"Ahhh, the smell of AP exam booklets in the morning....."

 

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    It's that time again. This week, the first week of June, a thousand or so Advanced Placement high school teachers and college history professors will be in downtown Tampa, Florida at the Tampa Convention Center, spending a week reading AP US History exam essays and short answer responses and awarding scores that may translate into college credits for the over 500,000 high school students around the world that take the AP US History exam each year in early May. Tampa is one of several sites that host AP readers of various subjects; other sites include Kansas City, Cincinatti, and Louisville.

(Tampa Convention Center, where the deed is done.)

    History teachers and professors from all over the US will start arriving in Tampa on May 31, and they will find their hotel rooms, meet up with new roommates or old friends, and find their reading assignment. Over the next week, they will report to their assigned reading room and their assigned table. More introductions as readers meet their table leader and tablemates; usually there are 8 table members. Each table is assigned a specific prompt to score. The table leader begins going through some training exercises, calibrating, it's called. The readers read some sample responses along with scoring commentaries provided by a few table leaders and question experts and creators. The point is to get the readers on the same page, so to speak, to build a consistency so that reading scores are less arbitrary, less subjective. The hope is that different readers will be able to score the same responses with close to the same score.

    Scoring happens over the next 7 days, from 9 AM to 5 PM. Readers move at their own pace, and table leaders "backread" often, that is, read essays and scores that tablemates have scored to make sure the scores are consistent. These are long days, with readers reading hundreds of responses a day. To break things up, there are stretch breaks and a lunch break. Some tables create games to play, and there's usually lots and lots of candy available. It is a long day. 

    In the evenings, there are sometimes best practices presentations, vendor tables, and maybe authors doing book talks. People also find others with similar interests or hobbies, so there may be groups of runners, walkers, musicians, etc, meeting up. Others check out restaurants. Still others just chill in their rooms, maybe reading, or, for a misfortunate few, even doing schoolwork (shudders).  

    I was fortunate to be a reader for several years. I had put off applying to be a reader for years, because I couldn't imagine reading hundreds of essays a day. Grading my own classes' essays was an arduous chore that I sometimes put off for too long.  However, I realized that readers were correct when they told me that I should go. It is a hard week, but it came with benefits. It made me a better AP teacher because I saw how the "sausage is made" so to speak, and I enjoyed meeting new people, and gaining different perspectives. I've always said that the best professional learning for teachers is always just getting teachers together to talk and to share.

    So, to my friends and roommate who are returning to Tampa this week: Good luck, have a great time. I'll miss you (but I live only a half-hour away now.....)