Greetings WHAP Family!
I want to be as straightforward as possible with you today, but I’m concerned that tone can often be misunderstood in an email. So allow me to begin by saying that there is no anger or frustration behind what I am going to say, only concern for the academic welfare of your child and a need to express my desire to help and move your student in a positive direction. Your student is aware of my strident style and knows to take me with a few grains of salt, but you don’t know me quite as well as your child does!
I’ve heard from many of you and you have several understandable concerns. I’d like to address some of those among all of us and to make you aware of a new strategy I’m employing this weekend to support your efforts and especially those of your child.
While I understand the importance of grades (I have four children of my own) my primary concern as an educator is student learning. I work hard to make sure that grades are a reflection of a student’s learning –that is their function. World History Advanced Placement is a very rigorous class, and it is therefore reasonable to see a drop in student’s grades. Now, at the end of the first marking period, the issue of grades rises more than ever in the minds of students and parents.
I want you to understand that I cannot lower the standards of this course for several reasons.
· Foremost, I am an educator because I am deeply committed to a personal mission to develop the intellectual, aesthetic, ethical and empathetic lives of children. To lower those standards because of grades would run contrary to my mission.
· I have submitted to the College Board the syllabus from which I am teaching this class. It was approved by College Board because it meets the standards of rigor established by them. Ethically, I am bound to that syllabus.
· Many students are taking this course with the intention of earning a maximum 5 on the exam in May so that they may earn college credit and thereby save time and money in college. Any lowering of standards effectively cheats those students out of that opportunity. I have had several former students go off to college effectively as sophomores because of the AP credit they earned in High School.
So the challenge for you, your child and I is to rise to the standards of the Advanced Placement curriculum. We can do that, but it will likely not be a painless process.
At this point, as best I can discern, the WHAP students fall into three groups, of fairly equal size. There are students who are managing the work, earning reasonable scores on the assessments and showing an improving trend. Other students have not yet internalized the amount of work required and the personal skill growth needed to succeed. They need motivation, but they are not going to get it in the form of an artificial grade. The third group is of the most concern to me.
These are people who are working hard, but still struggling to manage the assessments. In class this week, I presented (or more accurately, re-presented) a wide-ranging menu of study strategies. You may want to ask your child about that conversation and the hand-out that accompanied it. The idea is for students to find a strategy that works for them. If old strategies are not working or consuming large amounts of time, then they need to try new ones until their hard work pays off.
Last weekend, I engaged many students in an on-line forum on the class web site about the Strayer text. As a result, I did see scores improve, and so that is an encouraging trend. I am doing that again this weekend, but I’ve also taken one more step.
This morning I essentially put myself in the role of a WHAP student and tackled chapter 23 of Strayer as I have been directing your child to do. The result is on the 20th century page of the web site. My intention was not to do the work for students, but to model the work. I want your student to do their own work and then compare it to mine. Did he or she miss a key point from a margin question? In what ways did he or she organize the data? Are the note thourough? (This should be unique to each student’s personal learning style.) My study notes are intended to move your student in the right direction, in the direction of a workable strategy they can utilize for the rest of the year, and likely beyond.
If your child wants to succeed in his or her learning in this class, then they deserve every effort on my part and your to help them get there. In the end though, it’s up to them. I sincerely hope this helps us come to a greater understanding in our shared mission,
I want to be as straightforward as possible with you today, but I’m concerned that tone can often be misunderstood in an email. So allow me to begin by saying that there is no anger or frustration behind what I am going to say, only concern for the academic welfare of your child and a need to express my desire to help and move your student in a positive direction. Your student is aware of my strident style and knows to take me with a few grains of salt, but you don’t know me quite as well as your child does!
I’ve heard from many of you and you have several understandable concerns. I’d like to address some of those among all of us and to make you aware of a new strategy I’m employing this weekend to support your efforts and especially those of your child.
While I understand the importance of grades (I have four children of my own) my primary concern as an educator is student learning. I work hard to make sure that grades are a reflection of a student’s learning –that is their function. World History Advanced Placement is a very rigorous class, and it is therefore reasonable to see a drop in student’s grades. Now, at the end of the first marking period, the issue of grades rises more than ever in the minds of students and parents.
I want you to understand that I cannot lower the standards of this course for several reasons.
· Foremost, I am an educator because I am deeply committed to a personal mission to develop the intellectual, aesthetic, ethical and empathetic lives of children. To lower those standards because of grades would run contrary to my mission.
· I have submitted to the College Board the syllabus from which I am teaching this class. It was approved by College Board because it meets the standards of rigor established by them. Ethically, I am bound to that syllabus.
· Many students are taking this course with the intention of earning a maximum 5 on the exam in May so that they may earn college credit and thereby save time and money in college. Any lowering of standards effectively cheats those students out of that opportunity. I have had several former students go off to college effectively as sophomores because of the AP credit they earned in High School.
So the challenge for you, your child and I is to rise to the standards of the Advanced Placement curriculum. We can do that, but it will likely not be a painless process.
At this point, as best I can discern, the WHAP students fall into three groups, of fairly equal size. There are students who are managing the work, earning reasonable scores on the assessments and showing an improving trend. Other students have not yet internalized the amount of work required and the personal skill growth needed to succeed. They need motivation, but they are not going to get it in the form of an artificial grade. The third group is of the most concern to me.
These are people who are working hard, but still struggling to manage the assessments. In class this week, I presented (or more accurately, re-presented) a wide-ranging menu of study strategies. You may want to ask your child about that conversation and the hand-out that accompanied it. The idea is for students to find a strategy that works for them. If old strategies are not working or consuming large amounts of time, then they need to try new ones until their hard work pays off.
Last weekend, I engaged many students in an on-line forum on the class web site about the Strayer text. As a result, I did see scores improve, and so that is an encouraging trend. I am doing that again this weekend, but I’ve also taken one more step.
This morning I essentially put myself in the role of a WHAP student and tackled chapter 23 of Strayer as I have been directing your child to do. The result is on the 20th century page of the web site. My intention was not to do the work for students, but to model the work. I want your student to do their own work and then compare it to mine. Did he or she miss a key point from a margin question? In what ways did he or she organize the data? Are the note thourough? (This should be unique to each student’s personal learning style.) My study notes are intended to move your student in the right direction, in the direction of a workable strategy they can utilize for the rest of the year, and likely beyond.
If your child wants to succeed in his or her learning in this class, then they deserve every effort on my part and your to help them get there. In the end though, it’s up to them. I sincerely hope this helps us come to a greater understanding in our shared mission,
RSS Feed