My First Day at AP Camp

My butt hurts. Last time I took one of these 4-day things, by the end I was bringing stadium seat cushions to sit on the hard plastic classroom seats. This facility is much nicer. More like a conference center, so there are padded swivel chairs. Still, I really can't sit in a chair for 7 hours out of 8. I stood all the way through our two allotted 15-minute breaks and out 30-minute lunch.

I wasn't sure how to dress. These things are always completely informal. Today I opted for lightweight long pants. Most of the building was quite cool but our classroom was warm so I'm wearing shorts tomorrow.

The class itself is fine. The people are a wide range of ages, with a couple of people in their mid 20's and a couple of people in their 60's and the rest in between, evenly divided by sex. The teacher is very good. Not the most entertaining person I've ever met, but clearly in command of her material and very knowledgeable about AP Calculus.

For the first part of the day we just go some general information dumpage, including a comprehensive presentation on the College Board's commitment to diversity. Since the percentage of minorities taking the test at our school is somewhat less than the average (unless you count Jews as a minority, which we certainly are, even if we do control everything), we have some work to do in that regard.

After that, we started through the curriculum. This looks like it might turn out to be the entire AP Calculus course crammed into 3 1/2 days. We have a textbook (with 3 more yet to be distributed) and 4 handouts that have been distributed so far (I know there are more to come but I can't tell how many).

I haven't really learned any math techniques or anything so far, but the value in doing this is to get ideas of how to introduce and present material, and get an idea from the AP people just what it is they are trying to test. There was some decent stuff in this regard, including a unit on something that has always been difficult for me to present.

Lunch was the classic box (bag) lunch. Choice of chicken salad, roast beef, turkey and grilled vegetable sandwiches with chips, an apple and a chocolate chip cookie. The chicken salad was decent except that it was done hoagie style with provolone cheese. Cheese on chicken salad will never make sense to me. Sorry. The apple was good. The cookie was so sweet I couldn't discern the cookie part from the chocolate part so I didn't eat it. Things have to be pretty bad for me to pass on a chocolate chip cookie.

There was no coffee available after lunch. BIG downgrade in my program ratings for that. I went out to get a thermal cup of iced coffee that I'd brought for just this type of emergency and in the process got to close the windows in my car before it poured. Good planning triumphs, and it was nice to have the coffee because the afternoon got pretty draggy after a while. This wasn't anyone's fault and maybe nobody else thought it was draggy.

Walking through the hallways during breaks you could see the other AP classes going on. The AP Spanish people looked highly engaged and finished early. The US History people looked kind of bored.

At about 3:45 we were given a homework assignment and sent on our way.