Summer Camp for English Teachers

Well, it's winter, but rapidly catapulting towards spring, and that means that summer is just around the corner (ok, so I'm pushing it a little bit).

Aside from the obvious benefits such as flip-flop weather and silenced alarm clocks, one of the things I most look forward to in summer is my opportunity to be an AP exam Reader.

Most people's first question would be: What does that mean? And then after hearing my description: Why would you want to do that?

If you're reading this blog, you're probably familiar with the basic concept of an AP course: students take a rigorous course in high school and then have the opportunity to take an exam, on which a qualifying score could earn them college credit. In AP Lang, our students take a section of cold-read Multiple Choice questions and then respond to three essays... all over the course of a 3 hour and 15 minute time slot.

AP Lang is a widely-popular course; according to this site, over 500,000 students took the exam last year. If you consider that each of them wrote 3 essays, that leaves over a million and a half essays that need to be read. And thankfully, the world of automated essay scoring has not made it into AP world yet. That means that people, a whole lot of people, must read a whole lot of essays. That's where we Readers come in (that's also the point in the conversation where astonished friends, family, and colleagues question my relative sanity).

AP Central provides excellent information about being an AP Reader, which outlines the basics: we're a mixture of college faculty and high school AP teachers, we gather during a designated time and place to read essays, we get trained by experienced exam leadership to ensure fair and accurate scoring, and yes, we earn professional development credit and compensation. The College Board and ETS take test security very seriously, and as such, you won't find much posted publicly about the details of the reading (for example, you will find no pictures of the process).

The Reading is undoubtedly hard work. We are there to get a job done, and we do it with gusto. We read for a full work day, yes read hand-written papers on a single topic for eight hours a day, for seven days in a row. We sit in an inevitably arctic convention center, in small diverse groups, with individual table leaders to guide us, and we are amazingly pretty silent. We munch on candy (or bananas… lots of bananas) and take a short stretch break, and then get back to reading some more. In the evenings, there are professional and/or social opportunities, but most Readers I know find they need to schedule in some downtime as well, because the pace of the week is demanding.

But the AP Central website also highlights some intrinsic value to the experience, and that's what I'd like to share with you today because that's ultimately why I so look forward to something that seems, to an outsider, like an anxiety dream about never-ending papers.

First, many Readers will tell you that it's the best professional development they've experienced. Being in that room, being trained on the scoring rubric, studying samples, digging into the prompts, reading essay after essay.... that's all learning. That's all new understanding that I can take back to my own classroom to better prepare my own students. Going to a Summer Institute is a great first step towards this knowledge, but I found that I didn't really internalize it, didn't really get it, until I was in "the room where it happens." There's something about reading a thousand student essays that helps you learn what works and what doesn't. Now I know exactly what differentiates an adequate paper from an effective one, so I can give my kids more targeted feedback on their own writing (and bonus, it builds my credibility with them and their parents!). Sure, next year they'll be writing to different prompts, but the writing skills will be the same, and the Reading helps me help them hone those skills.

But in addition to the educational benefits, we gain so much from the environment, of being surrounded by so many other "like minds."

Imagine, waiting at an airport gate, and looking around you knowing that the majority of these strangers do the exact same thing as you for a living. Imagine seeing old friends excitedly greet each other for the one week of the year they get to physically be together. Imagine the absolute nerdiness that ensues when you take 1,500 book geeks and throw them together for one glorious week where everyone knows exactly what it's like to have the same passion. Imagine a place where you can sit down to a meal in the dining hall, at a table of complete strangers, and know that you automatically have something in common with them, that you can sustain conversation for an hour, get some great new teaching ideas or book recommendations, and perhaps make a lifelong friend. And then imagine being immersed in this world for 7 whole days.

My first year at the Reading, I met my first Reader friend, Andy; we struck up a conversation based on the fact that neither one of us knew anyone else (Literally I said something very close to "I don't know anyone here, want to be my friend?"), and by the end of a two-hour dinner conversation, we had shared our Dropbox folders of course resources. The following year, we formed a walking group through social media, and that's how Andy and I met Christine, Robin, and Cathlina. Through more social media connections on Twitter, the following year we welcomed Crys. And the year after that we finally met Liz.

If those names sound familiar, it's because most of them are the co-contributors to this blog. In reality, they're my best friends. We're scattered in all corners of the country, but we talk every. single. day. And that's not to mention the dozens of other Reader friends and acquaintances I keep in touch with throughout the year, so many that I couldn't possibly shout out to all of them on here.

These Reader friends have become a lifeline, not just as friends who are there for me on my best and worst days. But they help me be a better teacher. Our conversation never steers away from our classrooms for long. We help each other by sharing lessons, giving feedback, brainstorming new ideas, problem solving, and being each other's loudest cheerleaders. Every day. All hours of the day. How many people get that kind of support from ordinary professional development opportunities? I would not be half the teacher I am today without these rockstars by my side every step of the way.

And it's all due to the Reading.

Sure, Facebook and Twitter allow us to create Professional Learning Networks a mile wide, and we gain so much from those opportunities. But nothing compares to personal connections that cannot be made through a screen. When you have a real friend, one whose voice you can hear in your head, with whom you've wandered an unfamiliar city or shared a 3AM alarm clock for a flight home... that becomes a professional connection times twenty.

So I have a countdown app on my phone. Every June, when we cheer our accomplishments and exhaustedly say goodbye, I reset it to the following year's start date. That's how I know that in 114 days, I will be heading to what is affectionately dubbed "Summer Camp for English Teachers." And I can't wait.