Potential solution to AP-induced all-nighters AND inability to soak in the material??? maybe...I don't know, you tell me.

Exactly one year after the last long, tedious rant on this stupid blog, I'm dropping another one...uuuuggghh...

(TL;DR at bottom.)

Throughout high school, I've taken some well-taught and well-structured AP classes, as well as some that were the dead opposite of that. I've been keeping mental note of things I would do differently if I were a teacher since about fifth grade, so I'm going to spill a few mental notes about teaching AP classes. I have no idea what teachers have to do to get AP certified or about the extent of requirements they must fulfill while teaching the course, but in an ideal world, I'd like what I write here to be applied to both AP's standards and to teachers' personal choices.

• Although AP exams are designed to allow only a short amount of time for each problem, practice and preparation for the exam should not completely model after the exam's time limits--at least not during the beginning of the course. If the large majority of a student's practice consists of doing problems quickly rather than accurately, it will become a challenge for them to understand the material well enough to do the problem both quickly and accurately on the exam. Understanding should be the initial goal, and once that's mastered, speed can come in. (This applies mainly to science/math subjects, but writing can also be improved this way.)

• Side note: This is no excuse for struggling students not to seek problems/material to study slowly and surely on their own time, but if they are already receiving loads of work, how are they going to find time* to self-study on top of assigned work and doing other things that matter to them? (More on a homework solution below.)

• Consider replacing agonizingly long problem sets consisting of the same, typical type of problem with short sets made of more challenging/more varied problems that may not all be likely to appear on the exam but that will provide a deeper understanding of the material. If the quantity of practice probems is reduced, but the amount of rigor and variety is increased, students will be spending their time more efficiently rather than wasting it on hundreds of repetitive problems yet still not understanding the material. This would lead to a less superficial understanding of the material, and would reduce the need for students to seek additional, hard-to-find material to cover what the class failed to cover.

• Question that may arise from this: "Isn't an AP student's responsibility to independently seek resources to supplement what the teacher provides to them?" Yes, but this doesn't give teachers an excuse to make the class time-consuming and simultaneously superficial. Independence can be exercised within the course, not just outside of it, which brings me to my next point.

• If AP classes are supposed to model after college courses and focus heavily on independent learning, why are so many teachers still assigning things like key term sheets with CCQs and making them graded so students are forced to do them? Everyone has their own learning style, some more minimal or crazy than others, yet many inflexible AP classes are not accomodating to this fact. Diminishing unnecessary homework bulk will provide more freedom and time for students to learn the way they prefer, at a pace that they prefer. It would open up more space for getting help after school, and even self-studying if necessary.(Of course, pace still must be monitored and reinforced, just not ridiculously so.) This would satisfy the "independent learning" requirement.

• In my school, I have the reputation of being one of those students who always does their homework on time and rarely procrastinates. The reason why I get it done right away is that I'm the type of person who simply can't enjoy themselves knowing that there's unneeded work in the way. Notice how I'm only talking about "unneeded" work. Work that consumes time yet contributes little or nothing to my learning process, like sitting in a chair for half an hour trying to think of an insightful connection to a minor, abstract APUSH vocab word just because your teacher decided to make it a grade, actually hurts my learning process. Maybe for some, it would be helpful. That's fine. But don't make it required. Assign notes for a homework grade but have reasonable flexibility over the style and length--a basis for learning that each student can customize to fit their needs and schedules.

*If you're thinking, "If you dumb kids could learn time management, all your problems would be solved", yes, this might apply to students with hefty but manageable workloads or schedules, but once the workload gets large enough and you still want to maintain your grades, you're scientifically going to have to sacrifice something, be it sleep, your social life, a massive groundbreaking invention (who knows) that you're trying to draft, or even time to just...think. (Woah, teens THINK? Mind-blowing, right?) Even if you manage to fit 28 hours worth of activity into 24 hours, you would still sacrifice the quality of the activity.

TL;DR: If AP classes were cut down on the amount of homework assigned while increasing the amount of variety and challengingness in assignments, as well as giving students more personalized control over how they do the learning, the classes could maintain college-level difficulty while saving students' time, increasing students' understanding, and introducing college-level freedom that the classes previously lacked.

Nice. Even my TL;DR was too long to read.