This is our LAST blog for the school year! I would like you to reflect on this past year in AP Literature and provide me with some feedback about our course and the texts that we have read. Consider the questions below, but feel free to provide any additional ideas or feedback in your response. In order to earn full credit, please provide extensive feedback in your response and respond to at least two of your peers. Thank you!
DUE DATE: Thursday, May 19th at 11:59pm (G Day)
Questions to consider for your reflection:
- What did you like best while Mrs. Loux was instructing the course? Why?
- If you were teaching this course, what would you do differently? Why? What was your favorite assignment/activity in class? Why?
- What was your least favorite assignment/activity in class? Why?
- Describe your experience with the various texts we read this year; consider novels, plays, short stories, and poetry. What would you recommend I continue for next year and what would you eliminate?
- Describe your experience with the various types of writing we did in class this year, particularly the AP exam essays.
- Describe your experience preparing and taking the AP exam.
- What is one thing you would tell a future student about Mrs. Loux’s English class.
- List ONE thing you will take away from Mrs. Loux’s class.
- Other comments or suggestions for the future.
Mrs. Loux's English Class 
Going into AP Lit, I was very nervous because everyone kept telling me that I would get tons of work, have to read huge books in one night and I would never get any sleep. But I ended up enjoying it alot. You are a great teacher, you explain things really well. The due dates for everything were fair. I loved the books we read, especially the short stories. For next year, definintely keep the short story unit and keep the book “Life After High school” because your students will be able to relate to it. But maybe you should take out, “The Rocking Horse Winner” because I feel like it more fit for a pyschology class than an english class due to the way it relates to Freud. The other books choices were good. Adding Pride and Prejudice and The Picture of Dorian Gray would be good because I noticed that they are always an option on the free response essays and they are really good books if you want to focus on a specific time period.
My least favorite unit was the poetry unit because I didn’t like having to create a lesson to explain a poem. People have diffrent ways of understanding a poem so sometimes it’s hard to teach one meaning of a poem. Instead of a lesson, maybe have a socratic seminar where everyone can explain how they saw the poem. Then narrow it down to one meaning,
Preping for the exam was good but the online essays were difficult. It’s hard to annotate a book or a poem when it’s on a computer screen. Also, it was nerve racking to have the timer in the corner. Instead, have the essays and mutiple choice in class so its easier for students to take notes. Maybe essays and mutiple choice can be posted on schoology as an option if students want to get extra practice at home and if they get a good grade then it can be counted toward the grade in class.
If I could take away one thing, it would be grading other people’s essays. Although it’s good to get feedback from peers, getting an essay graded by a teacher is alot better. Maybe have peer editing where they chose who will edit their paper.
Also, there’s alot of vocab on the AP exam, I suggest going over more vocab during exam prep. I know you gave us a packet in the beginning of the year but over time some students forget the words. I also suggest taking away the vocab test we get once we get back to school. Having to memorize the defintions to all of those words is too stressful for the summer. It’s better to go over it in class and then take it once we’ve seen them applied in books.
Thank you, Mrs. Loux for a great year!
I agree to a “T” with everything you’ve said. You make so many valid points and things I would never have thought of. The only thing I disagree with (besides the poetry assignment because that was my favorite one) is peer editing because sometimes our peers judge essays too lightly or too harshly. Otherwise I really think Mrs. Loux should take your opinions into consideration because I would have loved it if we received that type of help.
I agree that the vocab should be gone over again because it is an important to know them for the exam. I disagree with what you said about grading other people’s essay. I think my grading others you can see what not to do and what to do in an essay.
I agree with Roshni, I really do wish we spent more time on vocabulary. There were a lot of terms and words on our exams that I saw, and I think a lot of AP Lang students were familiar with the words and vocab but because I wasn’t an AP Lang student, I was stumped. I know that you gave us a whole stack of vocab words to look at, but it didn’t really help because we didn’t get to go over it in class and I didn’t get much time to look over it with all the assignments we had.
I also liked reading all the short stories. They were nice and easy reads; the short stories were also very interesting and varied greatly from each other. I agree that I would have liked to go over the vocab or literary terms such as blank verse and tetrameter.
I agree when you say to take out the online essays. I personally concentrate A LOT better when I have a pen and paper in front of me. It’s very difficult to edit on a computer screen, especially when I’m so accustomed to using my computer for leisure. It was hard to get in the zone and concentrate.
I hate peer editing also because I never know if I should fully take in what the person is saying. I would rather hear what I did wrong from my teacher.
I don’t think The Rocking Horse Winner should be taken out because of the psychological aspect. Literature tends to touch on a bunch of different topics. I thought it was cool that we read a piece like that because it makes you think. The varied topics in the short story unit made it more interesting.
Something that you said that I agree with is the vocab. We only had to know it for the second day of school and then after that we never looked at it again. I understand that many people took AP Lang last year so it may have been repetitive to them it we went over it in class. However, there are many people who didn’t take that course so all or most of the words were new. Additionally, many of those words appeared on the AP exam or on practice exams that we took. If we had reviewed the words I think that could have given us a leg up on the tests. I know that you gave us a list of the words but telling a senior to read a bunch of definitions before a test is kinda useless since, speaking for myself, we will never look at it.
Just to reply to the vocabulary comment, I said in the beginning of the school year that this was your responsibility to learn and understand these words. Unfortunately, we just do not have the time to go through 100+ words. One thing I can do for the upcoming school year is to give additional assessments to check student understanding throughout the year.
AP Lit was nothing like I expected. My expectations going into this class was that I would have to write an essay and read a book in one day; I was definitely wrong. What I liked the best while you (Mrs. Loux) were instructing the course was understanding the time periods the books were written in to get a better understanding of the setting of the novel and the novel overall. My favorite assignment in class would have to be reading short stories because they were very interesting to discuss. My experience preparing and taking the AP exam was sort of difficult because coming from a Honors English junior year I only wrote 1 or 2 essays the whole year but never was told how to improve the essay as I never received my paper back. I had to put extra work to prepare for the AP exam which included practicing writing essays on my own and reading past essays from past exams. One thing I would tell a future student is to have a list of novels they have read from junior year and the ones they will read in AP Lit on a google doc with helpful information that would help write an essay. If I was teaching this course, I would explain how to approach each essay on the AP Exam in the beginning of the year in depth. One thing I will take away from your class is the techniques to understand and approach poetry. Thank you Mrs. Loux for helping me become a better writer and for a great school year!
I have too agree learning about the different time periods was helpful too. It was very useful in analyzing and understanding the text. The only thing I would disagree with is teaching how to write the essays in depth in the beginning of the year because after time passes they would probably forget.
Learning about the time periods was so helpful and honestly so much fun, it made our topics and reading more engaging and involved. I stared learning the history of a book before reading it last year, and I’m really glad I got to continue you it.
On an other note about poems, you made sure we knew about the poet’s background before/after we read it and it helped flesh our analysis out. It was a detailed and great thing you helped us do and I’m glad it was done.
I think the short stories were interesting too. I agree with what you say about teaching the essay techniques earlier.
I also came from Honors English junior year so I can relate to everything you said about how difficult it was to write essays. However, I did learn a lot and I can definitely see an improvement in the way I write.
I like your advice about having a list of novels to choose from for the Free Response Essay. It’s helpful to have some books in mind before sitting down to write the Free Response Essay.
I agree! Even if there’s a book from junior year that they really liked, I feel like they should make a spreadsheet of the different themes that could possibly be used for a free response essay on the exam. It could also work for the SAT, if they’re taking it again before submitting college apps.
One thing I will also take away is the techniques to understand poetry better. I can now better decipher what the author is trying to say by using techniques like syntax, tone, or the most important lines of a poem by identifying the rhyming pattern.
I am not particularly skilled in writing, and since I knew I wasn’t going to take the exam I was not as driven or motivated to improve on those skills however, the course provided plenty of time and opportunities to refine the writing skills/strategies required to pass the exam.
My attention and my drive was more focused on being able to comprehend poetry. While I learned how to analyze text in Mr. Storey’s class, we focused on novels and plays. Poetry is a very different medium and I liked to challenge that it posed. I thought the selections were interesting, each with a surprise, and the constant repetition of TPCAST throughout the year allowed me understand how to read/analyze poetry. Since I took the class to learn about poetry, my favorite project was when we had to choose three poems and teach them to the class. While it was early on and I was still figuring out how to breakdown poetry it was a good way to test what we had grasped during that short time. We got a glimpse into each time period, and familiarized ourselves with a few authors.
I also really enjoyed the blogs. It is a nice, casual setting where we can express our thoughts/opinions on controversial topics, and it allows us to cover more than what is in the curriculum. We also get to learn more about our peers.
My least favorite project would probably be the “Death of a Salesman” product. It had very little relevance to what was being taught in class; a project that took as much time as that one did should have been closer to the text.
This year has been a great experience because we read a lot of new material, we were exposed to different styles of thinking, and we were trained to articulate our thoughts in an eloquent and concise manner.
I agree with you- I am not a skilled writer but the experience of learning to understand poetry was rewarding especially since we did not really focus on it in Mr. Storey’s class.
Alisha–glad you love the blogs! I loved reading them and seeing your opinions about various topics outside the classroom. What do you think about preassigning students to different weeks to come up with topics? Or did you like the topics I came up with?
I personally enjoyed all of the topics, even the ones the students came up with because we covered a wide variety. I liked how we didn’t just stick to topics we were learning in class because it really made the blog more than just an extension of the course. I also enjoyed how personal we were able to get and that we felt safe enough to share influential experiences within our lives with our peers.
SAME. I liked the blogs too, lol! Especially the ones that some of the students got to choose. I loved all of the TedTalks that everyone chose and I still scroll through that website that Euna introduced us to. The blogs also gave some people a voice, who didn’t speak up as much during class, to voice their opinions on different topics that related to what we were doing and facing everyday.
You mentioned the blogs and I somewhat agree. But at times, it felt like we were reaching for topics to blog about. Like the short stories were fun in theory, but somewhat annoying to execute. Maybe make it a mandatory thing to come up with a blog post for a specific cycle. For example, assign groups or students to each cycle of the year so there’s a constant flow of new topics.
I really liked this idea of assigning blog topics to students. This will as you said prevent a lag in topics as well as bring in more discussion from students. At certain points in the year it will also aid in keeping the focus on the blogs as people (myself included) tend to forge them sometimes.
See above. That is what I suggested.
The death of a salesman project is something that I forgot to address in my post but I’m glad you touched on. The whole thing served as more of a marketing project than one that had any relevance to AP Lit. When I had heard about it in the past I thought it was going to be something different that was possibly going to help us understand Willy better. However, the project just created an unhealthy experience for some. The time that was used for the project could have been spent on better things such as AP review.
“Unhealthy experience” yeah, I do agree with N’Dea that perhaps we should have allocated our time into more review instead of this project. It was a really frustrating experience doing the DOS project because I would go into class knowing I got to spent time on this huge marketing project but not on review. (Especially because I saw my class and other classes beginning their reviews at that point.) Maybe you could make this project smaller and use some time for review instead?
Every book we were reading has some type of importance you never know when it could come up or when you could use it. The AP Exam essays that we practiced really helped me get through the actual exam. I felt like I was ready for the essay, and I knew how to write each one with time to spare. I wish we did a little more practice for the exam and explained the “science” of it all. Otherwise the prep we received was very helpful and allowed me to get through the test. If I could tell one thing to the future students of Mrs. Loux I would tell them to make a summary of all the important things of each novel or lesson, just so when they look back they won’t be overwhelmed. One thing I will take away with me, are the analyzation skills that we were taught. I never knew how important word choice was and how it could set up not just a picture but a story as well.
I totally agree with you about the idea of writing a summary about each novel as they are read…it would have made things less crazy when prep time came in late April.
I love this idea about creating summaries for each text. How could I incorporate this next year? What if I preassigned students to a text in the beginning of the year and they were responsible for creating some type of review/outline/summary? Thank you for all of the suggestions thus far! I look forward to hearing from everyone.
This might not be the most effective or efficient idea, but I think creating a packet of short summaries of each work and giving out such packets in the beginning of A.P. prep would be a nice refresher of all the works. Just a thought.
Farwa, in response to your comment, this really has to be on the students to create. I cannot do all of the work for everyone.
I don’t think I have one particular aspect that I think was best. I liked that it was a relaxed atmosphere because with a discussion based class like Literature it is important to make sure everyone feels included. It was a well balanced course and Mrs. Loux did a good job with how she taught it.
I don’t think I have the patience to teach but if I did I think I would teach the essays earlier in the year. But that just may be because I’m someone that likes to be over prepared. I definitely enjoyed the one pager assignments because the topics were so interesting. I liked the idea of the blogs although I enjoyed certain topics more than others. My least favorite activity would have to be the Death of a Salesman project. It was time consuming and I couldn’t see a direct relevance.
I enjoyed most of the works we read this year. All the poems, Othello, The Stranger, Misery, are among my favorites. The works I would eliminate would definitely be Death of a Salesman because I just despise Willy.
I hated writing the essays especially the poetry. Prose and Free Response were relatively okay. Preparing for the AP exam was stressful because I struggled with the poetry essay even though we had a lot of practice in class.
I would tell a future student to enjoy the poetry in the beginning of the year because once AP season comes around, you will be close reading so much that the joy of reading will be sucked out of you.
One thing I could take away was that I learned good analyzing skills that can apply to more than just poetry.
Meghana, your comment at the end about the joy of reading being sucked out of you made Wayne/”Mike” and I laugh out loud. I am sorry that happened, but you know it is the nature of the test. I hate test prep as much as you guys do! I would much rather read and analyze poems/short stories/characters for fun.
I only enjoyed the one pager assignments because it was the only time when we could write however we want without having to worry about if we used good vocabulary or anything and we just wrote about our opinion.
I completely agree that one pagers had the stress free aspect of being able to write whatever we wanted without the worry of ‘good vocabulary’ or grammar. It was also interesting to see the unexpected challenge of having to fit everything on to only one page. At times I was surprised I had so much to say/type.
I liked writing the one pagers too! It was a lot scary to write a one pager than an essay. The topics that we wrote about were also interesting.
I enjoyed the one pagers too. I felt like it was journal entry, and being able to just ramble felt great.
You liked the blogs? I hated them. Towards the end of the year I almost forgot about them completely and skipped a few by mistake. But, I do agree with you about the essays, I don’t think anybody like them.
You’re biased. You hated everything about the class lol
Yeah the blogs were always pretty stressful for me. I always forgot about them until the very last day. Even though it was stressful to remember to blog every cycle, I did like all the interesting discussions and ideas the blogs forced us to think about.
I agree that all the poems and the books you listed are my favorites. My least favorite would have to be Heart of Darkness. I still enjoyed reading poems when it came to AP season because I had more understanding on how to approach the poems and felt prepared for the ap exam.
I think it is interesting that you still enjoyed reading poems when it came APs came around. I felt that I lost interest in reading some poems during APs because it always came back to “how to write this essay”. I enjoyed it much more at the beginning of the year.
Unfortunately that is the nature of the beast. I personally would rather read the poems and discuss them, but if you want AP credits, we have to rip it apart.
Oh no, my favorite reading (or one of them at least) was HOD though xD It was a good combination of having to understand the time period and having to understand the symbolism and theme. Looking at it through different lenses was really fun too! (Definitely keep that activity, it was fun and helpful!)
I was a little afraid about this course in the beginning especially because I came from Honors English when most kids came from an AP class so I did not know what to expect. However, I eventually started to get the hang of it and you were also very helpful during this process, whether that’s reminding us to finish our essays with a thousand reminds or by taking us step by step on how to write essays. The only thing that I would change is that instead of going over how to write essays right before the AP exam, I would go more in depth about how to write in the beginning of the year before assigning any essays because I found it a little difficult and didn’t know how to improve my writing skills.
My favorite assignment so far would have to be the Death of a Salesman. Even though it was so hectic and at a point frustrating to put everything together, I really enjoyed creating my own product and talking to everyone at the showcase. My least favorite assignment would have to be memorizing the soliloquy because some people are very good at memorizing and some aren’t.
One of my favorite books we read would probably be The Stranger and it should definitely continue next year because there were various themes in that book and it was overall very enjoyable to read. The AP exam essays were a little challenging to write and it was very difficult to get a high score but it did improve my writing skills and made me expand my vocabulary.
One thing that I would tell a future AP Lit student is that the course may seem vigorous but it is fun and you get to learn a lot of things and read many interesting poems. The one thing that this class has taught me is to analyze poetry much faster.
You mentioned the reminders which reminded me (haha) the Remind 101 got so out of hand by the end of the year.
1. I’ll be thinking that someone important is texting me, and then it’s Mrs. Loux telling me about an assignment. So disappointing.
2. There would be a reminder for the same thing every hour on some days.
I do like the reminds, but I agree with Nicole in that we do not need the same text message popping up every hour. If the student doesn’t pay attention the first time it won’t make a difference no matter how many times the message is sent.
YESSSSSS! Mrs. Loux give the remind a break. I mean I’m not upset it was more amusing than anything. I would be doing an essay at 11 and have 3 texts from you ” keep going almost due”. I feel like maybe you shouldn’t stop though, its funny and I guess its just a Mrs. Loux thing.
Mrs. Loux and her sassy reminders for the essays were the best, I personally love the break reminders. (Though the rush of reminders was a bit redundant and bleh.)
Even though I’m good at memorizing things, I don’t like when teachers give soliloquies to memorize. It doesn’t teach me anything and I forget it by the next week. We could spend that time analyzing the text instead.
Nicole, I definitely agree. Memorizing sucks. And memorizing that Hamlet soliloquy was such a struggle for me because I’m so bad at memorizing. It just sucks because I actually really liked the “To Be Or Not To Be” soliloquy because of the deep meaning behind it, but the memorizing aspect made me hate it a little.
I agree with you Nicole. I think that memorizing the text does not force us to learn what it means. Some of the other projects were a little excessive as well. As much as I appreciated the good grade, I think one big project every semester would grab the students attention. We presented at least 4 times this year, and for some of the projects I felt myself stretching to find things to talk about (and I even got a little bored). Projects should be reserved for topics that can be discussed for hours on end because there is so much material to cover.
I agree with Lanette, having to memorize the soliloquy made me hate it a bit… maybe you could offer two variations of the assignment or a different one? Like one could be memorization and the other option could be a one or two pager analysis? To me, memorization of a soliloquy showcases skill but it’s not really a display for my understanding and knowledge of the soliloquy. Analysing though, I can do that.
I completely forgot about the Hamlet soliloquy. I also hated that assignment, but knowing you would grade it generously lifted a lot of the anxiety. I have always thought that memorization is stupid, and this assignment was no exception. I would drop it completely or shorten the soliloquy/choose a shorter one.
In the beginning of the year, I felt very nervous about being in this class because I had never taken an A.P. course before. I was not sure what to expect. Looking back now, I’m glad I took this course; I have learned a lot and improved a lot. What I liked the best about this course was that Mrs. Loux made her class a very open and comfortable place; I was never afraid to speak what was on my mind. My favorite assignment was when we were asked to teach the class for one period on a specific time period of poetry. It was fun to be able to teach our peers how to understand the poems with our own approach. My least favorite assignment was writing the Hamlet essay. I had absolutely no idea what to write and suffered from anxiety because of it. Out of all the literature we read, I enjoyed reading the Ibsen plays the best. They were easy to understand and had very interesting plot lines. My least favorite piece of literature that we read was Heart of Darkness. I lost interest midway through the book and it was difficult to continue reading. Throughout the year, I struggled with writing the A.P. exam essays. However as the year progressed, my writing skills improved due to the practice we had in class. Once I actually sat down for the exam, I felt prepared and ready. The test did not scare me and I was able to finish the three essays in the allotted time. One thing that I would tell a future student is to make sure they read all the literature assigned. They’re not that bad and it’ll help you when you have to write the A.P. Free Response Essay. One thing that I’ll take away from this class is to always close read. It helps you get a better score on your essay which is always good.
One thing I particularly liked best about Mrs. Loux’s teaching is that she never yelled, got angry, or had an attitude. Her positive attitude was uniform throughout the entire school year (at least for period 1), and helped create a positive atmosphere for the classroom. We all have had at least ONE teacher who would take their anger and frustration from a previous class, a personal event, or something else completely unrelated out on an innocent class. Personally, I feel this only leaves a class with animosity towards the teacher, not knowing when the teacher is going to flip out. When we didn’t do so well on an essay, Mrs. Loux hardly raised her voice, but instead went over whatever we did horrible on and told us where we went wrong. One thing I will take away from Mrs. Loux’s class is the importance of positivity and how much progress can be made when one is level-headed.
An assignment that I would eliminate was one aspect of the Hamlet quiz. Out of the many tasks given to us, this is the only one I distinctly remember because I thought it was so unfair. The quiz asked us to place quotes from the text to the character who said the quote. I particularly had trouble with this part because I A) Didn’t memorize Hamlet and B) Had trouble understanding what was being said in the first place, let alone connecting which character was talking to what they were actually saying.
A word of advice for incoming AP Lit students is to do the work assigned to you, WHEN it is assigned to you. It will make life a lot easier instead of cramping everything in at once. Also, when doing said work, take it seriously because 9 times out of 10 she’s actually going to check that you did the evidence sheets.
One thing I’m proud to boast about is how much progress I’ve made with my prose and poetry essays. At the beginning of the year I was questioning whether I made the right choice in being in an advanced class (like I do every single year), because between September and February I only received 1-3’s on my essays. Then something just clicked, and I almost shed a tear when I got my first 6. Even though it’s not a perfect score, that 6 is my golden child.
I agree with what you said about Loux. It is hard to learn from a teacher who always has an attitude, but I feel like Mrs. Loux treated everyone with equal respect and probably respected us more than we respected her sometimes (period 5 throws shade at her outfits). This made it easier to learn from and understand her. If she didn’t have such a positive attitude then I definitely would have failed her class because I had no idea what was going on about 80% of the time.
I remember when were given the Hamlet quiz; everyone was scrambling before class trying to read sparknotes. I agree that it should be eliminated. I did not see that how knowing who said what quote was going to help anything. Maybe just knowing the role of each character in the book would have been better than choosing who said which quote.
Like Peachezzz, I totally agree with what you said about Mrs. Loux. It made the class that much more relaxed and fun, and a positive attitude from a teacher should never be taken for granted.
OMG yes! I completely agree with you on Mrs. Loux. Although she got frustrated and annoyed with us (especially Period 5 because we were crazy), she never got angry with us or gave up on us. She was always open to suggestions. Even though we would all moan and groan about the work, she always had a positive attitude that made the work somewhat more bearable. Our class on countless occasions wasted so much time fooling around and distracting each other. Instead of screaming at us or losing her temper, Mrs. Loux remained positive and calm. By doing so, she was really able to get us focused again, even when really didn’t want to. Even when taking the AP exams, I remember talking to some friends during the breaks, that I honestly wanted to do well for Mrs. Loux. She has invested so much time, effort, and enthusiasm into this class, that I wanted her to feel as if it has all paid off.
I definitely agree Mrs. Loux’s positivity was definitely an asset this year. I would also take out that Hamlet test, the matching quotes to people was a little tedious to me. I felt like I understood the work without having to know what each person said, to whom, and in what chapter.
Thanks for the praise! I try to remain positive regardless of the situations, even when Period 5 makes fun of my clothes/shoes (ahem Nicole 🙂 As for the Hamlet quizzes, I will revamp for next year focusing on close reading, not quote IDs and character analysis.
Yeah, I agree with the fact that Mrs. Loux made a really good environment to speak and learn in. It was really easy to have Socratic seminars (my favourite thing to do!) and to be open for discussion. Everyone was patient and attentive, which was really nice to see.
I hated this class to be honest. I hate reading old plays and books and analyzing poetry. Like I literally wanted to pull an Oedipus and stab out my eyes every time I looked at Shakespeare. I only took this class because the rest of my classes were insultingly easy and I thought that the colleges I applied to would be like “Um you were in honors classes then you switched to all electives. How you go from 100 to 0?” So I said to myself you know maybe I should throw an AP class in there so I don’t look like a complete failure. What was my favorite assignment? Lol that’s a good one, probably the first blog that was a competition. I liked that one because we won and didn’t have to do a different blog of our choice. I would recommend that you continue with that next year. I would tell a future student to stay on top of their work load unlike I did. This was my only serious class and I still felt like I had a full blown schedule. I did learn more about writing, not that it matters because my writing is still trash (notice how I didn’t take that AP exam) so now I get to do it all over again in college. I must say that the teaching was very helpful in the way that we went over things such as poems and sample essays, and had I been more intelligent I would have actually been able to pick up on more analytical things and get better grades. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. It’s not that the class itself was terrible, it just didn’t work for me.
PEACHEZZZ! Stop being so hard on yourself 🙂 You are very intelligent and it was a pleasure having you in my class this year.
I hated everything about this class. The end.
Just kidding. My favorite thing about the class was (obviously) the poetry and short story units. I took this class over Expos because I wanted to read a lot of new literature. I really enjoyed the amount of socratic seminars we had, because I love hearing everyone’s opinion and ideas about a piece of literature we read. My favorite short story was “Life After High School” because it really made me think about…life. It was a cool story. I can’t think of a least favorite short story…all of them were interesting in their own way. Of course, I loved all of the poetry because I had more poems to add to my mental anthology.
I don’t think there is one person who actually completely enjoyed the Death of A Salesman project. If you did, reply to this, and then tell everyone that you’re lying. It was long and EXTREMELY dramatic. I love drama but this was just a mess. I felt like I was in a marketing class for three weeks. I would have liked it a lot more if we used that time for test prep instead. We didn’t really go over what to expect in the multiple choice at all, we just got a bunch of multiple choice practice exams. I think that would have helped a lot, even though many of us already had pretty good multiple choice scores. For class of 2017’s sanity, please get rid of that project. Also, I’ll never understand why you love Willy so much.
When it came to essays on the books we read, all of mine sucked because I didn’t try. I know. But I think that I could have benefited from us talking about what you look for in an essay briefly in class. We all come from different english classes, so each year I think teachers should go over that.
What would I tell Loux’s future AP Lit student? I would tell them that Mrs. Loux is Sammy from the Jersey Shore and a member of the mob. She only shops at Express, wears heels everyday, and her clothes are (somewhat) nice. Oh, and do all of your work a long time before it’s due. Doing homework at lunch ain’t cute.
Nicole, to your point about hearing everyone’s opinions on works: that was when I enjoyed the class most. I enjoyed when we had big socratic seminars, when we got to look at the work from so many different angles. I agree that the Death of a Salesman project just wasn’t stimulating, and I would have liked to spend more time doing something more stimulating, even if it meant writing an extra essay or two.
LMAO “all of mine sucked because I didn’t try.”
For next year’s class, try to actually try. We used to have talks in the locker room about how no one had started the essay due the following day. Try not to be us, or you’ll end up screwing yourself over.
I agree, I think a break down of the multiple choice section would have improved the numbers. I would also like to point out we were given a lot of work (some necessary, but others not so much) which caused most of them to overlap and ultimately forced me to use websites like sparknotes toward the end of the course.
Yeah, I totally agree with you on the procrastination. Though I guess it would be hypocritically of me to advise next year’s class to not procrastinate as I rush to finish this blog post 30 minutes before it’s due. The work is a lot, but to be honest, it only felt really overwhelming at times because I often waited to the last minute to start things. Especially with college apps, senior project, and whatever else life throws at you, waiting until the last minute is really not a good idea, And my friends have yelled at me one too many times for doing lit homework at lunch. I would tell next year’s kids that if you start early, this class isn’t really that intimidating.
So what did I learn from these responses?
1-You will procrastinate whether I give you 4 weeks, 4 days or 4 hours to do an assignment, so in the end, the amount of time I assign for something really doesn’t matter.
2-You hated the DOS project–I get it! You would rather have written 2-3 essays instead. NO DOS Project next year, but I AM teaching DOS. Loux ❤ Willy
3-Nicole LOVED my outfits
When I was coming into A.P. Lit, I had friends telling me horror stories about it, but I’m glad it didn’t turn out to be as horrific as generations past had described it. I still have a few suggestions, that hopefully have not been mentioned before, and hopefully my ideas aren’t too scattered:
First, I love the idea of the short story blogs. I think it gives us a great opportunity to show our creative side. However, I do not think the rules should be so stringent. There are always people who do not post regularly and people who always wait until the very last minute to do blogs, and so making it a rule to have every single person in the class post on the blog is impractical and difficult to work around.
I think I was prepared for the A.P. exam despite not coming to a majority of the A.P. Academy sessions. We did a lot of practice in class that made me feel like I was ready to take the exam, and that was appreciated.
However, the Death of a Salesman project seemed to take a lot of time out of more meaningful instruction. I felt as though in that time we could have been doing other things, like reading more works, or even doing some light preparation for the A.P. Exam. The stress of the project came with little reward as well, besides a grade.
There were definitely times where I felt overwhelmed with work, but coming from an A.P. Language background, I knew how to handle it. The most important thing I would tell an incoming student is not to wait until the last minute to do ANYTHING. Procrastination results in tears. At least, it did for me.
Overall, A.P. Lit wasn’t all too bad.
COULDN’T AGREE WITH YOU MORE ABOUT THE BLOGS. I think it’s a little unfair to expect EVERYONE to post when that’s not the case even for a regular blog. I get where you were coming from when you wanted people not to post consecutively, but the rules made it hard for the story to flow unless you made a google doc prior to posting. I think we’re all on the same page about the DOAS project. Though it was fun, it was very short lived and did nothing besides make me absolutely despise marketing and business more than I did before the project.
To be honest, AP Lit was the one class I was always excited to come to. I loved how I got to learn about things I truly cared about learning and it was in a relaxed environment. Compared to my other classes that were really ridged and structured, there was so much independence and flexibility in AP Lit, and that’s why I loved it so much. My favorite unit this year had to be the poetry unit in the beginning of the year, because I like reading and analyzing poetry. I loved being exposed to so many different types of poems from different time periods and seeing how writing has changed based on the circumstances of the era. My least favorite unit was probably the Death of a Salesman project. I have to say, February was probably the most stressful month of senior year, because of this project. BUT, the one good thing that came out of the project was the strong relationship I build with my two partners! I’m not sure if I’d change anything if I were to teach AP Lit. I felt as though everything that was done was great preparation for the AP exam (except may the short stories or the DOS project, but this can be overlooked, since I really enjoyed the short stories). I liked that we started preparing for the AP exam in the beginning of the year with poetry and transitioned into multiple choice as we started to read and analyze more novels. I think that helped when it came time to take the exam!! Overall, I really liked Lit. I thought it was going to be a lot like Lang, but I was definitely wrong. But the transition from one to the other was easy, and I think the way the class was taught and even the students made it such an enjoyable experience.
Yeah I definitely felt the same! I really thought I was going to dread this class, after hearing last year’s seniors complain about the work load. While they were perfectly right about the crazy work load, this class was actually a lot of fun. I bonded with so many of my classmates through various projects and essays, and Mrs. Loux’s relaxed style of teaching gave us a lot of freedom to express ourselves and have fun in the classroom.
Coming from junior year, I had really high standards for my English class. And not that this year was awful, but it was different.
The work load was a lot more independently determined. There was little to no in-class time to work on essays. There are a lot of grades. A lot. Especially in comparison to Storey.
Looking back on the year, I think the worst part was probably the classroom dynamic. It was enjoyable to fool around and goof off, but only if you were in the mood to do absolutely nothing. It ended up being pretty disruptive and detrimental to our focus. But to change that, it boils down to everyone in the class being focused on learning from Day 1. Once one person dropped into senioritis, everyone slowly followed, including myself. So maybe for next year, it would be more helpful to try and be more strict with focusing in class. And then as the year progresses, ease up a bit and your students will follow.
For the AP test, I felt prepared. A lot of people are saying they wished we did more prep work, but there came a time when I wished we would stop. It became mindless analyzing and doing practice exams everyday, which drained any joy from the class. Instead of just doing massive amounts of practice essays and exams, it might be helpful to actually analyze the essays and what made them good. Or what multiple choice questions each of us struggles on. It might also help to spread out the AP prep. Last year, we did prep for a few months, read and discussed for a few months, and then revisited AP stuff right before the exam. It made everything more bearable than spreading prep throughout the year and then spending most of the 3rd marking period solely on prep.
A note to next year’s class, try not to complain. The work sucks, but complaining about the work won’t make it any less. Suck it up, plan out your work, and it’ll be a lot easier. And hopefully you won’t drive Loux insane like period 5 did. Oh, and show up to AP Academy if you sign up, or Loux will write you a shady letter subtweeting you.
Looking back, the blog sounds like I hated the class, which is untrue most of the time. I actually really enjoyed some of the Socratic seminars and the texts. Last year, I really found my love for reading novels, but this year uncovered my love for poetry. I specifically remember reading “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” and spending the period trying to uncover all of its minor details. It was really interesting to see the differences between prose and poetry, but seeing similar techniques used in both.
This was definitely THE shadiest blog post. It’s kind of unfair for you to say the test prep was too much because not everyone is gonna be on the same level. But I do agree that Storey’s method of test prep was a lot less draining. And I also agree with you saying Mrs. Loux should be more strict because well…we were a mess.
I can definitely understand your experience, but I think the flexibility of Mrs. Loux in the class was a benefit. I think it made the class more like college. I think Mrs. Loux allowed a little fun and discussion, but at the end of the day your homework and assignments were due on time and if you didn’t do it you were out of luck. I had senior it is but it wasn’t an option when I knew I had a paper due. I guess I think the class reflected college. Nobody is going make you take it serious, you have to on your own.
PREACH KIELAH! I am not your mother. If you want to learn, I am here to teach you, if not, that is on you.
On another note, I do have to say that in my mind we did prepare for the AP essays throughout the year. Please see the following schedule of recorded AP essays.
The dates for the poetry essays are as follows: 9/8, 10/2, 1/2, 1/12, 3/10, 3/16, 4/11, 4/18 (8 essays)
The dates for the prose essays are as follows: 10/13, 11/16, 1/3, 1/25, 4/25 (5 essays)
We also did an AP Free Response Essay in December for Hamlet/Othello, one in Jan for Heart of Darkness, one in March for The Stranger/The Metamorphosis, and one in April one any text of your choice. (4 essays)
And these were the ones that were graded. To everyone in this blog who said that you wanted more AP prep, please clarify specifically WHAT and WHEN in the year. Also HOW would you liked to have done it? You absolutely can be critical, but give me practical suggestions for next year. FYI–as you crazy kids say, NO SHADE HERE, just trying to figure out what more I should have done. I agree yes more MC, but if I had to assign/read another AP essay I may have gone all Oedipus as well.
The most important thing that I took away from this class is that starting work early really is the best option. I have had my fair share of late nights before this year, but this class really marked it in my brain. Not sure why to be honest, I just lost all the rush that it usually gave me. Probably because Loux would always say that we had x amount weeks to do something. That would always get me, because there is really no excuse, for me anyways. Like some have said before, that would be the advice I would give to future students. Try not to leave assignments until the morning it is due. My favorite part of the class was hearing people’s opinions on different topics during seminars. That is always interesting. Least favorite part was DoS project because at it’s core, I just don’t see it fitting in an English class. Overall, I did enjoy just coming to class and just hearing people discuss things, that was the best part for me.
You are right Danielle, (in general you should start your work early) but especially for this class because we will get new assignments before the previous one has been completed.
I completely agree with not seeing the English point of the DOS project, however it was kinda of fun to do. I was also presently surprised about how much I liked presenting in in the Commons. If the project was given say earlier in the year when Ap’s weren’t right around the corner then maybe the project could be better appreciated?
I think the DOAS project would have been hell if you were not in a strong group. Communication, trust, and overall cooperation with your team members is what made it possible to have a good time with this project. I was lucky to have such an awesome group who were not only so good with deadlines and responsibility, but also gave such a strong sales pitch to help us win 😉
I didn’t like the DoS project either. I feel like it was meant to be fun but instead it was just a lot of work and it truly did barely have anything to do with the class. The concept of it was cool though.
I really liked our socratic seminars and hearing other peoples’ opinions as well(especially since everyone in our class is so vocal about their opinions)!
At the start I was quite apprehensive about Ap Literature and Composition since I was coming from Honors English and not Ap Language as most of my classmates had, however aside from a few ‘disadvantages’ I would say that the jump from Honors to Ap was not that drastic. I have always enjoyed reading and poetry analysis in the leisure sense and taking this class helped hone in those skills and refine my thought process. Writing was a skill I personally felt I could always improve on and Ap lit help in that. However I wish writing prep was a process that happened sooner; in that learning how to write and how to correct what was wrong. I really enjoy analyzing the short stories and teaching that to the class. My favorite piece of literature this year was most likely Heart of Darkness and Dollhouse. My least favorite work was Death of a Salesman (sorry) Our(P5) Socratic Seminars are probably the most memorable part of this class. Preparing for the Ap exam was OK and I always think more can be personally done. However the test (I thought) went really well. Overall this was a really great class and experience!
I totally agree with you. The transition from honors to AP was actually really smooth! It went way better than I had expected. I found myself doing even doing better than a lot of my peers who had come from AP lang! I think it’s all about work ethic with AP lit. If you’re responsible and good with time management, it’s definitely easier to be successful.
This year was interesting to say the least. Coming from an honors class where the hardest thing I had to was a 20 word vocab quiz once every 3 weeks, this class was definitely something I wasn’t used to. AP english is a LOT different from the AP sciences and history classes I was used to. Like many of my peers said, I think focusing on the vocabulary would have really helped for the exam. It would have got all of us some easy points on that test for sure! I think it’s safe to say that I’ve definitely grown as a writer and as a student with my days in AP lit. I am a very literal person and I used to HATE reading poetry and this class changed my perspective on it a little bit. I can now analyze them with ease and pull so many deeper meanings behind the pieces, and I’m proud of how far I’m come since the beginning of the year. In terms of test prep, I’m pretty sure you beat the life out of us. Essay prompts everyday was draining, even if it was just to analyze and come up with a thesis. I was not a very strong writer and it was hard for me to pull passing grades on the essay until one day a few weeks before the exam everything just seemed to click. I’m lucky that this happened to me, but I think a lot of people felt underprepared for the essays in general, because we didn’t know what was expected of us even though we did so many practice tests. The DOAS was fun… but it truly didn’t have anything to do with the book or with the class in general. I think we all felt extremely stressed and after about the first week it stopped being fun and became a hassle instead. I LOVED the short story unit because it brought about a lot of fun things to talk about in class. I so love the fact that AP lit is so socratic seminar based, and I think learning from your peers and hearing what they have to say is really productive. I think every student coming into this class should definitely stay on top of their work (ask everyone, i was ALWAYS organized and ahead of everything :)) It definitely helps make things less stressful, and it’s safe to say I wasn’t freaking out over everything like a lot of other people were. I’m glad I got to learn so many awesome things this year and I definitely would recommend this class to everyone! It changes your perspective on english and literature.
I agree with you about going from Honors into Ap Lit. It was very different especially with the essays and the work load and I was not prepared at all for Lit but I think I did okay.
Overall I think the class was okay. I didn’t hate it and I didn’t necessary love it. Taking the class did make me question whether or not I wanted to pursue literature in college, which i don’t think is necessarily a bad thing. One thing I truly enjoyed about your class is the short stories. I really liked reading those because to me those stories were the most interesting things we had to read this year. One thing I didn’t like was all those socratic seminars and how heavily talking during a socratic seminar affected your grade. I would rather listen to everyone’s ideas and thoughts on a piece of literature rather than voice my own so the socratic seminars weren’t for me. Also I felt like I was being forced to talk so that I wouldn’t get a bad grade on the assignment which made me not want to talk even more. So my advice for incoming students taking Ap Literature is that if you don’t like socratic seminars, maybe you shouldn’t take the class.
Like everyone else, I also felt like there wasn’t enough prep for the AP exam. I felt so unprepared and unready for the test that I decided not to take it even though I mainly took the class for the AP exam. Even with all the socratic seminars, the blog posts I always forgot to do until the last minute (even this one and we got an extension -.-), and not being able to take the AP exam, I still think the class was okay and the environment and atmosphere of the classroom was very welcoming and nice.
I too felt that we did not have enough time to prep for the AP exam. I wish we had spent more time working on essays than making fever charts.
This year’s course was by no means what I expected but it was a fun and sometimes bothersome experience. For starters I did not like having to teach a short story to the class. There is only so much that you can talk about in terms of characters and themes and things of that nature. It gets to a point where the only thing to talk about is whether or not people thought that a certain character was annoying. Additionally, having to write an explication on top of coming up with a lesson plan was a lot. I understand that the point of it was to demonstrate out understanding of the story but that could also be assessed during our lesson. Another thing that i found excessive was the length and detail of the data sheets. Many of those things were never discussed during the socratic seminar and just served as busy work that we were sometimes only given a day to do. On the flip side I did enjoy teaching poetry. The lessons allowed us to pick poems that we actually wanted to read and therefore made analyzing them fun instead of torturous. Many times looking at poems in class becomes boring and tiresome because we are not interested in the poem. Whereas with the lessons, we became invested in the poems and this made teaching exciting because we could share what it is that we discovered while analyzing it.
I agree that a lot of the work was tedious and unnecessary. I would suggest cutting back on some of this work(for example, the data sheets) next year.
Yeah I really hated the data sheets. We couldn’t even use short stories in the AP exam so I don’t understand why we had to go so in depth with some of the details in the story. Frankly, the data sheets made reading the short stories a lot less enjoyable.
I was really excited coming into AP Lit because I looked forward to reading a lot of classic pieces of literature. If I was teaching the course, I would spend more time discussing how to write the essays and going over essay writing tips. My favorite activity was writing the short story blogs; every blog post took the stories to a different direction and I really enjoyed reading the creative blog posts. My least favorite activity was filling out the worksheets during our short story unit; they did not help me at all and took a lot of time to fill out. My favorite unit this year was existentialism. I enjoyed reading The Metamorphosis and The Stranger and I really enjoyed the discussions we had during class. Overall, I enjoyed this class and wish the best of luck to incoming AP Lit students.
Wow, I can’t believe we’re already at the end of the year. To be honest, I went into senior year with my eyesight set on graduating. While I’m still really anxious to graduate, I’m surprised to say that I’m going to miss this class a lot. Even though I came from AP Lang with Storey, I was still taken off guard with the crazy work load this class demanded. Even though I hated the work, I still loved the class. I love everyone in Period 5 was able to joke around with each other and have a lot of fun. Even in our Socratic Seminars, while there were a lot of goofing around, we did often have a lot of serious, heated, and passionate discussions. As for prepping for the AP exam, it was exhausting and extensive. From the very beginning of the year you made us write practice AP essays, read/analyze AP poems, etc. Especially leading up to the exam, writing essay after essay was tiring. The essays almost became mechanical – which I guess is a good thing on a timed exam. However I feel as if the work prepping for the AP exam paid off. The seemingly endless practice did allow me to try new ways to read/write the AP essays, and I did see score improvements in all 3 essay types. As for the AP exam, I felt well prepared. One thing I would suggest is that maybe spend some time in the year teaching formal poetic and literary terminology. Phrases such as heroic couplets, etc. did show up on the exam, which I had no clue what they meant. Otherwise, I felt really comfortable with the timing because we had practiced so many multiple choice questions and essays. Also, I found the powerpoint with all the free responses from previous years extremely helpful. Looking back on this year, I have and will tell future AP Lit students that this class is a lot of work but manageable – even with senioritis. The class is actually really fun and is one of the few classes this year I really looked forward to throughout my schedule. You’ll also probably bond with a lot of your classmates as you debate whether 5 hour energy drinks or Monster is better as you all stay up the night before typing an essay due 7:15 the next morning.
I’m late! But in spite of that I would like to say I really enjoyed this course this year. I was dreading taking A.P. classes my senior year because I originally thought I would have a lot of stress dealing with hard courses and the college process. I actually ended up enjoying the class. I started out getting 4’s on every essay and I use to feel really sad that everyone else began to improve and I didn’t. It was very helpful when you showed examples of how to properly write the essays and gave detailed constructive criticism because it helped me improve. On my final test I ended with a 6, 6.5 and a 7. I also liked the Socratic seminar method of studying the books that we took. Its easy to read and take a quiz, but to have in depth discussions on the works and really analyze the text is what I found most helpful. If I had to change anything is that we start the course with literature terminology and background. I feel like I never had to know sonnets and hard literature terms and as I progressed I felt behind with the multiple choice. If we were maybe given a terminology packet I would have had more time to acclimate to the language. I think I was still in A.P. Language mode. I also didn’t like reading the Hamlet soliloquy, but that’s just me personally because performance makes me nervous. The short story period was really enjoyable, I think all the stories were interesting and fun to read. I like how we did creative projects, The Death Of A Salesman project was fun and I think it should always continue, its nice to see how creative everyone can get. Overall I’m very glad I took the course, as much as I dreaded reading some book and HATED the end of marking period essays, I improved, I enjoyed the class and I’m even more prepared for college.
For me taking this class was bittersweet because I wasn’t a fan of poetry and reading all these texts that probably wouldn’t matter to me in the future. However AP Lit also provided me with a lot of great opportunities. For example, the Death of a Salesman project was my favorite because at first even though it seemed ridiculous and unnecessary, at the end it was so much more fun. It was exciting to talk to new people every time they came by our station and to hear people be interested in our idea. It was an eye opener that any random idea could actually be very successful in the real world. I also really liked writing the one pagers because it was great to get out all my ideas at once and not have to write so many pages about it. If I were teaching the course, I would do less Socratic seminars because it was very repetitive and is detrimental to people’s grades who don’t like to talk that much or just don’t have anything to add to the discussion. My least favorite assignment was the short stories because I did not enjoy reading them and having to do a data sheet on every single one. There were some good short stories however I did enjoy reading Stranger and Metamorphosis, because they were short but had a good story line. Next year I think students should do a mixture of poems and short stories but also incorporate stories or even Socratic seminars about real world problems because they could connect to texts and it would be an eye opener for a lot of students. I feel like I got better as we continued to write the various AP exam essays. The more we did them the more I realized the poetry essay was interesting because you had to really understand and take apart each part of the poem which was somewhat fun for me. The free response was easy for me because you could freely write based on whichever text you knew the best. I will tell a future student to be prepared for the Socratic seminars because I know I did not speak as much as I should have and I could have done better. From Mrs.Loux’s class I will take away that it is important to do your best even if you don’t want to or think it’s not worth it because at the end the amount of work you put in pays off.
Well all, I truly appreciate you taking the time to reflect on our AP Lit course this past year. You have given me some very helpful suggestions and advice for next year. Although some of it I do not necessarily agree with, I think it makes for a healthy discussion and allows me to reflect on the course and my teaching. I am so glad many of you even reflected on your performance in the class. Reflection is so important in anything you do, especially if you want to be successful in college.
If you read through all of the responses, I see very mixed opinions on the AP prep. To be honest, I thought we did so much of it throughout the year, but in your eyes, many of you did not feel ready. Please provide practical suggestions on how to improve this for next year, but before you do so, please read one of my previous posts.
Here are some more of my takeaways:
(1) Loved the short story and poetry units
(2) Loved most of the texts, with the except of Death of a Salesman and some of you disliked Heart of Darkness–Sorry both of these texts are staying
(3) Focus on writing AP essays earlier in the year–DONE! I can do this
(4) Keep the blogs and assign students to come up with topics–DONE!
(5) Eliminate DOS project–although this will be hard for me if students are not going to embrace it, I would rather not waste time
(6) Short story data sheets–I will condense to a singular front page, but you need to be accountable for the reading in some way
(7) Due dates don’t matter because everyone will procrastinate
(8) Consider how to incorporate more vocabulary into poetry/prose units–Klastava and I are already doing this with look at structure AND genre for the poetry unit
(9) Ensure that EVERYONE is getting what they need
(10) Socratic seminars are a great way to discuss texts and allow for free discussion
Thanks again for a great year!
One thing I liked about class was the variety of work we saw. We had old poetry with over eloquent language that we had to pick apart but then really abstract ideas in short stories we had to analyze. I wanted to do AP Lit because I wanted to be exposed to more literature, and I got what I wanted.
I honestly don’t know how I’d teach this class better. Mrs. Loux, you did an amazing job when it came to AP students who talked way too much but didn’t have enough ways to say it. (On second thought, maybe adjust the extra credit we get? There were a lot of opportunities, but I don’t think we got a lot of extra credit that were actual English assignments. I liked the movie existentialism extra credit one pager we had to do because it actually made us do extra English work and had us understand an aspect of English lit better.)
Oh man one of my favorite assignment was the lens paper we had to do in HOD. It let me go into the archetype lens and it was so much fun to study something in detail and apply it to HOD. Loved it, loved it, loved it
My least favorite assignment was the DOS project by far. It frustrated me that we seemed to be doing a business project where people who had social media presence clearly got the upperhand. I also didn’t feel like this project prepped me so an AP exam, which I expected an AP Lit class to do. In all honesty, this project was a reason I considered not taking the class. I knew that there was less review time due to the project and I personally rely heavily on review time so I didn’t know how ready this class would be able to get me.
Oh gosh, I loved how we read so many texts this year. I might have not enjoyed every text, but I managed to appreciate the literary value of most of them. I enjoyed the short stories that explored psychological concepts (like “The Rocking Horse Winner”) or moral ambiguity (“A Good Man Is Hard To Find”) because the topics were new and therefore, kind of a mental exercise when it came to analyzing about. I can’t remember anything I really hated. (I generally have a distaste for Shakespeare but the depth and quality of the analysis we did this year made it bearable lol)
(Can I talk about other stuff I wrote besides the AP essay? Yeah, I’m going to talk about other stuff.) I really liked that Mrs. Loux gave us something to write about, what she wanted, and then let us write how we wanted. My biggest problem transitioning from an honors to an ap class was that in my honors class I had to loosely follow a structure but in AP, there were ways to analyze and express that deviated from the normal structure. Loux had no issue with letting me write my paper my way as long as I hit all the points she wanted and it was helpful.
To prep for the exam, I took a lot of prompts from class and wrote them again to practice my essays. I have a stack of practice essays I still need to burn actually. I thought that going into the AP exam I would be ruined but…it wasn’t that bad? I was used to having to push for time and used to having to read and analyze real quickly, so while I know I could have done better but I think I did okay.
To future/potential kids: I didn’t realize this but if you want to take this class but not want to take the exam, THAT’S TOTALLY OKAY. I kinda realized I shouldn’t have taken the exam because my school only accepts fives (which, I’m sorry Loux, but that seems really unlikely for me) but I really appreciate the experience I got here. I was exposed to so many different types of literature and new ways of thinking/analyzing. I’m going to go to college with sharpened analytical skills where I can disassemble a piece of writing and write on it. Plus, it’s just really cool when you realize how much more elaborate and deep the meaning of literature is to a time period and to an author.
I WILL TAKE AWAY THE ABILITY TO SPARKNOTES SO WELL.
…kidding, kinda. In AP Lit, I’ve actually gotten a lot better at summarizing texts. I mean that I can pick out crucial pieces of information and summarize them neatly for future reference, and that neat packaging makes it easier for me to analyze and understand things. Seems like a small thing, but it’s a really helpful skill for me.
Mrs. Loux, I know I definitely am/was not a model student or even a very good student (all that late and missing work hah ha…), but I want you to know that I really do appreciate the things that you introduced us to and taught us. I can definitely say I’m leaving high school as a better student c: