I flew in on Sunday evening, June 9, for a fun-filled (o.k., exhausting) week of scoring AP Government exams in Salt Lake City, UT at the Salt Palace Convention Center. Check-in for my single room was easy and I actually like that they put me in a handicap-accessible room - it has a lovely shower with a seat and adjustable sprayers. My view out my window is pretty blah, but that's o.k. since I'm working from 8-5:30 every day anyway...who has time to look out the window of the hotel room.
They always feed us very well at these things, with a full buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner and two snack breaks, followed by a hospitality suite at the hotel which includes snacks and soft drinks too. It will be amazing if I don't roll out of here - actually, I have skipped most of the snack breaks - but that's offset by ingesting the bite-sized candy at the table when I need a little sugar pick-me-up while reading about 250 of these essays a day.
I love the collegiality of the reading and meeting people who I have only "talked" with on the teacher community forums in the past. I organized a meeting on Monday night of AP Gov teachers who are interested in flipping their classes and it went very well. They are going to start a special thread for us on the AP community so that other teachers who are interested can also focus our talents together as we step out in this adventure. Two of the teachers who had planned to come ended up at my table at the reading as well, and this year seems to be the first of my readings where I think I have made contacts with teachers that I will keep after the reading is over.
So, what have I learned from scoring these FRQ's this year? Every year I learn something. The first year, I learned that the rubrics they post are so incomplete as to be laughable. You REALLY need to come and do this as an AP teacher for the professional development. I have grown in my ability to successfully teach this class and in my ability to help my students become even more successful on the test.
Last year's lesson was about context. There is so much vocabulary in AP Gov and a caucus is not a caucus is not a caucus - it all depends on the context of the question.
I tell my students to answer the question they are given - not the one they wanted - but this year I really see that playing out. They all told me they felt good about the question that I'm scoring. I hope their intuition is right. So far, students are not scoring well on this question - and no, I haven't seen mine come through - wish I would! For those worried about my integrity - I would tell the table leader to back check me if I ended up grading my students - additionally, I don't look at school codes until after I've already scored a test - but I would read every FRQ they wrote if I managed to get my student's responses in the randomized stream of folders they bring me! I'm not stupid or crazy!
This question is about policy formation, enactment and implementation. The real take-away that I have for my students next year (other than answer the question you are asked - not the one you wish you were asked) is that it is a banner idea to include examples if you can. There have been many instances where a student just wasn't getting the points for the question, and then they threw in an illustrative example (even a picture diagram once) and they got the points. Many of the best examples (here is point 2) came from current events! So, as I get students to follow current events in the fall while they are taking the class, I hope I can convince them to keep up that habit! Many of the illustrations that students included were from current events in the last couple of months.
That's it on my thoughts for now. I have three more full days of reading to complete. I am learning lots from the common errors that I see - it will help me warn my students about alligators they need to hop over!
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