<p>The teacher can have a profound influence. APUSH at our school is the only AP sophomores can take and it kicked my kids butt as far as the actual grade in the class. The kids said that although the teacher was difficult (boring and monotoned) they learned much…and they did ‘better’ on AP exam than they did grade-wise in the class. But they both said it “taught” them how to write for college. This particular teacher assigned lots of reading and lots of writing, far more than kids typically get in US public schools. The teacher would always admonish the kids when they whined and say “this is supposedly a college level class and this is what you’re going to have to do in college day in and day out.” Somehow this teacher also instilled a love of history into S1 not so much in S2. We don’t have alot of AP classes in our school, but the teachers seem to do their jobs and APUSH was definitely a wake-up call for my two oldest about what studying, reading and writing at a college level can be. I used to sit back and think ‘better him than me’ as far as kicking my kids’ academic butts in gear.</p>