AP Seminar at McLean High - brutal grading

[Anonymous]

There are a couple teachers at McLean who are very hard/strict graders. I am not sure if your child has one of these teachers? Usually the kids know who they are. Start with a teacher meeting to find out where there are deficiencies and then work to fix those issues. Ask for detailed feedback on each bigger assignment and for frequent check-ins with the teacher to make sure student is on the right track instead of waiting til the end of a quarter. Get a tutor - another AP teacher in FCPS preferably - to address issues that cannot be easily corrected.
I always have my kids talk with teacher first and then follow up with a meeting with all of us there. We have had a few of the hard graders at McLean and made for a long, stressful year with frequent tutoring BUT they learned a lot and the teachers we met with obviously cared a lot about the students and helping them improve. I also think grading got easier as the year went on but maybe the kids were improving? I hope the meeting provides good insight.

[Anonymous]

English teachers (especially AP English) are such hard graders. I often find that if the teacher doesn't like your style of writing they will give low grades.

Hopefully you can get some insight post-meeting and move forward with some good feedback.

[Anonymous]

What are you considering a bad grade? A B?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are you considering a bad grade? A B?

DP.

Nothing whatsoever wrong with earning a “B” in AP Seminar, as it is an extremely challenging course by design.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:AP is very, very prescribed in their response structures. I'd wonder if the paper or project is great but not in the structure asked for.

This. The AP format is very rigid. He needs to get a clear and crisp understanding of their rules and requirements.