Where AP teachers go to learn what they teach

Twenty-six high school teachers stood with straws in mouths and spoons at the ready. Bowls of M&Ms rainbowed before them.

Pretend the M&Ms are fish, the instructor said, and pretend the straws are fishing poles.

The teachers sucked up the M&Ms with the straws. They scrapped for them with the spoons. As the candy disappeared, a lesson about regulation and natural resources took its place.

This is what Advanced Placement teachers do when they step away from the front lines of an education revolution.

More than 230 of them were at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg last week for a "summer institute" designed to give them tips and how-to's. Across the country, about 30,000 AP teachers are attending similar events.

Preparing them has never been more important.

A tidal wave of high school students is crashing over college-caliber AP courses, and nowhere is that more true than Florida. Between 2004 and 2008, the number of students taking AP classes in Florida jumped from 68,000 to 118,000. The hope is that exposing more students to the rigors of AP will give them the skills to succeed in school - and in life after it.

But many of the new students aren't as prepared as the brainiac AP students of old. Many have never taken a challenging class. Some don't know how to write essays or take good notes.

For AP teachers, the new wave is a new world. And for some, a frustrating one.

"It's a change, and it's a challenge," said Eric Bergholm, who directs AP programs in Hillsborough County. "But are our teachers sophisticated enough to meet those challenges? 100 percent, I have no doubt."

The teachers spooning M&Ms all teach AP environmental science.

APES, as they call it, is a gateway class for the new breed of AP students. It combines science with economics and politics. It tackles everything from endangered species to global warming.

"This is the AP class where students won't say, 'Why do I need to learn this?' " said Beth McGovern, a science teacher at Countryside High in Clearwater who'll be teaching APES for the first time this fall.

At last week's institute, she and the other APES teachers got pointers from instructor Nita Ganguly, a geneticist by training and an APES teacher in Tennessee.

Ganguly riffed on cow flatulence and the Clean Air Act. On carbon footprints and fishing stocks. Her teachers tested the water quality in Bayboro Harbor, then plotted the rate of temperature rise in glass jars. All with an eye to what they would teach their students.

Don't tell them why they're harvesting M&Ms until their bowls are empty, Ganguly said.

"Then introduce the word sustainability."

Ganguly offered tips, too, on the questions many AP teachers want answered the most. How do we reach the new AP students? How do we teach in classrooms with such broad ranges in student skill?

"All kids don't learn in the same way," she said. "You have to make sure you're teaching at all platforms so they get the information they need in the way they need it."

At this point in the revolution, many AP teachers have the same story. Three years ago, Laura Rider, an AP environmental science teacher at Fort Myers High School, had six students in her AP class. Two years ago, she had 10. Last year she started with 22 but ended with 14.

Is putting so many middle-of-the-road kids into AP classes the best approach?

"I don't know," Rider said bluntly. "The guidance counselors say they should have that opportunity."

A survey of 1,000 AP teachers released by the Fordham Institute in April found more than half said too many AP kids are "in over their heads." A survey commissioned by the College Board in the spring found 45 percent said they need help dealing with diversifying classrooms.

"When AP was only attracting self-taught students, it was okay for teachers to deliver traditional college lectures," said Trevor Packer, the College Board vice president responsible for AP programs. "But that's certainly not what teachers are saying is going to help them now."

In response to teacher concerns, the College Board is piloting new classroom materials that address different learning styles. It's also piloting a 4-day "achievement institute." It is like the summer institute but it is focused on how to teach instead of what.

About 150 Hillsborough teachers and administrators attended the first pilot last week.

"We were the No. 1 guinea pigs," joked Bergholm, the AP director in Hillsborough. But the teachers liked it: "They talked about reading strategies. They talked about pacing. They talked about making sure the kids get it, not just going on and leaving people behind."

"The teachers were saying, 'This is what I can try, " he said.

The College Board will see whether the pilot teachers are more effective next year. If they are, the new institutes will be ramped up, pronto.

If not?

"It's clear that we're committed to finding a way to do this," Packer said. "But I don't know that anyone has found a silver bullet yet."

Ron Matus can be reached at matus@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8873.