As I mention in the previous post, I’m spending most of my week in Jonesboro, Arkansas at the Advanced Placement Summer Institute run by The College Board. The purpose of the summer session is to better prepare me to be a teacher of Calculus, which in turn, will better prepare my students to be takers of the AP Calculus Exam.
I’m not ashamed to say that I was a bit nervous heading into the week, this stemming from a few different reasons.
First, geography. I *knew* I would be the only participant in my designated room (teachers of AP Calculus AB) who was not from the state of Arkansas. Awkward. Was I right? Actually, yes, I was. But this really didn’t turn out to be such a bad thing at all. Even though I was singled out as being from Illinois at the beginning of my morning session, my foreign-ness was never again addressed. Yes, many other teacher knew each other, or at the least, knew the district where the other taught, but I’m not really one for meet-and-greets, anyway. I was just fine to quietly converse with gentleman to my left when I knew the answer to a question, but I felt too self-conscious to raise my hand.
Second, experience. I’ve only taught Calculus AB for 2 years, but never have I taught it fully to the AP Syllabus. Yikes. Surely, I thought, I would be one of the least, if not *the* least experience teacher in the room. What I right? Haha! Not even close! There were teachers in the room who had never taught Calculus and wouldn’t for another year or two. I could almost immediately tell that I wasn’t going to be lacking the knowledge department. This went a very long way to ease my nerves.
Third, experience again, but different. I was scared that I’d meet many other teachers who were familiar with Calculus BC, and the instructor would be working examples and teaching concepts from BC that I seriously haven’t seen since sometime in 2007 or 2008. That would be scary. Was I right? Not so far. Like I said, a large portion of the teachers in my room are inexperienced AP Calc teachers, and it seems like here in Arkansas, AP Calculus AB tends to be a Senior level course — leaving no room in high school for BC. Good deal.
I’m really looking forward to day 2. In day 2, I learned a lot about pacing. I know some rough approximations of dates and concepts and how they should align. I know a lot more about what is contained on the test and how it is graded. I even found out that I’ve been teaching a few things very in depth, that I can just gloss over or forgo altogether because they aren’t a part of the tested knowledge on the exam.
Lastly, I miss my wife. As much as I expect to enjoy the next few days, I’ll be wishing I was back at home even more.
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How am I using Evernote on this professional development trip? I’m taking pictures of my meal receipts to turn in to my district for reimbursement. I have a tendency to lose things. Runs in the family. Evernote is helping me get paid, if that happens again.
War and Piecewise Functions 