Teaching AP English Literature for the First Time

As a first year AP Lit teacher, what do you wish someone had told you before teaching AP English Lit?

It’s the second weekend in May and the AP English Lit exam just released the FRQ prompts from the test this week. Most teachers are winding down the school year and reflecting on its highs and lows. Some of those teachers taught AP Lit for the first time. I posted this question to first year AP teachers (and those who vividly remember their first year) to get their perspective.

AP Lit is huge. Despite trainings and AP Summer Institutes, many teachers feel underprepared for the course. Others (such as me) are the only AP Lit teacher in their school and lack the community to discuss the course and its problems. (This is why the AP Lit Facebook group has over 15,000 members!)

As I went to write this blog post, I planned to address some of the remarks made here. But I think we’re better served by reading the comments unfiltered. Just like our students, we are growing and learning from our missteps, so each year makes us a better teacher. For my tips on answering some of the questions raised by first-year teachers, please see the portion at the end.

I polled some first year teachers to ask what they wish they new before teaching AP Lit. Here are their answers:

Planning and Pacing

• Quality over quantity. I wish I would have known the best bang for your buck skills.
• I wish someone would tell me how I should arrange the units. Should I focus on genre and skill or group texts based on theme?
• Pacing! Also, what is the best way to assign and then teach novels? I always struggle with how much reading they should do independently and then how best to identify what needs to be discussed. Most years the students will bring discussion points to class and it is great, but what do you do if they are a passive learning group?
• Students didn’t need to read 8 novels in a year to be ready for the exam.
  • From Gina: I got this answer a lot. Before 2019, the AP Lit Course Document didn’t recommend short fiction, so the course was made up entirely of poetry, novels, and plays. Many teachers who have been teaching for decades still use this approach. I remember hearing teachers brag at the 2011 AP Lit Reading (my first one) about teaching 11-12 novels in a year! Those days are gone and the CED recommends only 3.
• How to balance everything. I feel clunky.
• Since I teach in an 85 minute block, I only have my students for half a year. I wish I had known more about pacing and paid more attention to it.
• How huge the course is. Also, how to teach the sophistication point!
• First year here. I felt like I taught it as a test prep course. In my previous years of teaching, I focused on learning to love literature. I definitely did not do that. My only writing assignments were the 3 essay formats over and over. It seemed stilted and forced. I just don’t know how to balance test prep with a broader intro to literature.
• Less is more.
• So many books fit the requirement of the Lit Argument question, so don’t hesitate to dump an older “classic” in favor of a text that will better engage your students.
• This is my fourth year teaching AP and it took me a minute to realize the title of the course is English Literature and Comp. My predecessor taught novels without focus. I also teach English 12 British Literature so now I do those period units with my AP class. That can also seem like a lot. AP daily units, Brit. Lit, and sporadic longer works thrown in.
• Lots of grading with specific feedback…like 100x more than other classes!

Student Relationships

• They’re just kids. This year was my first year. I think I expected them to be geniuses. I was intimidated.
• That kids think they do more than you do.
• The scores have absolute zero bearing on how successful my students will go on to be…
• How to engage kids to learn not just points gathering for an A
• We have the best job that any English major could hope for: we get to talk about literature with the highest level students in our schools. We get to introduce them to incredible works and discuss complex characters and universal themes. We get to watch them grow as readers, writers, and critical thinkers. What could be better than that? My students do very well on the exam but most importantly they enjoy the class and they come away feeling prepared for college. We don’t need to make it so complicated and we definitely don’t need to suck the joy out of reading and writing by trying to do too much.

Emphasizing Poetry

• I wish I knew how to teach poetry better. The kids just hate it so much. I try to make it less painful. I do more contemporary pieces. I try to teach the the importance of annotation, but the apathy is so hard to combat. I thought I taught enough of it, but I still feel like they needed more.
• Students need to work with poetry daily! 4th year AP Lit teacher– students need to work with poetry daily! My goal for next year is to rearrange the order so that the poems pair with our novel studies. I accidentally paired “Facing It” with Ceremony this year and it led to great discussions!
  • From Gina: This commenter also added, “I love your poetry bell ringers from TPT because no matter what we’re working on in class, I know my students are at least getting 5 minutes with poetry every day.” Here’s the link to the poetry bellringers, if interested!
• One of the frequent comments I get from my new to AP APSI participants after the first year is “I should have done more poetry”.  I spend a full day on it in a 4 day APSI but I think newbies underestimate just how important it is for the test.  It’s usually an afterthought in a standard English course.
• Even though the curriculum focuses on poetry the least, focus on poetry the most.
• As others have said, some sort of specific system for teaching poetry. I just finished year one and I definitely feel like I didn’t do it well.

Teaching Writing & Offering Feedback

• It’s better to encourage their confidence in making claims than to transfer my insights.
• Don’t bother with the sophistication point until later in the year.
  • From Gina: I have to add an “Amen!” to this. I didn’t teach the sophistication point until four days before the exam, and students were earning it. I just didn’t want them to chase it when so many were still trying to master Evidence & Commentary.
• How to balance feedback—what to prioritize and how to use systems of peer feedback.
• What complexity actually means and how to identify it and write about it.
• How different close reading is between college prep and AP. Complexity. I struggled with changing my grading on essays (went from 9th grade  teaching the rules of essay writing to AP was extremely difficult).
• First year here! I wish I had a guide beyond the rubric for grading and teaching FRQ writing. The rubric can feel nebulous and the samples can feel overwhelming, but there isn’t really anyway around it 🤷‍♀️
• Building your student’s confidence in writing and analysis is a big part of this course.
• Don’t underestimate teaching timing.
• I wish someone had taught me the importance of making sure my kids knew the exact differences between how the FRQs are graded, that someone had really SHOWN me how to grade these essays well, maybe taught me how to explain how to develop a thesis that has a unique interpretation and is defensible, more MCQ strategies that will help my students improve other than just taking practice tests.

Feeling Prepared

• Actually do all of the work you assign the students. You’ll feel much more prepared.
• Relax, it gets easier and the kids will be fine! You have got this!
• You’re not an imposter for learning along WITH your students!
• Teaching interpretation and insight is difficult.
• Skip the rote memorization of literary device definitions and go right to identifying them!
• I wish someone had told me to just relax. The teacher who taught AP Lit before me gave me piles of materials and I walked away feeling overwhelmed. Then I went to a an APSI and got larger piles of materials and I spent the first year thinking I wasn’t doing enough because clearly you needed to go through piles of materials to teach AP Lit successfully. It’s now 20 years later and I have no piles (and I barely use AP Classroom).
• How the scale works, so the kids can see they don’t need to be perfect on the MCQs.
• Make the course your own. My first year I got thrown into the class two weeks before school. Other than one text I did everything the previous teacher did (although she was fabulous and a mentor) but we have very different teaching styles and choice of texts (she is a poetry fanatic). My second and third year I have begun to follow more what I want to teach and teaching what I like. There are thousands of ways to teach this course which makes it both challenging and rewarding. I always go back to the skills from the CED to steer me and my selections.
• That you will feel guilty taking maternity leave.
  • From Gina: I’ve missed three seasons of AP test prep in my career, one for maternity leave and two for bereavement. There are so many ready-made lessons available on AP Classroom or you can get no-prep options from TpT if you feel like you need to. However, I will say that you shouldn’t feel guilty if your personal life interferes with test prep. Being an AP Lit teacher doesn’t mean you should sacrifice your mental, physical, or emotional health.
• It will be nearly impossible to fit in everything you want to fit in. You will see a lot of different approaches to the class, but you have to find what works best for you and your students and follow your gut.
• Comparison is the worst; if a teacher can read 3 major works a year, their kids are solid! They don’t need 6+! Just because everyone on the internet is doing it, doesn’t mean you have to or doesn’t mean it will work for your student population!

Lightening the test prep

• Find fun short ways to incorporate creative writing skills for students, too.
• Remember to balance lit test prep with the love of experiencing good literature.
• I think it’s actually a very simple formula: read quality literature, have daily student led discussions, write as often as you can without overloading you or your students, and most importantly: have FUN together!
• A few years in and I have a much better perspective but as a new overwhelmed AP teacher I wish someone had told me that this is a class that ends in a test, it is not a class about a test. AP Lit gives us an opportunity to give these kids so much more outside of a 4/5 on the test.

Advice for New AP Lit Teachers

If any first year teachers are reading this and want answers to these questions, here are my tips:

• Download the AP Lit CED and read it. You don’t have to follow the units, but learn the skills.
• Join the AP Lit Facebook group and read through the posts and files. You don’t need to post there, but even being a member will give you access to TONS of advice!
• Follow me on Instagram or Facebook and send me messages with any questions you have. I also recommend following Brian Stzabnik, Susan Barber, Melissa Smith, and Timm Freitas.
• Ask your school to send you to an APSI. Fall trainings are helpful, but they move too quickly. Summer institutes last 4-5 days and offer much more insight and training for first-year teachers.
• Bookmark this blog and use the “Find a blog post” search bar. I’ve written posts on complexity, scoring, time-saving strategies, and many book recommendation lists. Three quarters of my blog posts are devoted to teaching AP Lit, so if you’re looking for it, I’ve probably written about it!
• If you’re looking for more teaching materials and want a starter pack for AP Lit, check out my TpT store. I have resources (both free and paid) for writing, poetry, short fiction, and almost two dozen plays and novels available, Each is editable and can be customizable to your needs. There is also an AP Lit Full Course Bundle and AP Lit Starter Kit if you want ALL of the resources ready to go!

What I wish I had known

My first year of teaching was in 2006, which was also my first year teaching AP Lit. As I look back on almost two decades of teaching this course, I realize now how radical, and frankly ridiculous, it was to ask a first year teacher to teach AP Lit. As a graduate of the course I thought I could handle it. I took a one day training in the fall and just took the texts that my predecessor left me. However, I was dreadfully in over my head. Even with only one section of AP Lit students, I spent full weekends grading essays, reading novels, scouring Sandra Effinger’s blog (my unofficial AP Lit mentor), and doubting myself.

What I wish I knew before teaching AP Lit was how lonely I would feel. I wish I had a group of teachers to talk to about AP and the expectations from students, parents, and administrators. I didn’t know how to turn my group of students into a reading and writing community, so lessons were one-sided and grading became combative. It took many years and a lot of trial and error to feel comfortable teaching the course. Ultimately, however, I credit the AP Reading with helping me connect with other AP Lit teachers. Finding my people helped ease my imposter syndrome and gave me the AP community I craved.