What I've Learned in 20 Years of AP Lit

This week is our last week of school, and like most teachers, it couldn’t come any sooner. And while this year hasn’t been extraordinary in any ways, it is special for me. This is my 20^th year of teaching, which seems crazy. Even crazier, I taught AP Lit as a freshly graduated 22-year-old, which means it is also my 20^th year of teaching AP Lit. As I look back on my career so far, I’ve seen a lot of changes to the course, the exam, and the strategies behind teaching AP English Literature. And yet, some core elements have stayed the same as well.

Changes I’ve Seen:

Less Emphasis on # of Books, More Emphasis on WHAT Books

Whenever I attended an AP training or the AP reading, one question seemed to govern the atmosphere: How many books do you teach? When I first started teaching AP Lit I taught about six full-length books a year, plus one more for summer reading. I was quite proud of this number. However, at the reading there were veteran teachers boasting about teaching twelve or more books in a year (and they all seemed 600+ pages long, now that I think about it). This used to humble me and I generally stayed quiet when it was text-boasting time. I felt like I didn’t measure up, both literally and figuratively.

Even before the exam changed in 2019, I began to notice a shift in this attitude towards the test. While many classes had to read a dozen or more texts in a year, it became clear that reading isn’t the same as analyzing. To really guide students in understanding a text for analysis, you need to do some work in class. It also became evident that students with too many long texts suffered from drill-and-kill teaching. In other words, we teachers strangled the fun out of it. Students might earn a high score on the exam, but if they never want to read another work of literature again, what was the point at all?

These days, I’m quite happy to report that we study three full-length books (two novels and one play), as well as a nonfiction book. I ask students to read four books independently as well, but I’m not naive enough to think that most do. Even so, we do just fine with a lower number because I know we are reading those books well.

Bigger variety and more diverse texts

Back in 2006, the books I taught were predominantly old, long, and “classic.” I inherited books like All the King’s Men, Beowulf, and The Grapes of Wrath, as well as several Shakespearean texts. And while these books are still excellent, the options have definitely widened. Teachers are trained to “teach what you love,” and we do! I also think we adapt and change books that we teach more frequently based on our students’ interests. Another trend I’ve noticed is fewer summer reading assignments and more teachers incorporating independent reading. This also lends to more variety and incorporation of diverse works and authors.

Another element that contributes to this change is our students’ decreasing attention spans. I can barely keep my Shakespeare students hooked on Hamlet, and that’s even with reading it aloud each day. I know I could never keep my 2026 students hooked on All the King’s Men for five weeks these days. More AP Lit teachers are embracing shorter texts, read-aloud plays, and even film analysis to hook our students’ ever decreasing attention spans.

Close Reading Skills are on the Decline

Since we’re talking about low attention spans, we need to talk about students’ close reading strategies. No matter how many times I remind my students to annotate and read closely, I would say most of my students jump into analysis after one cursory reading. I have shifted to grading annotation assignments just to see that students can do it in the first place. My in-class discussions often illuminate misreadings or surface level understanding because so many students don’t want to “sit” in a piece of literature long enough to fully analyze it.

One major reason that annotation and close reading skills are on the decline is the shift to online testing. No matter how much I train my students to annotate for close reading, they can’t do it on the exam. Students are told to use online annotation tools on AP Classroom and the AP exam. Frankly, this is not the same. After the exam, all my students said they wished they were at least given a paper prompt for the test and I agree that it would improve understanding and close reading for everyone.

Better Multiple-Choice Performances

I don’t want readers to think I’m against technology or AP Classroom, because I’m not. In fact, I’m incredibly grateful for AP Classroom and the Personal Progress Checks it has for each unit. I’ve always been fine to give students on-demand essays to practice writing skills, but multiple-choice practice was difficult. Before AP Classroom, we relied on released exams and for-purchase test prep booklets to practice multiple choice. If we were really strapped, we struggled to write our own multiple-choice questions.

Because of AP Classroom, students can practice multiple choice strategies all year long. I especially love the assessments that explain why wrong answers are wrong and correct answers are correct. This year, because my students took all nine PPCs, I was able to offer each student a customized performance overview. This showed students what skills they need extra help with, based on their multiple choice performance. I was even able to assign students videos to watch in order to help them cultivate this skill.

In my 20-year career, I’d say AP Classroom has had its ups and downs. But as of today, I’m grateful for the support it offers AP Lit teachers functioning alone in the classroom without resources or extra help. My students have a better understanding of what they need to do on multiple choice questions. Even better, it hasn’t been up to me alone to teach them these skills.

What’s Stayed the Same:

The Importance of On-Demand Writing

One of the first skills I learned as an AP Lit teacher was how to administer, assess, and grow from a timed writing. Timed essays are the dreaded assessment in most AP classes, but no one can deny they are the most helpful way to prep for the exam. Even though we’ve shifted from a nine-point holistic rubric to a six-point analytical rubric (a shift I approve of), the fundamentals of scoring these essays haven’t changed much. I felt uncertain about my abilities in assessment until I was hired as an AP reader, where I learned a few of the guiding principles that I still use today:

Grade it thoroughly but quickly. AP Readers won’t read an essay more than once so you shouldn’t have to either, especially as you get to know your students’ abilities.
Provide feedback so students can improve their writing the next time.
Give both individual feedback and whole-group feedback in the form of a rehash. To learn more about rehashing, check out this blog post.
When in doubt, study the rubric. I’ve read the AP Lit rubrics hundreds of times and still find myself scrutinizing the wording in each column.
Reward students for what they do well, penalize only as needed.

Poetry – Teach What You Love

I spent my first four years teaching at a school in Milwaukee where our AP Lit class was also a British literature class. Because my poems were limited only to British authors, they were pretty classic in nature. However, since I made the switch to my new curriculum and have the ability to teach any poem I want, the selections have been as varied as my moods. Some days I don’t know what poem I want to teach until the students walk in. As in many things, the mantra of “teach what you love” has driven me to simply pick poems that I think my students will love.

There are lots of fun and flashy ways to teach poetry, many of which I’ve featured on this website. But time and time again, most of us return to simply selecting a text, reading it, and delighting in its uniqueness. I like doing different skill activites of pairing poems with others from time to time, but it’s not necessary. Poems are complex, so instruction doesn’t have to be.

Here’s a list of some classic poems that I turn to time and time again:

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Oxygen” by Mary Oliver
“Out, Out—” by Robert Frost
“A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne
“A Story” by Li-Young Lee
“Digging” by Seamus Heaney
“Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath
“The Colonel” by Carolyn Forché
“Musee des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden

…As well as some newer picks that my students have loved in the past few years:

“For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper” by Joseph Fasano
“Lot’s Wife” by Anna Akhmatova
“mulberry fields” by Lucille Clifton
“Negative Space” by Ron Koertge
“It Is Maybe Time to Admit That Michael Jordan Definitely Pushed Off” by Hanif Abdurraquib
“Baked Goods” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
“drones” by Clint Smith
“Good Bones” by Maggie Smith
“Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón
“Testify” by Eve Ewing
“Problems with Hurricanes” by Victor Hernández Cruz
“The Fury of Overshoes” by Anne Sexton
“Gate A-4” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Fraternal Support Among AP Lit Teachers

In my first few years as an AP Lit teacher, I truly existed on an island. My predecessor left me with her materials, but we never met face to face. I received no training until midyear (when I learned I was doing everything wrong). The only “curriculum” I found was Sandra Effinger’s brilliant website Ms. Effie’s Lifesavers.

Truly, it wasn’t until I became an AP Reader that I felt seen as a member on my island. I found my people, but except for one week a year, I still lived on that island. Then in 2016, I discovered the AP Lit Facebook group. Finally, I found the camaraderie I was looking for. It wasn’t so much that I needed resources (by then I was already making pretty much everything I wanted for myself), but I wanted to feel seen in the skirmish that is AP Lit.

Now, ten years later, I’ve become very close to some of those “Facebook friends,” as cringe as it sounds. Without that group I wouldn’t have met Susan Barber, Timm Frietas, Melissa Smith, Brian Stzabnik, Matt Brisbin, Melissa Tucker, Sarah Stoper, Adrian Nester, Brian Hannon, and numerous other professionals who let me glimpse their brilliant brains for time to time. It’s privileged company, to say the least.

If you’re still teaching on an island, I encourage you to reach out. Here are a number of ways you can find other AP Lit teachers to learn from:

Attend a training or an APSI
Join the Facebook group
Search for AP Lit content on Threads or Twitter
Apply to be an AP Reader
Follow teachers like me on social media

Cheaters Gonna Cheat

In my first few weeks of being a newbie AP Lit teacher, I encountered several students sneaking glances at their book for a reading quiz. I was shocked–these are AP Lit students! Surely advanced students wouldn’t cheat to get a better grade, would they?

What a fool I was. Of course students will cheat. In fact, one might argue advanced students are more likely to cheat because they are desperate to keep their grades high.

While the type of cheating may vary, students will still cheat. When I got hired we struggled with Sparknotes and sneaking paper “cheat sheets” into tests. Nowadays it’s problems with AI and insecure online testing. I don’t have a cure-all to curb cheating, but I can also tell you that I’ve learned to live amongst cheaters. Some get caught and some don’t, and that’s the way of it. My only advice after twenty years is to seek solace in the few students who take the class for the love of the literature. They might not be the straight A student, but they love the content. Those are the kids that will keep you wanting to keep showing up.

We Never Feel We’ve Done “Enough”

If I had a dollar for every time I heard an AP Lit teacher say, “I am just worried I didn’t do enough,” I’d have many dollars. Even after twenty years, I can assuredly say there isn’t enough time—not in a year nor in a career. And even if you follow the CED perfectly, you won’t feel ready. And your students will certainly not give you the peace of mind that they’re ready either.

This year, I broke my leg at the end of March, requiring surgery. Whatever, that’s fine, I thought. I can teach on one leg. However, I didn’t know that surgery requires two weeks at home to avoid blood clots. Suddenly, I lost most of April with my AP Lit students. My plans for poetry March Madness went out the window and I had to scrap together a project they could do with a sub for two weeks. Those projects took another two weeks to present, leaving us only three days to cram for the exam. And you know what? That’s okay.

You can’t prep a student for the AP Lit exam in just a few weeks. You can’t even do it over the course of the year. So much of their success relies on the skills they already have and the work they’re willing to do. We will never earn each kid a 5—and that’s the point. Ultimately, this is their journey. We are just the guides who lead them most of the way. And I look forward to guiding many more as my career continues.

Need help?

If you’re just starting AP Lit or looking back at 20 years (or more), I’d love to help you in any way I can. Bookmark this website, where I post free lessons, reading lists, and other helpful tools for ELA teachers. I also have many resources in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, over half of which are geared towards AP Lit teachers!