The Lack of Attendance at my 2022 APGov Exam Review

And what to make of it

In the days and weeks leading up to the 2022 APGov Exam, not one single student showed up for any of the reviews I had to offer. That had never happened before!

At first, I was taken back. Then, in thinking about it, it made sense. With all the high-quality and free-for-the-taking resources now available online, students can review at their own pace/time. So why show for a review? There’s no benefit to showing.

That said, I doubt that things will change in the years to come. The kids have come to conclude, justifiably, that much of what they need to know for the exam they can learn from the resources found on the internet, with this learning to be done at a time and place of their choosing.

But if this is true, then in the years to come my students will not only steer clear of my end-of-year reviews, they will probably also not come to class every day either (and certainly not with a desire to engage), especially if I continue to cling to the pedagogy of the past.

Why should they listen to me at a time and place of my choosing if they can learn from someone just as good as me, and in some cases even better than me, at a time and place of the students’ choosing?

It seems that all the high-quality teacher produced resources available for free on the internet, AP Classroom, and Covid have come together to all but demand that if I want my kids to show up for class and engage, I’m going to have to teach and test even more differently than I do already.

That means even less learning opportunities that call upon me to cover, cram, assess, and reteach AND even more learning opportunities that call upon the students to either solve a real-world problem (PBL) or create some content for the internet.