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Home > Summer Institutes -- In the City, Country, or by the Sea
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Summer Institutes -- In the City, Country, or by the Sea
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by Susan , Kornstein
Director, Content Development
The College Board
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| | Unique and Intensive Experiences
Motivated by the desire to learn more about Pre-AP skills or about AP courses, as well as to discuss teaching strategies and resources, last summer more than 9,700 teachers attended College Board-endorsed AP Summer Institutes. While their backgrounds vary greatly, with some teachers only recently finding out they were chosen to teach an AP course in September and some teachers having more than 20 years of experience teaching the course, all AP Summer Institute participants share commitment, dedication, and the willingness to take a significant time away from their summer vacation to be students themselves.
Summer institutes, usually lasting one week, offer unique and intensive experiences supporting teachers to teach rigorous and exciting courses and prepare students for AP Exams. Very often, the workshop leader is a College Board consultant who has been a Reader of the AP Exam and can offer particular insights from that experience. All College Board endorsed AP/Pre-AP Summer Institutes have a College Board-endorsed consultant as the lead instructor.
Some institutes offer graduate credit, some have on-site housing, some require assignments each night and even before the institute begins, and some are located in very special places. You can often choose a workshop that is especially designated as appropriate for either new or experienced teachers.
The workshop agendas often include: - In-depth discussion of the Course Description and Topic Outline
- Teaching suggestions, including assignments, assessments, laboratories, fieldwork, use of technology, and choice of textbooks
- Discussion of free-response and multiple-choice questions from recent AP Exams and analysis of the scoring guidelines
- Teacher presentations of course content
- Generation of syllabi for the upcoming year
There are AP Summer Institutes in New York City, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, Phoenix, and San Diego, just to name a few of the locations. There are even international institutes in Honolulu and Heidelberg (Germany). The varied sites point up the diversity of experiences that AP Summer Institutes offer. Each has its own specialty and offerings, so even if you go to one institute, you can always go to another the next summer and enjoy something different and unique.
Last year there were more than 188 locations and 1,685 sessions of AP Summer Institute workshops, so the selection is great!
A good measure of the success of these workshops is the evaluations given by those who attended AP Summer Institutes last year. On a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 indicating excellence, the workshop presenter's knowledge of the subject matter was rated 3.92 (with 99 percent of the participants responding). Quality of the content of the workshop was rated 3.76, and overall quality of the session was given a mean score of 3.71. A 2002 research study on the characteristics of AP teachers released by the College Board found that 52.2 percent of the respondents attended an AP Summer Institute prior to teaching an AP course and that 44.9 percent had attended an AP Summer Institute within the last five years. That study rated AP Summer Institutes as the most effective of all the professional development activities.
 Research Report: Characteristics of AP Teachers (.pdf/223KB)
You can read more about the wonderful AP Summer Institute experiences in the following three features:
AP Calculus: A New Challenge
Summer Institute Participants: "Lifelong Learners"
Teaching Other Teachers: My First Summer Institute
Some quotes taken from the evaluations of an AP Summer Institute show the value of attending a Summer Institute: - "My confidence has gone up as a teacher, because I have so many new ideas and approaches to help me."
- "Couldn't have been better. There was no wasted time. Excellent in every way!"
- "Wonderful! I learned more this week than in all of my workshops combined."
- "Wow, this has been a really worthwhile investment of a week. I'm inspired, motivated, and ready to infuse my instruction!"
- "It is such a treat when quality information is presented in an intellectual and humorous way. It was fantastic!"
And others share that enthusiasm.
In the Institutes & Workshops catalog, you can search for an AP Summer Institute, and then in the fall you can tell your own story of friendships made, content mastered, and inspiration gained over the summer. If you'd like to review the complete list of AP Summer Institutes being offered this summer, click on the link "2005 AP Summer Institute Brochure" below. This is the perfect time to make your plans and look forward to a rewarding learning experience.
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