I'm dying in AP US History, what do I do?

Pre-College Topics High School Life
1

<p>Alright, so I'm generally a pretty smart Junior taking the full IB course-load. I have a 100 in Spanish, 100 in Theory of Knowledge, 97 in English, 94 in AP Psych, 92 in IB Math 2, and an 89 in IB Chemistry. (My grades are somewhat irrelevant, but I'm just saying that I do well in most of my other classes.)</p>

<p>In my APUSH class, I have a 74. </p>

<p>It's not like I don't try or just don't get the subject, my teacher is incredibly picky and overall, a terrible and ineffective teacher. In the two years I've been in high school so far, 3 students have passed his class with an A out of ~150 who have taken the class. Those weren't even high A's. With a grading scale of 93-100, they were only in the 93-95 range.</p>

<p>On the most recent pop quiz, ONE student passed. With a 70. </p>

<p>He says he doesn't want to "water down" the AP curriculum, but he simply doesn't teach.</p>

<p>We're expected to read the textbook, and this is the only way we are able to do well in the class. I'm fine with reading the textbook, but he suggests we read the set of chapters 4 or 5 times. After that, he chooses nit-picky, irrelevant details to test us on.</p>

<p>Besides being assigned to read the textbook, we do nothing related to the US History. He goes off on 30-minute tangents, bringing up pointless, unrelated things. He mentioned how he visited a fort near Niagara falls, and showed us one picture of the fort, and 50 pictures of his vacation in the area.</p>

<p>I don't understand... how he's even able to keep his job. How am I expected to learn without him teaching?</p>

<p>What do I do?</p>

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<p>I’m confused as to how you aren’t able to absorb the obscure details he harps upon if you’re reading the chapter multiple times? In AP World, I can pretty much grasp even the most obscure details if I reread the chapter a second time around.</p>

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<p>Sounds like a killer Apush course, from what I understand this is pretty typical, I am one of 5 kids passing in my Apush class had we had a dropout rate of like 30%. Honestly most of our homework is textbook, then a class discussion about semi-relevant topics, doesn’t seem as bad as yours though. If you can’t have that grade on your transcript, and hate the teacher, then drop, if you like the content and want to stick it out to see how you do, by all means stay. Our school’s transition from Apush to regular US is very permeable, the parallel section of regular US has a jam packed 30 student class. If it is permeable then I’d stay until just before the first quarter to see how your grade is, then drop, leave enough time so that your grade doesn’t show on first quarter.</p>

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<p>^rude</p>

<p>APUSH is definitely one of the harder AP’s - especially if your teacher doesn’t teach. Have you tried supplementing the course with another review/textbook? </p>

<p>If it really isn’t working, I would suggest dropping it (if possible). It’s not worth the stress!</p>

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<p>Read in class. If he always tests for obscure stuff, it’s somewhat possible to be able to spot that stuff…</p>

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<p>A class is never hard with the exception of science and math courses which require understanding difficult concepts. In AP US History, all you literally have to do is read the textbook a few times to take in all the information, as in every other history class. In a college-level course the teacher is not going to give you all the information you need. Thus, you need to read every night on your own to truly absorb the information. I got a 96 in AP US and a 5 on the exam, not by listening to the teacher, but by reading on my own.</p>

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<p>^^^ I got an A+, 5 on the exam, and 800 SAT II ^.^ So yeah. To the OP, devote more time to studying APUSH and doing practice questions. Doing that should help a lot.</p>

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<p>@fchris13</p>

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</p>

<p>I think this proves that it<code>s not totally the OP</code>s fault. Now, I<code>m not going to get into the APUSH talk, because I haven</code>t taken it, so I don<code>t know what</code>s entirely involved, but from the perspective of an AP student, I know, and you should too, that different studying methods work for different people. Sometimes reading the textbook doesn<code>t exactly work. Regardless, any teacher college or high school level, still has to * teach* the class. And it sounds like this teacher isn</code>t doing so. And even if it<code>s a college level class, no teacher is going to act like a college professor towards high school students. We * are* still high school students, regardless of the level of class and it</code>s not as if this is History 101 with 300 students. </p>

<p>Saying a class is never hard except for math and science is basically stereotyping them. Not true at all. I know plenty of people who struggle with math and science and do fantastic with English and History, and vice-versa. There are many students who don`t do well with English and History, it just might not be their thing. </p>

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<p>This I can directly reply to. Not true at all. Textbooks have so many details, it can often be hard to sort through all of them, and it<code>s something that takes practice. In my AP World class, I would be getting 50</code>s on my tests had it not been for other assignments we have. The ONLY time I use my textbook is for the chapter tests we do, and in those, everyone gets below an 80 usually. </p>

<p>I saw so many lies in your post. I<code>m sorry, but most of what you said doesn</code>t work for everyone and isn<code>t true at all. Maybe it worked for you. But that</code>s you.</p>

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<p>

Come back as George Washington?</p>

<p>Theyre has to be a good essay topic in that headline somewhere :)</p>

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<p>If you got a review book that may help you out a lot. Review books include Barrons, Princeton review, and even Kaplan. Plus to Darthpwner, I felt that AP US would have been to easy to take as a subject test, thus I choose to challenge myself and take the physics subject test, which I got an 800 on.</p>

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<p>I’m one of those people who is great a math and science, but horrible at history. I hate when people say that history should not be difficult!</p>

<p>If the teacher is that bad, then I would drop the class. The AP test isn’t even about obscure facts, but about understanding deeply what is happening during each decade in history and knowing major facts to use in essays. My APUSH class was hard, but at least it actually went over what would be on the AP test!</p>

<p>If you want to stay in the class, I really recommend the AMSCO U.S. history review book! It saved me last year :)</p>

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<p>@fchris13 no one cares about what you got ******bag. Give good advice or shut up.</p>

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<p>Thanks again for the replies guys. </p>

<p>The quarter is coming to an end, and I should have around a 72-74 in the class. It’s terrible. Luckily most of my other grades are very good. </p>

<p>This upcoming quarter, I’ll be sure to make a few changes to my effort in that class. I’ll have to sit down and read my textbook for an hour or two per day. </p>

<p>Conveniently, my teacher makes his own tests by compiling questions from review books and online sources, most of which I’ve found. By memorizing those answers, I should do a bit better on his tests and quizzes. (sshhhh)</p>

<p>I just wanted to thank you guys again for the advice. I’m still incredibly jealous when I see one of those “what are your grades?” threads and people are posting about their 95+ grades in APUSH. Oh well. I’ll just suck up my 73.</p>

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<p>I think that a lot of people have the wrong idea when they say you should do better on a course by studying. I mean of course, your grade will slightly change, but it’s way easier to understand how your teacher grades/picks questions. I remember that I was able to pass my AP English Junior year course by really trying to understand how my teacher was grading my essays and understanding how I could boost my scores by mentioning connotations of words and whatnot.</p>

<p>Half the grade is studying, the other half is knowing how to game the system (but don’t cheat obviously!). I think you’re on the right track.</p>