Semi-crisis in AP chem

Test Preparation AP Sciences
1

<p>Let's cut it to the chase. I'm a good student and I like chemistry a lot. I took honors chem last year and I currently have a solid A in my AP class. However, 3 months into this, I feel like I really haven't learned anything.</p>

<p>My teacher doesn't really teach. She really just prints out notes for each chapter, reads some points out loud to the class, and assigns a bunch of even problems for homework. The next day we spend most of the time redoing the problems in groups and we would present it to the class. When our solutions are right, we don't go over concepts and just move on. If we get it wrong, our teacher shows the right solution and we move on. No real explanation of the right solution, just the right way to solve it. Is this how I'm supposed to be learning? Is this how it typically is for AP chem? If it is, I'm doing just fine. However, I might be majoring in a chemistry field later on in life and I feel like I don't get what I need to know, only the right solutions.</p>

<p>The second thing is that I don't think I will have a solid chemistry teacher for the next few weeks. She has only been to class about 75% of the time, and even then having her isn't much of an asset. We might have a sub for more than 2 weeks! But on our many sub- days, I simply drown in confusion. I understand the information in the book fine, but it's difficult when I can't explain why I get certain answers. I don't feel like I'm going to be ready for the AP test or Subject test because I'm so lost in the class. It's not only me who feels this way either. Our class has a facebook group and I always see kids complaining about the teaching and/or lack of guidance. </p>

<p>Any comments? That was kind of long, but any advice on how I can survive this class would be extremely helpful. Thanks in advance.</p>

2

<p>Copy and paste this into an email to your counselor.</p>

<p>They’ll ever get you out of the class…</p>

<p>Get a qualified teacher for the course…</p>

<p>Tell you to suck it up and self study it.</p>

3

<p>Ask for the results of last couple of years AP test results for this course. That will tell you what you need to know. You and all these other kids need to go to the principal and complain. My dd hs had the same problem. None of the teachers could teach chemistry very well. She took chemistry as an AP class because the IB version of chemistry(she took IB HL biology at the same time) had a really bad track record too and she wanted to make sure she got her IB diploma. Terrible teachers need to be accountable. She got a 3 because it was taught so poorly and she is a chemistry major in college.</p>

4

<p>I kind of feel the same way. My teacher rushes us through the information and we are expected to teach ourselves most of the curriculum because we apparently don’t have time to go through much of it in detail. She also frequently gets problems wrong (so we have to correct her) and is many times unable to answer our questions. It’s okay though: get a review book (I have Princeton, it’s great so far) and just rely on yourself to learn the material.</p>

5

<p>Im in AP Chem right now, and our teacher really pushes concepts. We’ll learn a formula, but the main thing is…the concept of the formula what does it mean. According to my teacher, collegeboard is really pyusing conceptual type questions…idk how other teachers do it though …</p>