The rigors of the Advanced Placement program remain a constant worry for educators, particularly as pressure mounts to bring more and more students into AP classes. But Ms. Cornelius, a high school AP history teacher, has her own reasons for keeping her class as tough as she can:
There is usually mucho handwringing over how to make this class in many schools more accessible and easier. I am, after all, about to be immortalized on the pages of the school paper as the teacher who gives the most homework in the school. Not that I am some sadistic dragonlady, but these mostly working class kids have to compete against kids who do twice as much reading/homework as the amount I already give them... But mostly, with the exception of one kid right now, they are willing to do the heavy lifting. And not to brag, but I'll put the learning and growing my kids do in the course of the year through their own efforts up against anyone at a "richer" school.
I remember taking AP history as a high school junior -- I may have done more work in that one course than I did in four years of college. (Whether that says more about the class or me, though, is an entirely different question.)
(From A Shrewdness of Apes.)
