AP CLASSES why so much homework?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They have so much homework because AP classes are tied directly to the curriculum dictated by the college board. The only way for teachers to get through all of the material is to assign huge amounts of HW for many of the courses. APUSH is a prime example of this. My kid was assigned 20+ pages of pretty intense reading nearly every class. It was overwhelming.
As a teacher with 30 years in the classroom, I would argue that for most kids (there are always a few exceptions) APUSH, APBIO, and APLIT together is too hefty a schedule.

Oh no! 20 pages of reading for each class every night? That’s typical for non AP classes in most private school classes. The problem with little to no homework in public school is that when students actually do get homework, they freak out about it. My kids had hours of homework starting in 3rd/4th grade.

Name the private school you are talking about. Because the trend in education over the past 10 plus years in both public and private schools has been to move away from hours of homework per night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Forget AP Classes, those are college level and expected to have a lot of work. Why is my freshman in History honors drowning in SO MUCH homework? Every weekday evening and most of the weekend is spent ONLY on finishing up History assignments. And no, the teacher does not give any time in class to work on hw. Kid manages to finish all the other classes hw during Study Hall and comes home and does only history work every day. I have a suspicion that the history teacher is deliberately overloading the hw so that the kids will drop down to lower level. The same teacher is teaching AP World also and I suspect they are trying to scare away the kids from AP World with too much work. Thankfully, the other teachers are giving normal hw.

+1 omg bless you. My poor kid is in the same boat. We have no idea why this teacher is assigning gobs of work. It is absolutely insane. My son is also spending hours on it. The sad part is the work is only for completion. The teacher doesn’t teach - just assigns reading (they read it outloud in class old school round robin style) and then they are given these ridiculous assignments that keep them busy the rest of the period. They cannot ever possibly be finished with them.

The teacher is teaching the kids how to study.

If your kid doesn't want to study and learn, then just scribble through the work and don't waste time making it correct.

I don’t agree that simply reading a text outloud in class and assigning work after that is teaching my child “how to study.” If there was a lecture or discussion, where my child had to take take notes, and then study said notes, that might be “teaching him how to study.” But assigning copious amounts of busy work with zero discussion is not it.

Is it possible that your kid is not relaying accurate information about what they are doing in class?

No. He is a straight A student and extremely truthful.

Also, I can see they don’t have any notes taken from lectures.

I guess your kid is lazy, or notes aren't important.

My kid learned the incredibly complex skill of note taking in middle school

Not at all, more like the teacher is lazy. Having kids read outloud the text during class time to kill time and then simply assigning independent work with no discussion? That’s the definition of lazy teaching.

What school is this?

It does not sound like your kid is telling you an accurate story.

Whenever my kid tells me something so outlandish, I ask them to explain it to me slowly, then type it word for word in the body of an email.

I preface the body with "Dear Teacher. My kid informed me that this is occuring in your class.

(Insert exact outlandish complaint from my kid)

Can you please fill in any holes that might be missing from my kid's version of events?"

I then read the entire email back to my kid and ask them if I can hit send.

Nearly every time, after hearing me read their complaint out loud back to them, combined with the threat of me sending the email to the teacher as written, my kids corrects the original complaint to something that makes a heck of a lot more sense and which often switches the fault from the teacher to my kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Forget AP Classes, those are college level and expected to have a lot of work. Why is my freshman in History honors drowning in SO MUCH homework? Every weekday evening and most of the weekend is spent ONLY on finishing up History assignments. And no, the teacher does not give any time in class to work on hw. Kid manages to finish all the other classes hw during Study Hall and comes home and does only history work every day. I have a suspicion that the history teacher is deliberately overloading the hw so that the kids will drop down to lower level. The same teacher is teaching AP World also and I suspect they are trying to scare away the kids from AP World with too much work. Thankfully, the other teachers are giving normal hw.

+1 omg bless you. My poor kid is in the same boat. We have no idea why this teacher is assigning gobs of work. It is absolutely insane. My son is also spending hours on it. The sad part is the work is only for completion. The teacher doesn’t teach - just assigns reading (they read it outloud in class old school round robin style) and then they are given these ridiculous assignments that keep them busy the rest of the period. They cannot ever possibly be finished with them.

The teacher is teaching the kids how to study.

If your kid doesn't want to study and learn, then just scribble through the work and don't waste time making it correct.

I don’t agree that simply reading a text outloud in class and assigning work after that is teaching my child “how to study.” If there was a lecture or discussion, where my child had to take take notes, and then study said notes, that might be “teaching him how to study.” But assigning copious amounts of busy work with zero discussion is not it.

Is it possible that your kid is not relaying accurate information about what they are doing in class?

No. He is a straight A student and extremely truthful.

Also, I can see they don’t have any notes taken from lectures.

I guess your kid is lazy, or notes aren't important.

My kid learned the incredibly complex skill of note taking in middle school

Not at all, more like the teacher is lazy. Having kids read outloud the text during class time to kill time and then simply assigning independent work with no discussion? That’s the definition of lazy teaching.

Challenge for you. Call the school and ask to observe the teacher’s class.

I’m willing to bet the story your child brings home doesn’t match what is really occurring in class.

From my 20 years of experience teaching advanced courses in high school, I’m comfortable saying there aren’t many lazy AP teachers left. The 60 (or more) hours a week it takes to teach an advanced course is enough to scare the lazy teachers away. Those of us who remain are the work horses who unhealthily put our jobs over our own families and our own health.

You’re confusing me with OP. I’m talking about a freshman honors history class, not an AP class.

I still recommend observing the class. What students report is rarely what is actually occurring. I’ve witnessed that with my own children.

Agree.

--parent of several kids

[Anonymous]

I took APs 20 years ago and everyone knorw APUSH was the hardest early class. I didnt take BIO as that was the other hard one. Loved AP lit as i loved to read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They have so much homework because AP classes are tied directly to the curriculum dictated by the college board. The only way for teachers to get through all of the material is to assign huge amounts of HW for many of the courses. APUSH is a prime example of this. My kid was assigned 20+ pages of pretty intense reading nearly every class. It was overwhelming.
As a teacher with 30 years in the classroom, I would argue that for most kids (there are always a few exceptions) APUSH, APBIO, and APLIT together is too hefty a schedule.

Oh no! 20 pages of reading for each class every night? That’s typical for non AP classes in most private school classes. The problem with little to no homework in public school is that when students actually do get homework, they freak out about it. My kids had hours of homework starting in 3rd/4th grade.

That's way too much. They are in school for more than 6.5 hours. They don't need hours of hw as a 9 year old.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like your kid isn’t ready for APs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I took APs 20 years ago and everyone knorw APUSH was the hardest early class. I didnt take BIO as that was the other hard one. Loved AP lit as i loved to read.

APUSH is an 11th grade class now and one of the easier ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like your kid isn’t ready for APs

This is really it. It’s more challenging work and it’s MORE work because the amount of content kids have to get through to be ready for AP exams in early spring is enormous. If your kid can’t handle it, they likely won’t do well on the AP exam anyway. Just bump down to honors. It is not supposed to be easy. I had to write a 5 page DBQ every single week in APush on top of other work- that’s the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They have so much homework because AP classes are tied directly to the curriculum dictated by the college board. The only way for teachers to get through all of the material is to assign huge amounts of HW for many of the courses. APUSH is a prime example of this. My kid was assigned 20+ pages of pretty intense reading nearly every class. It was overwhelming.
As a teacher with 30 years in the classroom, I would argue that for most kids (there are always a few exceptions) APUSH, APBIO, and APLIT together is too hefty a schedule.

Oh no! 20 pages of reading for each class every night? That’s typical for non AP classes in most private school classes. The problem with little to no homework in public school is that when students actually do get homework, they freak out about it. My kids had hours of homework starting in 3rd/4th grade.

Name the private school you are talking about. Because the trend in education over the past 10 plus years in both public and private schools has been to move away from hours of homework per night.

A K-8 Catholic school and an all male Catholic school in Baltimore. Catholic schools aren’t into trends. He had midterms and finals beginning in late ES (starting in 4th grade I think for core classes). By 6th grade, they were in all 6 classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Forget AP Classes, those are college level and expected to have a lot of work. Why is my freshman in History honors drowning in SO MUCH homework? Every weekday evening and most of the weekend is spent ONLY on finishing up History assignments. And no, the teacher does not give any time in class to work on hw. Kid manages to finish all the other classes hw during Study Hall and comes home and does only history work every day. I have a suspicion that the history teacher is deliberately overloading the hw so that the kids will drop down to lower level. The same teacher is teaching AP World also and I suspect they are trying to scare away the kids from AP World with too much work. Thankfully, the other teachers are giving normal hw.

+1 omg bless you. My poor kid is in the same boat. We have no idea why this teacher is assigning gobs of work. It is absolutely insane. My son is also spending hours on it. The sad part is the work is only for completion. The teacher doesn’t teach - just assigns reading (they read it outloud in class old school round robin style) and then they are given these ridiculous assignments that keep them busy the rest of the period. They cannot ever possibly be finished with them.

The teacher is teaching the kids how to study.

If your kid doesn't want to study and learn, then just scribble through the work and don't waste time making it correct.

I don’t agree that simply reading a text outloud in class and assigning work after that is teaching my child “how to study.” If there was a lecture or discussion, where my child had to take take notes, and then study said notes, that might be “teaching him how to study.” But assigning copious amounts of busy work with zero discussion is not it.

Is it possible that your kid is not relaying accurate information about what they are doing in class?

No. He is a straight A student and extremely truthful.

Also, I can see they don’t have any notes taken from lectures.

I guess your kid is lazy, or notes aren't important.

My kid learned the incredibly complex skill of note taking in middle school

Not at all, more like the teacher is lazy. Having kids read outloud the text during class time to kill time and then simply assigning independent work with no discussion? That’s the definition of lazy teaching.

What school is this?

It does not sound like your kid is telling you an accurate story.

Whenever my kid tells me something so outlandish, I ask them to explain it to me slowly, then type it word for word in the body of an email.

I preface the body with "Dear Teacher. My kid informed me that this is occuring in your class.

(Insert exact outlandish complaint from my kid)

Can you please fill in any holes that might be missing from my kid's version of events?"

I then read the entire email back to my kid and ask them if I can hit send.

Nearly every time, after hearing me read their complaint out loud back to them, combined with the threat of me sending the email to the teacher as written, my kids corrects the original complaint to something that makes a heck of a lot more sense and which often switches the fault from the teacher to my kid.

I am not going to share my complaints on this teacher’s teaching style with the actual teacher. This way of teaching history, believe it or not, is actually very common among teachers who rely heavily on the textbook. It’s one of the reasons many programs that teach teachers how to teach wanted to get away from using textbooks. Teachers who use the textbook often will default to easy lessons such as reading outloud and assigning end of chapter questions. They don’t have to do any work to actually prepare a lesson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Forget AP Classes, those are college level and expected to have a lot of work. Why is my freshman in History honors drowning in SO MUCH homework? Every weekday evening and most of the weekend is spent ONLY on finishing up History assignments. And no, the teacher does not give any time in class to work on hw. Kid manages to finish all the other classes hw during Study Hall and comes home and does only history work every day. I have a suspicion that the history teacher is deliberately overloading the hw so that the kids will drop down to lower level. The same teacher is teaching AP World also and I suspect they are trying to scare away the kids from AP World with too much work. Thankfully, the other teachers are giving normal hw.

+1 omg bless you. My poor kid is in the same boat. We have no idea why this teacher is assigning gobs of work. It is absolutely insane. My son is also spending hours on it. The sad part is the work is only for completion. The teacher doesn’t teach - just assigns reading (they read it outloud in class old school round robin style) and then they are given these ridiculous assignments that keep them busy the rest of the period. They cannot ever possibly be finished with them.

The teacher is teaching the kids how to study.

If your kid doesn't want to study and learn, then just scribble through the work and don't waste time making it correct.

I don’t agree that simply reading a text outloud in class and assigning work after that is teaching my child “how to study.” If there was a lecture or discussion, where my child had to take take notes, and then study said notes, that might be “teaching him how to study.” But assigning copious amounts of busy work with zero discussion is not it.

Is it possible that your kid is not relaying accurate information about what they are doing in class?

No. He is a straight A student and extremely truthful.

Also, I can see they don’t have any notes taken from lectures.

I guess your kid is lazy, or notes aren't important.

My kid learned the incredibly complex skill of note taking in middle school

Not at all, more like the teacher is lazy. Having kids read outloud the text during class time to kill time and then simply assigning independent work with no discussion? That’s the definition of lazy teaching.

What school is this?

It does not sound like your kid is telling you an accurate story.

Whenever my kid tells me something so outlandish, I ask them to explain it to me slowly, then type it word for word in the body of an email.

I preface the body with "Dear Teacher. My kid informed me that this is occuring in your class.

(Insert exact outlandish complaint from my kid)

Can you please fill in any holes that might be missing from my kid's version of events?"

I then read the entire email back to my kid and ask them if I can hit send.

Nearly every time, after hearing me read their complaint out loud back to them, combined with the threat of me sending the email to the teacher as written, my kids corrects the original complaint to something that makes a heck of a lot more sense and which often switches the fault from the teacher to my kid.

Did you miss my earlier post where I explained this teacher writes a quick summary online of what was done in class for every period? It matches exactly what my child said. I don’t need to threaten to email the teacher to get the “truth” from my child. What a stupid idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I graduated from Radford University back in 2005.

Well there’s your problem. Not exactly a robust academic comparison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They have so much homework because AP classes are tied directly to the curriculum dictated by the college board. The only way for teachers to get through all of the material is to assign huge amounts of HW for many of the courses. APUSH is a prime example of this. My kid was assigned 20+ pages of pretty intense reading nearly every class. It was overwhelming.
As a teacher with 30 years in the classroom, I would argue that for most kids (there are always a few exceptions) APUSH, APBIO, and APLIT together is too hefty a schedule.

Oh no! 20 pages of reading for each class every night? That’s typical for non AP classes in most private school classes. The problem with little to no homework in public school is that when students actually do get homework, they freak out about it. My kids had hours of homework starting in 3rd/4th grade.

Name the private school you are talking about. Because the trend in education over the past 10 plus years in both public and private schools has been to move away from hours of homework per night.

My 7th grader just switched to an independent religious private and is currently reading 15 pages of The Hobbit every night for lit class. Our experience in private - you know, a whopping month in - tracks with PP's assessment.

Some schools haven't hopped onto the trend, especially the parochial and church ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Forget AP Classes, those are college level and expected to have a lot of work. Why is my freshman in History honors drowning in SO MUCH homework? Every weekday evening and most of the weekend is spent ONLY on finishing up History assignments. And no, the teacher does not give any time in class to work on hw. Kid manages to finish all the other classes hw during Study Hall and comes home and does only history work every day. I have a suspicion that the history teacher is deliberately overloading the hw so that the kids will drop down to lower level. The same teacher is teaching AP World also and I suspect they are trying to scare away the kids from AP World with too much work. Thankfully, the other teachers are giving normal hw.

+1 omg bless you. My poor kid is in the same boat. We have no idea why this teacher is assigning gobs of work. It is absolutely insane. My son is also spending hours on it. The sad part is the work is only for completion. The teacher doesn’t teach - just assigns reading (they read it outloud in class old school round robin style) and then they are given these ridiculous assignments that keep them busy the rest of the period. They cannot ever possibly be finished with them.

The teacher is teaching the kids how to study.

If your kid doesn't want to study and learn, then just scribble through the work and don't waste time making it correct.

I don’t agree that simply reading a text outloud in class and assigning work after that is teaching my child “how to study.” If there was a lecture or discussion, where my child had to take take notes, and then study said notes, that might be “teaching him how to study.” But assigning copious amounts of busy work with zero discussion is not it.

Is it possible that your kid is not relaying accurate information about what they are doing in class?

No. He is a straight A student and extremely truthful.

Also, I can see they don’t have any notes taken from lectures.

I guess your kid is lazy, or notes aren't important.

My kid learned the incredibly complex skill of note taking in middle school

Not at all, more like the teacher is lazy. Having kids read outloud the text during class time to kill time and then simply assigning independent work with no discussion? That’s the definition of lazy teaching.

What school is this?

It does not sound like your kid is telling you an accurate story.

Whenever my kid tells me something so outlandish, I ask them to explain it to me slowly, then type it word for word in the body of an email.

I preface the body with "Dear Teacher. My kid informed me that this is occuring in your class.

(Insert exact outlandish complaint from my kid)

Can you please fill in any holes that might be missing from my kid's version of events?"

I then read the entire email back to my kid and ask them if I can hit send.

Nearly every time, after hearing me read their complaint out loud back to them, combined with the threat of me sending the email to the teacher as written, my kids corrects the original complaint to something that makes a heck of a lot more sense and which often switches the fault from the teacher to my kid.

I am not going to share my complaints on this teacher’s teaching style with the actual teacher. This way of teaching history, believe it or not, is actually very common among teachers who rely heavily on the textbook. It’s one of the reasons many programs that teach teachers how to teach wanted to get away from using textbooks. Teachers who use the textbook often will default to easy lessons such as reading outloud and assigning end of chapter questions. They don’t have to do any work to actually prepare a lesson.

This does not sound even a little bit like any FCPS AP class in all our years in the district. My kids have so far taken over 2 dozen AP classes and counting between them. I am not buying it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Forget AP Classes, those are college level and expected to have a lot of work. Why is my freshman in History honors drowning in SO MUCH homework? Every weekday evening and most of the weekend is spent ONLY on finishing up History assignments. And no, the teacher does not give any time in class to work on hw. Kid manages to finish all the other classes hw during Study Hall and comes home and does only history work every day. I have a suspicion that the history teacher is deliberately overloading the hw so that the kids will drop down to lower level. The same teacher is teaching AP World also and I suspect they are trying to scare away the kids from AP World with too much work. Thankfully, the other teachers are giving normal hw.

+1 omg bless you. My poor kid is in the same boat. We have no idea why this teacher is assigning gobs of work. It is absolutely insane. My son is also spending hours on it. The sad part is the work is only for completion. The teacher doesn’t teach - just assigns reading (they read it outloud in class old school round robin style) and then they are given these ridiculous assignments that keep them busy the rest of the period. They cannot ever possibly be finished with them.

The teacher is teaching the kids how to study.

If your kid doesn't want to study and learn, then just scribble through the work and don't waste time making it correct.

I don’t agree that simply reading a text outloud in class and assigning work after that is teaching my child “how to study.” If there was a lecture or discussion, where my child had to take take notes, and then study said notes, that might be “teaching him how to study.” But assigning copious amounts of busy work with zero discussion is not it.

Is it possible that your kid is not relaying accurate information about what they are doing in class?

No. He is a straight A student and extremely truthful.

Also, I can see they don’t have any notes taken from lectures.

I guess your kid is lazy, or notes aren't important.

My kid learned the incredibly complex skill of note taking in middle school

Not at all, more like the teacher is lazy. Having kids read outloud the text during class time to kill time and then simply assigning independent work with no discussion? That’s the definition of lazy teaching.

What school is this?

It does not sound like your kid is telling you an accurate story.

Whenever my kid tells me something so outlandish, I ask them to explain it to me slowly, then type it word for word in the body of an email.

I preface the body with "Dear Teacher. My kid informed me that this is occuring in your class.

(Insert exact outlandish complaint from my kid)

Can you please fill in any holes that might be missing from my kid's version of events?"

I then read the entire email back to my kid and ask them if I can hit send.

Nearly every time, after hearing me read their complaint out loud back to them, combined with the threat of me sending the email to the teacher as written, my kids corrects the original complaint to something that makes a heck of a lot more sense and which often switches the fault from the teacher to my kid.

I am not going to share my complaints on this teacher’s teaching style with the actual teacher. This way of teaching history, believe it or not, is actually very common among teachers who rely heavily on the textbook. It’s one of the reasons many programs that teach teachers how to teach wanted to get away from using textbooks. Teachers who use the textbook often will default to easy lessons such as reading outloud and assigning end of chapter questions. They don’t have to do any work to actually prepare a lesson.

This does not sound even a little bit like any FCPS AP class in all our years in the district. My kids have so far taken over 2 dozen AP classes and counting between them. I am not buying it.

This is in reference to the freshman honors class, not the AP class the OP was talking about. Keep up.