More than a number

So periodically throughout the year, I had to stop my AP World class and remind them that the class was more than just a score on an exam or numbers on a GPA.  I teach at a pretty well to do school and have a lot of students that are very driven, and get caught up in these things.  Well, the AP exam scores are out, and......they're alright.  In all honesty, they're probably pretty good (had around 58% at 3 or above) out of my 84 students and most got around what I'd have expected if I was pressed to give predictions with a few pleasant surprises and a couple of disappointments.  But I definitely was hoping to have a little bit higher numbers, and I hate it since so many students came back talking about how "easy" they thought the test and essays were.  But for it being my first year teaching and not really having any real resources (or clue as to what I was doing) until the 2nd quarter it's not bad.  So after some initial disappointment, I had to give myself a similar little pep talk to help me see what really matters.  I survived the year teaching something that definitely wasn't in my wheelhouse in world history, and had to learn on the fly to teach at an AP level.  Most importantly for me, is I've learned to really love this course, the material, the challenge, everything about it.  I'm fired up to start it all again and look to improve my class for next year.  It'll be a challenge again as I'm now getting a fourth class, bumping my numbers up around 110 students.  Some things I've already geared up for next year that I've changed from last year:

• Helps that I know how to pace the course now, so I'm combining Unit 1 and 2 together basically and doing a ton of skills teaching during this first 5 weeks.  Within the first 2 weeks, we'll look at all of the different skills & essays and use bell ringers most days to work on putting these skills to work.  Examples will be doing a personal CCOT, analyzing pics, breaking down DBQ docs, use that beginning time to do a SPICE chart rather than having students fill them out in class (or not fill them out)
• My students may not like this, but they'll have to read a lot more than last year's students.  But it'll be for a purpose, an article or something short and to the point, not pages and pages of the textbook.  I've added a blog portion to my website and my students will have to make quick responses to what they read on the blog page.  I'll probably work it out so not everyone reads the same article at the same time to avoid overload of responses.  But it'll be something that I can use to formatively assess what they students are getting from the readings, textbook, etc.  
• I'll have a lot more discussions in class.  We're doing a Harkness on the second day on the summer reading, and we'll do more things like that throughout the year, whether it be full class or smaller sided ones where students dissect point of view on historical events, issues, etc.  
• One other thing I'm planning to start up this summer, is making some podcasts for my students.  I'm definitely planning on using them to help explain the historical skills, and probably do them for chapter and unit reviews among other things.  

So we'll see how these changes go, I'm sure I'll have others along the way or more things will come to me or I'll find online to help me out.  Now I know where the bar is set for me, time to get working to make my class even better next year.

Thanks as always for reading, any suggestions or thoughts, I'd love to hear them in the comments or find me on twitter @amcrowe5