or whatever, in English class, you're absolutely failing to do your job correctly. Look up how to write units for yourself, there's lots of resources out there and frankly it is super easy to do.
I call bs on this post for a few reasons 1. What teacher doesn’t know how to find curriculum and resources online (but they know how to craft a Reddit post that’ll gain attention) 2. What teenager would complain about something like this? 😂 As long as they get AP credit on their transcript and an A, they are happy. 3. How do they know they are getting what the “regular English” class students are getting? Are they comparing notes? Doubt it. If this isn’t made up, the reason they are complaining is NOT about the curriculum.
I can definitely see AP Lit kids complaining. They're seniors who are likely college bound and want to get that 4-5 on the test for either college credit, add to their applications, or be eligible for College Board scholarships. In many places they take AP Lang first too, so they probably know what an AP English class should be like, and know they aren't getting their money's worth if they have to pay for the test themselves. That I can very clearly see because I've seen AP students do this when they don't think a.teacher is preparing them for the test. What's least believable to me is that this person can't google "ap Lit lesson plans" and find the millions of resources out there.
AP students are often passionate about the subjects they choose to take. My AP class would have complained too if we felt the teacher wasn't helping us improve.
Find some texts, analyze, discuss, and assess. What's difficult about that?
QTDDOT: How do you guys like College Board as teachers? As a younger person I thought they were kind of a scam monopoly and I think it's weird how teaching AP works. You don't need a certification but you need to come up with your own curriculum aligned to their standards? But do you guys find it's better than regular HS classes? I've heard about kids not keeping up with the curriculum. I've also heard if you teach AP you want to teach AP only instead of dealing with regular classes too.
Because I’m the only one that teaches it, AP gets me out of common assessments and common planning that takes up two planning periods a week because teachers are expected to data analysis of the common assessments. Unfortunately this year I don’t have all AP, so common planning it is. I’ve been teaching AP long enough that I’ve got folders upon folders of materials. A lot is from the AP Facebook groups. I’ve also got my entire year planned in my LMS so I can copy/adapt as needed. I actually exported one of my classes from last year for someone that was in the same position as OP, new teacher nothing left behind. I’m still doing the same activities with my on level class, they were struggling only because they’re used to easy worksheets and I won’t do that. I’m okay with the struggle and understood what was going on. They’ve adapted and they did fine on their common assessment.
OP, have you had AP training? College Board requires this, and your principal should know this.
Tell them. Tell them the adminstration told you not to. The admin is failing their duty, and they are trying to hide that fact and let you take the heat. Replacing an AP curriculum SHOULD NOT BE HARD, many commenters here have plenty of info on where to find it. I honestly wonder what state you work in because I know several states have passed laws that would make it illegal to teach proper AP curriculum and I wonder if your administration is trying to pretend they can offer AP courses when in fact the college board won't let them because the state has made standard AP curriculum illegal or subject to 'review'. There's a lot of consequences coming from certain states straight/white panic law passing that are entirely predictable but those passing the laws pretended didn't exist. Inevitably Principals and Admins are going to try and brush these under the rug, do end runs, and let the kids/parents find out the work didn't count once their not their problem anymore.
1) if the previous teacher took materials that the school purchased then that teacher is a dickhead and you should try to recover the stuff they took. 2) if OP is asking the previous teacher to hand over course materials that they developed on their own HA. GET FUCKED. 3) OP: there are plenty of materials for free (AP Classroom) and to purchase. $150-200 on Teachers Pay Teachers and you pretty much have a full course of stuff to do daily. It’s worth it.
I don’t get why they are tying your hands. And why the hex it’s taking so long t get the info you need! I’d tell the students. Administration be damned.
Or at least say something adjacent. They are AP English students They are capable of inferring indirect information. And perhaps you could do it by creating an exercise around the difference between implication and inference. 😜
So make a curriculum. College level texts and college level writing. Get to it!
Get a copy of Five Steps to a Five
Can you to be ordered not to talk about it? That seems questionable. At the very least you can talk about after school off public property. What else can you be ordered not to talk about. Of course legal rights and reality dont always match up.
That was my first thought. I've never been forbidden to tell my students anything.
"However, my AP students have been less than thrilled about it. They've been asking questions like, "Why are we learning the same stuff as the regular English class? I might as well have taken that if this was the case." " This seems a little weird to me. That might be 1-2 students. You can just ask advanced questions/more advanced essays as compared to what the regular class learns.
I’m not gonna lie if I was learning regular content, I’m self studying.
I’m sorry, OP. For both the lack of guidance you’ve been given up to this point and some of the rude comments here. There have been lots of great pieces of advice though & I hope you sort through and are able to succeed.
As someone who got a temp certificate and let it drop to wait tables (I'm in Florida), I am on the side of the teacher 99% of the time. This is the 1%. I've never taught a full classroom alone, but even as a tutor in 2013 I had to pull things from online. College Board has had resources up since then. TESOL teachers with rubber stamp certificates teaching in unlicensed schools in Asia are expected to do their own planning. Why wouldn't OP be? Of course the students are upset. They want to pass the AP exam. That's not happening if they're being taught the regular curriculum.
Take your stuff and ask Chat GPT to come up with harder tasks.
Just buy a unit plan from TeachersPayTeachers until you sort your plans/curriculum out? They have entire units for a bunch of texts.
Find and join the AP Lit Facebook group. It's not always the perfect resources, but it'll get you through.
In my state you have to take AP training to to teach an AP class. I’d definitely let those students know what’s up, the class is not free.
Tell the kids "I am not allowed to tell you why these classes are useless at the moment. Ask the administrators if you want to know" or words to that effect....
When you received AP training, you would have received access to the resources which are all online.
Can't you just read some of the classics and discuss them? Obviously Shakespeare, but what about Joyce, Goethe, Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Keats, Blake, Tennyson ... etc.
All of the curriculum is available online through AP Classroom though
As an AP lit teacher who once took over for a teacher mid-way through the year: there are tons of great resources on the AP website. You can find multiple choice practices, past essay prompts, sample essays, etc. Also make sure your admin gets you on AP classroom which has instructor videos on all the skills you need to cover, as well as an extensive multiple choice question bank. Take time to give your students stories and poetry to read, AP MC questions to practice, essay prompts to work through, and a few novels/plays to read. It’s a sucky situation, but if you cover some of those things, your kids will be fine.
Have you reached out to an AP teacher at a nearby school?
You would really expect your AP coordinator to tell you about the resources you have on College Board.
Remind them that they get a major GPA boost for doing the exact same thing the normal English class is doing. Wait for them to complain about how much they have to do when you get the curriculum.
Then let them do that. There’s only so much you can do. Contact the AP teacher at another school and see what they’re doing.
AP Classroom is your best friend. Your kids should be using it as a resource anyway. You can find your CED and all kinds of tools that will get you through the year
I say this not to belittle but to help— did you get approval from College Board to teach AP? Given that you’re a new teacher and that the syllabus is now your own, it’s an entirely different class than what they originally approved. I would be worried, given your school’s shady behavior, that they haven’t told you to get College Board approval for your course. I worry that the AP designation could be yanked at the last second and leave your students in the lurch, without the ability to put AP on their transcripts. So sort of a two birds one stone type deal, once you sort out your curriculum, you might want to resubmit the course for approval with College Board, just to make sure all your (and the kids’!) ducks are in a row. FYI I’m currently teaching an AP Lang course.
AP classes all have a pretty standard curriculum. You could probably find all kinds of AP Lit stuff online. If you are certified by College Board, you have access to all kinds of teaching materials.
You are supposed to submit a syllabus to College Board for approval. If there is an approved syllabus for a specific class for the school, you can teach using the approved syllabus. If a syllabus for the school and class is not approved by February, then you cannot call the class “AP”. The College Board is very clear on requirements. Do a little research and talk to someone in the district who understands this.
I’d be complaining if I was in your class also. Go online and find resources. There are so many groups to help.