AP Biology Labs

In my AP Biology class, the curriculum dictates 12 different labs that the students are required to do. Because the students chose to be in the class, they are generally excited about what they are learning. However excited and critical are very different things. They accept what I tell them to do, they read what I ask (kind of), and they blindly participate in the labs, or at least until this last lab we conducted on Tuesday. They were very unenthused and complained, mildly, about what the lab asked. With this change in attitude, it makes me wonder how to meld required curriculum, and what the students want. I know that all curriculums are dictated but AP classes are particularly stringent. I think the new approach would be to make the students aware that they can question what they are doing, but still require them to finish the class.

Next week I have plan to have the students conduct the next lab. Do I still require that we participate in the lab? Or do I change everything to what they want to do? At the beginning of the year, I asked these students what they expected out of the class, and they unanimously replied that they wanted college credit. The only way to get credit is to earn a 3 at the least. So it seems like a disservice to scrap the curriculum, and do what the students want. Somehow there must be a way to put a critical eye on these students, and still complete the course.

The Ordinary Day

Today at the Critical Literacy Conference at American University, Professor Harste read us a book entitled, "Once Upon an Ordinary Day" by Colin McNaughton and Satoshi Kitamura. This book, on the surface, was very uplifting. As some of the participant mentioned, the book does a great job at making creative teaching seem like a wonderful thing. The student in the book loves what this “Mr. G” does with the class, and as a reader, I did too. But we then began to discuss how this book must be read from a critical eye. I agree with the other participants that the students we teach would not have a home that looks like the students in the book. We have students that crave “ordinary” as one person stated. However this I have a problem with. We, as teachers, have a duty to our students to be consistent, but that should never force us to be ordinary. Mr. G’s extraordinary lesson sparks the student to think and ultimately enjoy one day at school. He goes home excited for the next day. Students should know what to expect in the day, and teachers should provide the stability that they crave, but we should always create extraordinary experiences as Mr. G does. The students should go home smiling as the little boy does in this story, and being ordinary is not the way to do this. We should never settle on an “Ordinary Day.”