Mike Tyson Was Right – AP Research

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

I have been loving this first year of teaching AP Research.  I’m still not sure I’m doing everything well, but I enjoy it and the students are engaged.  Research requires me to be so much more flexible than any other course I’ve ever taught.  I made up my syllabus back in June, but since school began, I’ve been forced to freestyle.  I anticipated some of my students’ needs, but not most of them.  Every week it feels like we need to change direction based on where their inquiries are leading them.  Thankfully, my school has been generous and given me plenty of planning time. 

Here are some of my students’ inquiries. 

• The factors that influence acceptance of EV cars.
• How otome games are affected by post-feminist theory.
• How much does the digital divide affect health outcomes in rural areas?
• The psychological effects of dating restrictions in high schools.
• Why is product placement so awful in Chinese television?

This is less than a quarter of my students and each has a different topic they are studying.  How much experience do I have in those topics?  Almost none.  I had a plan on how to approach our one-on-one meetings until I got punched by their inquiries.  I love learning more about what they’re doing; it is super interesting stuff.  But sometimes I feel like an imposter just trying to keep up. 

 With any luck, they will listen to me and find real expert advisors who can provide more guidance.  Those advisors can direct them to the current scholarship in their fields.  The best I can do is tell them what I, a somewhat educated guy, think should be going on in the field.  I imagine that there has been some research already done on how music affects math learning, but I have no idea what it might be. 

Another potential benefit to being a layman is that I feel I am pretty good at calling out students when they are using too much industry jargon and shorthand.  While academic papers often use specialized language, clarity is important for the AP Research paper.  As such, if I struggle to understand what my student is writing about even after meeting with them every week and seeing their work develop, I know that they need to improve their communication if they want to succeed in the course. 

All in all, AP Research is the most interesting course I’ve had the pleasure of teaching.  At least so far.  Let’s see how I feel about it when my students start submitting their inquiry proposal forms and trying to organize their surveys and experiments.