Teaching AP Science for the First Time? 6 Tips for Success [Episode 236]

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:00]:
If you are listening to this episode, I’m guessing that you just found out you’ll be teaching an AP Science course for the very first time. And if you are anything like I was, you are equal parts excited and equal parts overwhelmed by the prospect. Now, if you are listening to this the week that it airs, you have a whole summer ahead of you to mentally and emotionally and physically prepare yourself. But I also know that many of you listening are going to be finding this episode via Google search when you found out last minute you’d be teaching this course and you’re slightly freaking out. So with that in mind, today I’m sharing six tips for success teaching AP Science for the first time and five of these tips will apply whether you have a three month gap before you start teaching this course or a three minute gap. Let’s get to it. This is Secondary Science Simplimplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca Joyner from It’s Not Rocket Science.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:05]:
As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers, love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode. Tip number one. And this is so important. I typed it in all caps in my outline so I’m going to be like semi shouting this at you through your headphones. Okay? It is do not attempt to do this alone. Okay? You should not be taking on AP Science by yourself.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:51]:
Now you may be thinking, but I’m the only one who’s teaching it in my school. Which is most likely the case if you have another teacher teaching AP Science alongside you. You are the exception to the rule of what I’ve seen. But what I mean is like you need to go to an AP Summer institute. You need to get your hiney at an apsi. All right? You need to tell your admin, who asked you to teach this course, you better sign me up. And if it’s August so there’s no time, you need to tell them. You need to find the money so that you can send me next summer and I’m just going to make it work this year.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:23]:
But it’s not just apsi. It’s joining the teacher Facebook groups for AP teachers. It’s connecting with other teachers in your district who teach ap. It doesn’t just have to be in your school. It doesn’t have to be the same AP subject as you, Although that is great. But you need community to do this. You need people you can ask questions to. You need people you can bounce ideas off of.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:45]:
It’s truly a course that’s not like a competition between you and other AP teachers to see who has more students. Pass. Okay? Teaching AP science, you’re now joining, like, a community of people. And in my opinion, it’s like the community of high school science teachers versus College board. Like, they are going to keep rewriting your course and changing the ced, and you and all these people are going to work together against this quote, unquote common enemy that’s making a lot of money and profiting a lot from students taking their AP courses. And it’s you against them in terms of seeing your. All of your students be successful. So please, please, please.

Rebecca Joyner [00:03:25]:
The first thing I want you to do, it’s going to be the action step today at the end of this episode, is find other AP teachers so that you are not attempting to do this alone. Okay? Second, I need you to accept something, and this will be hard if you’re type A enneagram one perfectionist like me. And it’s that you will not be great at this, okay? You’re just not. So just accept the serving of humble pie that I’m sharing with you. I’ve already had my whole entire humble pie myself. Accept that you will not be great at all and become comfortable with okayness and just doing things very okay. Becoming an AP teacher, you are going to change and evolve so much as an educator through this process. You’re going to get better and better every year.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:12]:
You’re not just going to be an amazing AP teacher overnight. You could be the best honors biology, honors chemistry, honors physics, honors whatever teacher at your school and be a very mediocre AP teacher the first year that you teach it. So what I want to challenge you to do is pick one area that you’re going to care a lot about and you’re going to put like 90% of your effort into doing really, really well and focus on that one thing this year and then kind of let the rest of it again, be very okay. Just be average and then know, okay, next year when you get to teach this AP science, hopefully again. Now you’re going to focus on this other area and. And each year you’re going to get better and better at different areas till eventually you become one of those experienced AP teachers that just, like, thrives in Their role. Okay, for me, when I taught AP Biology for the first time, I decided I was going to be really, really intentional about creating solid assessments for my students. Now, this was pre so much being digital on AP Classroom, but I was literally pulling all these released exams, all these released practice tests, all these questions.

Rebecca Joyner [00:05:22]:
And I was like manually copying and pasting questions to create my unit test from old AP exams. Now it is so much easier, so much more seamless to do it all. But I think that was such a wise use of my time because my students got so used to that College Board language and the way that College Board writes tests, because so much of it is about taking the test well and the critical thinking strategies in using the test and what’s given to you and not necessarily content or skill knowledge. And so it was a good use of my time and it was something that then I was able to have for future use teaching the course, solid assessments that I’d invested that time in. And all my students felt not surprised when they got to the exam. Like, they were like, I know how these things are worded. I know the time. I always made them take timed test that mimicked the exam based on the amount of time that they were given and similar testing environments.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:17]:
They always had the reference sheet and all the different resources. I think it really made a difference. That was a good use of my time. But that doesn’t have to be what you choose to be great at. You can choose something else. I do want to encourage you, though. Do not choose making lecture notes like the one thing you’re going to do really well. That, to me, is not a good use of your time.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:36]:
I do not want any of you, the first year you’re teaching AP Science to be making slide decks. That is something it is so easy to borrow from another teacher. Cite your sources to your students. Like, I didn’t make these. I got these from so and so. Then if you know they’re a little wordy or they aren’t written how you would like or formatted as good, or if they have weird transitions with weird noises and you have to mute your computer every time you use them, not that I’ve been there. Does it sound like I have? But you can say, hey, look, I’m just using this this year and I’ll have my own in the future. Okay? You don’t need to be defensive, you know, but you can explain to your students like you’re new to this just like they are.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:10]:
And that kind of will get us into our next point before I get there. I just want to encourage you, like, please spend very little time creating resources this year and understanding that you’re going to be curating resources and gathering them from more experienced AP Science educators. And know that you have lots of years in your future to make things as good as you want them to be. But just try to pick one area and be okay with not being great at everything. All right? Third tip for success. Make sure your students know from day one that you are on the same team as them, that you are in this to see them successful, and that you’re going to be working alongside them as you grow in this role and they’re going to grow in this class. You’re all taking this AP Science course together for the first time. You’re most likely going to be studying just as much as they are.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:00]:
I was studying, like, 10 hours a week, just studying, watching videos on YouTube, reading textbooks, like, learning the content again. Because even though I’d been teaching biology my entire career, I hadn’t thought about it to the depth of AP Bio, which was my first AP Science like at all. It’d been years since college that I thought to that depth, so I had to study. You will, too. That kind of takes the edge off, too, when they ask you questions and you can be like, I don’t know the answer. Let’s figure it out together. I think it’s a really good skill to model that humility in front of them and also that ability just to, like, be figuring things out together, because that’s a lifelong skill. You are committed to figuring it out with them, but at the same time, this is a team effort.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:46]:
They are on this team, so they have to participate. I’m going to give you a sporting analogy, which is hilarious because I’m, like, the least sporty person in the world. And it’s also going to be a baseball analogy, which is arguably my least favorite sport. But my oldest son is playing baseball right now, and I’ve learned a lot from sitting through those long, boring games. Okay, but here’s what I’ve learned about team. Again, I think don’t come at me if you’re a baseball person and you just absolutely love it and it’s America’s pastime and yada, yada, yada. I know. But to me, objectively speaking, looking at all the other sports, it feels the least athletic.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:24]:
If my son can chew big league, chew bubblegum during a sporting event, it doesn’t seem to me like he’s actually getting his heart rate very high or working Very hard. Okay, now before you come at me, because this is not a baseball podcast, it’s an AP science podcast, I will say this sport. Of all the sports he’s played as an eight year old in rec sports in the county that I live, okay? So I understand the bar is low and I understand that I’m like a baby when it comes to being a sport moment. But of all the sports he’s played, I think this is like the sixth one he’s played on a team for. It requires so much of every person on the team. Like, if you have a bad person as your shortstop, if you have bad kids, no one can hide on the baseball team, okay? Even in the outfield, your role is essential. Third base essential. First base essential.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:14]:
Like, every single person’s role is essential because it really is such a team sport. Whereas when my son did play soccer or he did play football or he did play basketball, like on basketball, if you had like two good players and the other three were like, okay, your team could still be pretty good football. If you had like one kid that can throw, one kid that can catch, you know, you were still doing pretty good. Obviously you need defense and stuff too. Again, I’m not trying to, like, oversimplify this, but I really, I’m saying all of this to say, not to be controversial, but to say that, like, this is like being on a baseball team where every person has to play their part or the whole team will not win. And your students need to play their part. They have to participate. You will not have the capacity to do things for your students like you maybe did for them when they took like, the prerequisite course of this class that maybe you taught, whether that’s like chem1, honors bio, whatever that may be.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:12]:
And you may not have been their prereq teacher, but I know in a lot of circumstances, like, you become the AP science teacher because you are one of the prereq teachers. But if you’re like me, like when I taught AP Bio, there were things I did for these students that I was having again in my class that I did for them in honors bio that I, like, could not do anymore for them now that they’re at this AP level and they had to take the initiative now, most of them, it had been a year or two since I taught them, so they had grown, they had matured, they were able to do this, but I had to, like, communicate to them, like, hey, remember in AP Bio how I literally graded, like, all these different things? Not going to be doing that Anymore. Remember how I would come find you when you needed to come make up work because you had a junior leadership conference that you missed four days of school and I kept following up with you. I’m not going to be able to do that for you now. They have to take the initiative. And we’ll talk about this a little later in the episode, but explaining it to them like, I am training you for college. And one of the most important things is that you are an independent person that can advocate for yourself and take initiative for your learning. Like, I’m training you for this.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:16]:
Now, I’m not just doing this because I’m lazy and I’m mean and I’m tired and I don’t have the capacity. Okay? I’m doing this for you because that’s part of my role as your AP science teacher, is to prepare you for taking these courses in college, because it’s a college level course. And I’d have them sign a contract of sorts and you can come up with this together. On the first day of school, say, hey, I, your teacher, Rebecca Joyner, am committed to. And you’re gonna list all the things I’m gonna be studying every day. I’m gonna be doing my best to provide you, like all the support. Da, da, da da. And then say, my ask of you is that you, as a student, you are committed to keeping up with your missing assignments, doing the reading that you’re committed to reading outside of school.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:57]:
Like, whatever it is, you make these commitments, you sign it. And this is something you can bring up when there is conflict, there are zeros in the grade book and gaps in their learning, or you’re seeing a lack of effort. This is something you bring up and say, hey, this is what we committed to from day one. And if you didn’t want to sign this, you could have gotten out of the class. And that’s a way that you can ask your admin and your school counseling department to support you and saying, we’re not just going to throw any student into this course. It has to be someone who’s willing to commit to these things because at the end of the day, this is a college level course, okay? And at the end of the day, you, you cannot sit there in May and take the exam for them. So you’re going to need to. There’s going to be growing pains here.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:37]:
But again, we’re all on the same team. Okay? That’s something I want you to clearly communicate to them. Fourth, I want you to prioritize the process over the Product. Okay, what do I mean by this? I want you to prioritize their learning experience in your classroom over the course of the school year or the semester that you have them, not if they’re going to pass the AP exam. Now, do we want to do everything in our power for them to get a good grade in our course and pass the AP exam so that they can get college credit? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, I firmly believe, and I know you could fight me on this, like they’re paying for it. They have this expectation that they’re going to pass. Okay, again, team effort.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:18]:
They can do their part. But for me as a teacher, I believe that if I’m prioritizing the learning process and what they’re going to experience in my classroom during this year, that’s going to prepare them for college, not just the exam, and that’s going to serve them for years. And most likely, if I’m preparing them for college, they’re going to at least get a 3 on the exam as well. So what does it look like to prepare them well for college? I would make a list and focus on prioritizing those things and share this list with your students because again, you’re on the same team. Say, hey, here’s what it looks like for you to be successful in college, or honestly even not in college, in any career you go in after this, it looks like being independent, it looks like taking initiative, being proactive. It looks like critical thinking, communication skills, it looks like self advocacy. You’re going to have to advocate for your pay, for your workload, for your health, for the health of your children, for the success of your future family. Like, there are so many ways that you’re going to have to learn how to be an advocate.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:20]:
And so you’re going to have to learn communication. You’re going to have to learn initiative. Like, these are all really important skills. So those are things that I want to train in you. And again, we’re on the same team, so I’m not gatekeeping this. This isn’t like a secret test that I’m doing for you all year. I’m going to be clear that this is what I’m going to help train you in so that you’re ready for life. I think you can even have your students say, hey, reach out to your older siblings or some old friends you had, you know, from your soccer team that are now in college and ask them, you know, what are things you’ve learned the hard way since high school, whether that’s in college or in going directly into the working force or whatever things you wish you learned in high school, skills you wish you’d learned and get those jotted down and share those with your students.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:03]:
You can even reach out to your own old students and get some testimonials and say, hey, what are things you did learn you’re so glad. Or things you didn’t learn you wish you’d learned? I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with past students who came back to me and even ones that only had me for freshman biology one. Okay, they never even had me for upper science course. Would say, the only things I learned that prepared me for college were from your course. You were the only teacher who really pushed me, who really gave me a dose of reality, even though it was so hard, Whatever it may be, okay? We’re not just making it hard to be hard. We are preparing them with life skills for success. We’re prioritizing the learning process and how it’s changing them as a person and not the product of a 4 on the AP exam. Emphasize that with your students and emphasize it with yourself.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:49]:
I would print out these skills. I would write out specific ways. How am I going to encourage independence? How am I going to encourage productivity? How am I going to support them in taking initiative and critical thinking, whatever. In communication, how am I going to educate them in these skills before I set them free and focus on that as opposed to getting through the whole entire cedar? Now, a question that I got about AP science that I kind of want to address here, because I feel like it kind of fits under this point, is someone asked me, how can I do it all in AP and still be using inquiry and letting students struggle and learn? Okay, well, that kind of goes back to point number two, is that you cannot do it all and you will not be graded at all. But what I would do when it comes to inquiry, specifically, because you and I know that that is the best way for students to learn and really retain information and skills, is to have them work through that struggle and really explore and engage with things before they come up with an explanation. But you and I also know how much time and energy that takes, and it can be unrealistic to do that for every single thing. So what I would encourage you to do is go through each of the units that you’ll be covering in your AP science course and pick one topic that you’re going to teach well with inquiry that you’re going to do the pogo that you’re going to have Them do the lab before they get any background knowledge on it. Like you’re just gonna do the most for it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:05]:
You’re gonna do the five Es for. And then maybe you give yourself permission this first year teaching AP Science due to the rest, more traditional direct instruction followed by reinforcing activity or lab and learning experience. Okay. And then again, each year you teach this course, you can transfer more and more to be inquiry and kind of take away more of that direct instruction. But I think giving yourself permission to do that will help a lot and it’ll take the pressure off. And again, we gotta scaffold this kind of stuff for our students too, because they’re gonna. They are gonna be overwhelmed. We still wanna build in some struggle.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:39]:
And we’re all gonna struggle together because. What did I say? We’re on the same team. Okay? So first, we’re not gonna attempt to do it all alone. Second, we’re gonna accept that we’re not gonna be great at all, and that’s okay. Third, we’re gonna make sure students know from day one we’re on the same team. Fourth, we’re going to prioritize process over product five. This is the one that’s going to be hard if this is August or September and you just found out you’re teaching this course. But if you’re.

Rebecca Joyner [00:19:05]:
You’re finding this out in the spring or in May or at the start of your summer, I want you to print the ced. Print every page. Print it at Staples. It’s going to cost you like 12, but do it. Put it in a binder. If you’re not getting a printed one from College Board. Read every word, highlight things, take notes. This is your blueprint for teaching this course.

Rebecca Joyner [00:19:29]:
It is the ced. I wish we could print one for every student, but that’d be insane. Like, the AP Biology one’s like 240 pages. Of course, they might redo it by the time you hear this episode, but print it for yourself. The other thing I would do, because I’m love. I’m a paper and pen girly. Well, paper and mechanical pencil girly, I should say, is I would print out calendar pages of each month. Like, month at a glance.

Rebecca Joyner [00:19:52]:
Okay. And print out, like, August, September, October, whatever. Mark off the days that you don’t have school already and then go through and just outline in pencil what days you’re going to cover each unit and the subtopics within those units. Okay? So, like, you know, I mean, I. I know it might look different for all the different AP Sciences and again, like I said, they may change this as time goes on. Because College Board is nothing if not wanting to keep us on our toes and make us work harder. Maybe not necessarily smarter, but like, for instance, AP Biology Unit 1, Chemistry of Life. The different topics 1.1, Structure of Water, Hydrogen Bonding.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:31]:
1.2. Elements of Life 1.3. Intro to Macromolecules. Okay, that kind of thing. I want you to put it on a calendar in pencil. Okay? I’m gonna spend one day on elements of life. 1.2. I’m gonna spend two days on intro to macromolecules.

Rebecca Joyner [00:20:44]:
Topic 1.3, write down those things on the calendar so that you have a plan. Build in some review days. Okay, so we’re printing the ced. We’re kind of making a plan of the topics in the ced. I want you to get familiar with AP Classroom, how it works, what resources are available for you and your students, and I want you to start curating other resources for you to use. This is how I want you to spend your time this summer. But it starts with printing the CED and reading every word of it. Not just asking ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or whoever else to make a summary for you.

Rebecca Joyner [00:21:18]:
You need to read it and learn it. Okay? That’s how you’re going to feel most prepared to teach your course in terms of what the heck you’re supposed to be teaching. Okay, that’s my fifth tip. Obviously, if you’re finding out you’re teaching this class tomorrow, you’re not going to have time for this. You’re going to have to use the AI version of the summary. But I. I think it’d be worth your time next summer to do it. And then my sixth tip for you is make a plan.

Rebecca Joyner [00:21:41]:
Share it with your students, but hold it loosely. So again, you’re not going to print the whole CED for your students. That would be insane. But I would make a mini version for them and give it to them at the beginning of the year. And, like, give it to them with a contract you’re making as your syllabus even, and say, like, I would print the page with the science practices on it. I would print the page with the big ideas. I would print the page that has the summary chart with the spiral big idea so they can kind of see how it’s all going to be working together and how it all builds. And then I would print the course at a glance page for biology.

Rebecca Joyner [00:22:12]:
It’s like three pages for different courses. That might be different, but I love printing this course at a glance, and I like it to be in a poster size. Okay, so then as you finish stuff, if you laminate your poster, you can cross it off with a whiteboard marker and you can show students like, hey, here’s how we’re working through it. I would make copies of those calendar pages that you made and give them to students so they can say, hey, see, look, my teacher has a plan. And then you can work with them on pacing. So let’s say it’s September and your students are getting stuck on mechanisms of cell transport or cell compartmentalization or something like that. And you’re like, guys, we gotta move on. And they’re like, well, we need more time.

Rebecca Joyner [00:22:54]:
It says, okay, that’s fine, but let’s look at the calendar together and the plan. If we take more time here, we’re gonna have to sacrifice it later at the end of the year for review time and make sure they see again that you’re on the same team. You’re not trying to rush them for the sake of rushing them. You’re just trying to help them with PACE because there’s a lot to get through and help them understand that there’s going to be sacrifices made. So, like, if we want, if you guys want more time to work on this lab, that’s fine, but we’re gonna have to cut it somewhere else. And that’s where I think I love having the plan because it’s going to help you feel less overwhelmed, and I think it’s going to help them feel less overwhelmed to see the overarching plan, that you’re organized and you’ve got this going on. Okay, you’ve prepped for this, but also to see that, like, okay, we do have to kind of keep moving. But again, you’ve got to follow their lead because again, we’re prioritizing the process over the product and we care more about that than getting through every single subtopic and the course at a glance in the ced.

Rebecca Joyner [00:23:52]:
So those are my six tips for you. My take home challenge. If you’re teaching AP Science for the first time and the very first thing I want you to do, even before you print the cd, maybe you’re going to go ahead and submit your order to Staples for your printed and, you know, spot. You get it spiralized. I love that when they do that little binding for you. Okay, maybe you’re going to do that first. Get that going at Staples because it’ll take them a day or two, but then the next first Thing I want you to do is connect with other AP teachers today in your district in teacher Facebook groups for AP teachers at apsi. Make a plan for APSI if that’s an option for you, because that’s my favorite because that’s in person connection.

Rebecca Joyner [00:24:32]:
Make a plan now to connect with other AP teachers and if you do not know where to start. I have interviewed so many AP science teachers since I started this podcast because they’re some of my favorite people to talk to. And I have curated every episode I’ve done with an AP teacher into a free Spotify playlist. You can find it@itsirockscienceclassroom.com APscience that’s it. And it will give you all of the links to all of those episodes so that you can listen to them and find them really easily. And y’ all these episodes are so good. Yeah, some are with AP bioteacher, some are AP Physics, some are AP Environmental, some are AP Chemistry. But like all of them have such great advice regardless of your content area.

Rebecca Joyner [00:25:17]:
I mean even think about this, this episode with six tips, it applies to any AP science, not just, you know, the specific one that I have specific experience teaching. So highly recommend you get connected. And all of those episodes have their own show notes that have Facebook groups linked, other resources linked, free things linked. Some of those teachers that I’ve interviewed have shared their contact information if you want to reach out to them and connect with them. So that is such a great place to get started. And if you want a link to that podcast episode because you can’t remember that URL I told you always, always, always my show notes. It’s narcoticscienceclassroom.com episode 2 36. You can also just go to my website it’s not rocket scienceclassroom.com and just search episode 236 and the show notes will pop up for you.

Rebecca Joyner [00:26:00]:
So I hope this has equipped you. I hope you feel more on the excited and equipped spectrum than you did on the overwhelmed and scared spectrum. Maybe when you started this episode. And if you have any questions at all, don’t forget you can totally always find me on Instagram @itsnotrocket Science with dots between each of those words. Rebecca Joyner it’s not rocket science. I would love to connect with you. All right, teacher friends, that wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to its not rocketscienceclassroom.com com challenge to grab your classroom reset challenge, and guess what? It’s totally free.

Rebecca Joyner [00:26:40]:
Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you, teacher friend.