Jan, your teaching assignment sounds oh so familiar!!!
The most recent AP seminar workshop I attended earlier this month shed a
little more light on this program for me.
1. Use the AP curriculum to "raise standards" in your school's current art
curriculum. Have long
range goals and visions--it doesn't happen overnight, unless you're truly
blessed with motivated students who have a good work ethic.
There is a vertical team teaching idea that sounds good on paper, but
getting middle school and others in the department to buy into this is a
bit difficult. It basically is sequential teaching to the AP standard--i.e.
if AP standards is the ultimate goal in a high school program, then other
classes from middle school through high school should sequentially be
offered to work up to these requirements. I tell my students they will
have a strong portfolio when they leave my class, whether or not they get a
high AP score.
2. Think "process" instead of "product" and hopefully quality products
will eventually come. (This is a hard one for me since the College Board
wants high quality products.)
Also, there is a new website for the collegeboard.
http://apcentral.collegeboard.com
You have to wade through several links to get to the studio art page.
There's supposed to be a listserv chat group, but I haven't been able to
locate it on the new site. Last summer in my attempt to start an AP forum
for folks on this list who teach AP I did get into a chat group at the old
website, but of late haven't gotten any messages. The messages I did get
were moderated, and somewhat sporadic. Many times my messages weren't
answered, but I did get answers for other's mail--not as effecient as this
Getty group!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So as far as starting a chat group for AP teachers from this list, I'm game!!!
And I know of a few others on the list who have expressed an interest in
the past.
