BY LILLY MARK
Students nationwide spend long summer hours completing preparatory assignments for their Advanced Placement (AP) courses. At Jericho High School, AP classes are very popular, leaving a large number of students with work to be completed over their summer breaks.
According to College Board Director of Communications Sara Sympson, while AP courses and exams are created by the College Board, AP summer assignments are not required by them and left to individual school districts and teachers to decide. She said, “The AP Program designs the frameworks for AP courses but those do not include specific assignments. Individual schools and teachers plan their own curriculum for AP courses, so it’s possible they may assign something over the summer based on their own policies or curriculum plan.”
AP teachers have different opinions and approaches with summer assignments depending on what their course requirements are. Teachers often create these assignments with their colleagues who teach the same curriculum and they work together to make summer assignments that will be helpful to students.
AP U.S. History teacher Dr. Dussel believes that summer assignments allow students to be prepared before the school year starts. He said, “I think that summer assignments for AP classes are very beneficial. Teachers use them to give students the opportunity to interact with the material and the textbook prior to coming in in August/September, and that experience is vital to success throughout the program that we have for them in their junior year.”
Similarly, AP Composition teacher Ms. Gulitti believes that the AP summer assignment for her course is very helpful. She said, “As a New York State School, we start a lot later than most other states in the country so in some ways our students lose a month of instruction. Part of the summer assignment is to get students prepared.”
On the other hand, some teachers at Jericho are passionate about giving their students a break from assignments unless it is really necessary. AP Research teacher Ms. Drayer believes that it is important for students to have a break during the summer. She said, “I’m a little bit hesitant to ruin a summer vacation with summer assignments, especially if students have camp or do something and then they try to cram all their summer assignments into the week right before school. ”
Ms. Drayer knows how tedious these assignments can feel, and to make them more valuable she invites students to give their opinions on her summer assignment. She said, “Every year I have the AP research kids revisit it after the AP and tell me how to fix it to make it more useful, and over the years they’ve had less and less feedback because they say it is helpful.”
The main controversy lies with student opinions about summer assignments. Senior Logan C. emphasized how his summer break is negatively affected. He said, “During the summer I want to relax, I want to focus on my extracurricular activities and I want to do other things. I don’t want to be focused on doing summer assignments for the school year that I shouldn’t need to do yet.”
Similarly, senior Joey M. believes summer assignments take away from the enjoyment of summer. He said, “I have taken 6 APs so far and I feel like AP summer assignments were pretty useless. It does affect the break I have over the summer because I can be enjoying, but in my mind, I still know I need to get back and make sure I finish the assignment and that there is a deadline I need to meet.”
Some students question if these assignments are helpful to them during the school year. Senior Cooper G. said, “The assignments that I have done have not helped me in any of the classes I have taken yet.”
Senior Josh R. feels that summer assignments tend to bring on stress. He said, “I think summer assignments do create stress because a lot of people procrastinate, and procrastinating with summer assignments is like leaving it to the last week before school starts and then you have to complete everything, and its topics you don’t know, so it is a struggle.”
Although a lot of students view summer assignments as a stress, some students believe AP Summer Assignments are very beneficial and prepare them for the school year.
Senior Logan C. explained that for certain AP classes summer assignments are very necessary. He said “AP summer assignments are definitely helpful for certain classes. In AP Research they are needed as they are completely vital for beginning the class, and for AP math classes they really help by refreshing your memory before you take the course.”
With approximately half of all AP courses requiring a summer assignment, Jericho students will have to continue to incorporate some school work into their summer plans.
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