The bane of many student’s vacations, summer work is a staple for nearly half of all advanced placement (AP) courses at Leesville Road High. While many students find the prospect of completing school work over the summer positively repulsive, there is merit to be found in its assignment.
AP pre-course work is assigned for two primary purposes: to help students attain a rudimentary knowledge of the subject matter within the course and to gauge students’ motivation in bettering themselves through self study. Whilst the former purpose acts as the primary function for AP Summer assignments and is most beneficial to students, the latter is designed as a test. If you do not possess the self discipline to complete a single assignment over the summer, than you will typically not have the self management skills necessary to complete an AP course.
“I think it’s actually in the long term interest of both the students and teachers to assign precourse work, so long as it is substantive and not just busy work,” said Angela Scioli, a teacher at Leesville. For her AP Government class, Scioli typically assigns pre-course works that acquaints students with politicians that represent them as well the basics of the U.S. Constitution–both of which are key concepts that repeatedly appear throughout the course.
“When you’re taking such a hard class, summer work helps to adequately prepare you for what you’re going to endure for the next three months,” said Maximus Buico, a junior at Leesville. “It feels like some of teachers are almost trying to punish us from the start, but for the most part they’re just trying to prepare us with this work.”
Like it or not–and the majority of students definitely fall on the “not” side of things–AP pre-course work is likely here to stay. For the most part, pre-course work is an invaluable tool in preparing both students and teachers for the upcoming school year, is not going anywhere in the foreseeable future.
https://www.themycenaean.org/2017/09/how-teachers-view-summer-assignments/ link to opposing view
