AP ENG Test Anxiety (Teacher and Student) and What I Finally Figured Out About Q2

I don't want to make the kids wig out about the AP test. I don't want them to go into it thinking it'll be easy. I want them to be as ready as they can be--so how much can I push them this last month without wigging them out? 

Tomorrow in AP Lit we are taking a full MCT. (I used Progress Check 4 plus Progress Check 5 MCT). It's 54 questions, so close. My kids have been slowly improving on multiple  choice. We take a lot of short ones: 15-30 questions. After each quiz I make them choose 3 they missed, and they have to write 4 sentences explaining why they chose their answer, and why the AP  answer is the best one. It seems to help. (Now that I've written this, they'll all probably bomb the full MCT tomorrow and blow their confidence. I hope not.) Other times I'll print a test, they'll do it individually, then I'll have them discuss the answers with a partner, and then I give them the answers. They like that strategy. I think it helps as well. I feel that the AP Lang multiple choice test is easier, and it's only 50 questions in an hour. 

Since I teach both AP Lit and AP Lang, from April 1-May 15 I'm pretty dang busy: grading, prepping, teaching, prepping, finding videos, grading, grading, teaching, grading, talking about grading, talking about how busy I am, grading, prepping, teaching. It's a lot, but it's what I signed up for. I'm happy to do both AP courses, and I have the 3rd prep of freshman English. Like you, I just work a lot, but there's an end. I don't have little kids at home or 160 students, so my gig is more manageable than many others'. I'm just showing up with my bass, and others are bringing an entire drum set, or a couple amps and an electric guitar.

Right now I'm grading the AP Lit Q2 one where the artist is just finishing his airport mural--I have 8 left to finish before tomorrow. I have 6 of "Rock Eaters" to respond to.  And, I have a few of the "Shaving" and a couple other straggler miscellaneous poetry essays to read. They can wait, I guess. I have written in other posts about not being able to grade efficiently and it does truly slow me down. I still give quite a few comments.  

BUT, here's something definitive I figured out this weekend about Q2--it's what I'm going to teach tomorrow with the few minutes we have left over. First,  the prose analysis is the hardest one if time is an issue for you. The prose excerpt itself takes so long to read. I have noticed my kids get impatient and like to jump in and start writing about the beginning of the excerpt and then let the ending go ignored. They'll write two-thirds of the essay on the first half and leave only ten minutes for the entire second half of the piece. The last practice one we did, I said at 35 minutes, "You HAVE to go to the end of the excerpt and write about that if you have not--you can close that way--you just can't blow off the end of the passage."

So this finally dawned on me: the good stuff  in the Q2 excerpt is NOT necessarily in the opening two paragraphs--it's probably in the second half--and you should ALWAYS talk about how the piece closes.  I think how it closes is frequently more important than how it opens. (You probably already figured all this out!)

Anyway, I decided to write about teaching AP since it's AP month for me (and for many of you).  I wish I had really good advice.  If you can pull it off, I guess a full essay test is probably the best prep we do--we have  90 minute classes, so I just steal them from their 7th period for 35 extra minutes or so. Even then,  exam day is a toss up: what is the wind gonna be like the day they try to fly that kite, and will they have read ANY of the books clouding up the Q3 list? I almost wish the the College Board  wouldn't even give a list--it can be depressing for me as a teacher let alone the students. It always makes me feel inferior: I guess everyone else is teaching Rushdie or Invisible Man or Hurston and we're still doing Gatsby and Frankenstein. I feel so accomplished if I see two of our titles on the list.

Finally, I think it's hard not to judge ourselves when it comes to how our kids do on a test like this. I think we probably shouldn't. I tell my kids what they score will NOT change the way I feel about them--I already know they are all smart. But I worry that  my intensity during this month of prep overpowers that comment. My pressure says, "But still, you better bring it May 7, know what I'm saying?' Ridiculous. I will definitely try to help them relax starting the weekend before the test. And then I'll wish them well and say, "Just do your best! Fly, little birds! You've worked hard." (Or something odd like that.)