M-A added a new elective as a part of the English Department: AP Seminar. Unlike most AP classes, AP Seminar centers around developing investigative and critical thinking skills through in-depth research and analysis.
The class, taught by AS English II teacher Jason Hunt, teaches students how to conduct research through questioning, analysis, and exploration of contrasting perspectives to curate an argument and solution based on their findings. AP Seminar equips students with the foundational skills needed beyond high school, whether in college or a future career.
“What I love about AP Seminar compared to a lot of the other AP classes is that it really gives students the opportunity to pursue their own high interest topics,” Hunt said. “It’s a lot of recursive steps and not necessarily linear.”
“The class is pretty small, which makes us able to talk and participate a lot,” senior June Wagner said. “It’s also very independent, you have to get your work done and you have a lot of freedom in what you choose to work on.”
The first few months of the class are focused on building these analytical techniques through topics chosen for them. Students explore topics such as artificial intelligence, environmental issues, and urban development.
“It’s stuff that you don’t talk about often, so giving them this kind of attention is really interesting,” junior Piyi Papapanagiotou said.
“It forces you to look at things through a different perspective, and you can’t let your own biases interfere with what you’re learning,” junior Jaretzi Magallon said.
After building a foundation of research and analysis skills, students spend the rest of the school year working on two performance tasks on topics of their choosing.
In October, students start their first performance task, the Team Project and Presentation, which makes up 20% of their AP score. Working in small groups, students investigate a specific problem to create an argument. Each student is required to select a unique focal point to create their Individual Research Report, and together the group creates the Team Multimedia Presentation with an oral defense of their solution. The whole task spans about 10 weeks.
“Once we start the performance tasks, it’s hands off on my part, and then it’s just meeting with students, individually checking where they’re at with their research,” Hunt said.
The second performance task, the Individual Research-Based Essay and Presentation, begins in January and requires students to conduct the same process as the first task—writing a paper and creating a presentation. The difference is that it’s on their own and with a provided set of stimulus materials. The stimulus material is a packet of seven sources, ranging from nonfiction articles to song lyrics. “You choose two [sources] to identify, like a theme or thematic element, which are so open-ended that you can literally do anything that you want,” Hunt explained.
The remaining 45% of student’s AP Seminar score comes from the assessment at the end of the year, where they demonstrate the skills they have learned through three short-answer questions and one essay question.
“I really like that it’s student-centered learning, so the course rewards curiosity, and the research questions that students develop are just as important as the answer,” Hunt said. “Students who have curiosity about the world in which they live goes a long way.”
“It’s taught at a good pace, which is really helpful, because it’s a class that has so many different aspects to it,” Papapanagiotou added.
Along with AP Research, the two classes normally make up the AP Capstone Program; however, only AP Seminar is offered at M-A.
