AP Institute for the Mentally Inflated

I'll be entering my 8th year of teaching this coming year and I have always wanted to teach AP Lit.  This year I get that chance.  I believe I've "fallen into" the position a bit though.  We have one teacher who has been the work horse for AP Language and Composition for the past 7+ years or more.  She's very awesome at what she does and she's been the only one teaching AP Lang at our school.  This past school year we went to a true PLC model where every teacher, no matter what level of English, will have at least one other teacher teaching the same subject for collaboration purposes.

A word on collaboration if I may.  I used to be one of those old, cranky English teachers who wanted to be left alone.  Give me my prep period and leave me alone to grade and put my lessons together.  This is no longer acceptable.  After complaining and fighting I've found it's much better than holing myself up in my classroom cave.  Veterans, please accept change.  It will make you a better teacher.

And we're back.  So I was lucky enough to attend an institute in Monterey.  Ah!   Coastal air.  Temp in the low to mid 70's.  Can't ask for a better location.  If the campus didn't look like a zombie apocalypse took place I would have given the location an A, but some of the abandoned buildings gave me the creeps.  Luckily, going down to Cannery Row nightly put my mind at ease.

The gentleman running our institute for AP Lang was Dr. Waters, a 30 year + veteran with the AP test.  He's been a reader and he has submitted questions and reading selections for the AP exam.  Furthermore he was educated at Oxford; Oxford, New Mexico!  Just kidding (extra credit if you got the Gatsby reference).  No, THE actual Oxford.  I was expecting a pompous Brit who would tell us how horrible we all were as teachers and that it was by the sheer grace of God that we were in his presence.  No, he was a tiny man, balding, with  a Benny Hill kind of boyish charm.  I half expected him to serve me tea.  Earl Grey I suspect.  Nevertheless, he was quite knowledgeable and I found it very easy to listen and learn from him.

I've only been to one other AP institute and that was for Pre-AP, but even then there is that ONE teacher in the class that everyone despises.  You know who they are.  He/she is the teacher who takes every single chance to say "Well in my class we...   ...and the kids just love it."  Wah wah wah.  They are the ones who throw out all the education acronyms and pedagogical mumbo jumbo.  There is a reason why I despise these teachers; they are there to toot their horn, not sit and listen.  What made it worse is that my class was a combination of new AP and veteran AP teachers.  Many of us "newbies" were feverishly writing down notes and posting Post-Its everywhere short of our sleeves.  The others calmly tolerated the stuff they've already seen with an occasional "Oh, this piece is delightful!" or "I find this to be a bit obtuse."

What I gained was valuable, but what I actually ended up with was a small trove of articles to use and a VERY rough outline of what to do doing the semester (by rough I mean "you should do about 12-18 articles per semester").  That's it.  The upside was I got some nice swag.  I got about 4-5 really nice texts to use.  Now i just have to pick through it.

Dear teens who stumble on this post.  You're thinking of the wrong swag.  Mine means gifts or promotional items that are given away at events.  Yours means (quoting Urban Dictionary) "appearance ,style ,or the way he or she presents themselves."  Or, also eloquently put by Urban dictionary, "The word quickly made its way to the states and has ever since become the catchphrase of douchbags and tools everywhere."