This was the first week of my new placement at UHS for the intern fall semester. So far, my duties have included interacting with students, running bellringers and various activities, answering questions, observation and reflection. In this process, I came to produce a number of wonderings.
This key wondering for this week is as follows: What is the effect of having students take AP classes at progressively younger ages? When I was in high school, AP classes were practically limited to students in their Junior and Senior years. However, UHS offers a great number of AP classes which count for various credits, several of which are freshman classes. I began wondering to myself how encouraging AP classes as early as freshman year effects the social and cognitive development of students. Invariably, the workload in AP classes is monumentally more than in on-level or even honors. This has led me to postulate the two following points:
A. The creation of AP opportunities for students throughout the years of high school - especially those classes available for freshmen - will ultimately improve the cognitive ability, accountability, organizational skills, and college-readiness of the students who participate in them. Since these classes are more rigorous, students will be more accustomed to the heavy workload that a college schedule will give them. Thus, it could be theorized that students who take a large amount of AP classes will perform better in colleges and universities than their age-level peers.
B. The popularization AP classes combined with the high-achievement required by the students who participate in them could help US schools become more competitive in the international education community.
Of course, these are merely ideas I have about the topic, and are not necessarily supported by any sort of data.
Going forward, I am still looking for a good Action Research topic that would be viable to do in this setting.
