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Pointers for ProsBy Judy Prather
While most high school students were enjoying summer vacation, raking in extra spending money or hanging out by the pool, some of their teachers were still hard at work. The 2008 Advanced Placement Summer Institute, sponsored by the Lifelong Learning division of the Baylor Alumni Association, was held on the Baylor campus from June 23-27, with classes offered in six different subjects.
 Advanced Placement courses are designed to give high school students a chance to earn credit or advanced standing at most of the nation's colleges and universities. According to AP Central, the website for the national College Board, thirty-seven advanced placement courses are offered in twenty-two disciplines--ranging from Chinese and Italian to statistics and studio art. With today's rigorous college admission standards, plus the high cost of tuition, students want to gain some of those credits early. And it can also prove to Baylor's advantage to host these teachers, who go back and recommend the university to their promising young students.
This year, forty-four Texas high school teachers (and one from Pennsylvania) opted to spend a precious week of summer vacation attending the AP Summer Institute at Baylor, where five College Board consultants--also teachers themselves--offered classes in math, history, literature, and language.
Each teacher there brought a wealth of skill and experience. For the past nine months, most of them had been standing before high school classrooms of their own. But now, they were choosing to sit in the students' seats and learning how to be even better teachers. The general consensus was that it was time well spent. As one teacher commented, "This is like liquid gold. It's the first institute where I've gotten such invaluable information."
She was referring specifically to the AP English Literature class, led by Peggy Leeman. A high school English teacher for fifty-four years, Leeman is now officially retired, though she still teaches some classes at Bryan Adams High School and at the Yavneh Academy in Dallas. A College Board consultant for more than twenty years, Leeman has won numerous awards at the local, state, and regional levels, including the Southwest Regional Award for Excellence in Advanced Placement English.
Leeman--who is pictured above with Carolyn Carter Nicholson '70, MA '76, (left) and a Baylor graduate student, Rachel Colvin Jenkins--teaches at AP institutes at three different universities every summer. She also helps to lead several annual two-day workshops--among them the Interdisciplinary Creative Problem Solving Conference for gifted students and their teachers held on the Baylor campus each February.
When asked why she does it, Leeman's eyes lit up. "Oh, I thoroughly enjoy teaching. And I enjoy teachers. I continue to learn from these teachers. They come to be enriched with new ideas for their own classrooms, to gain useful new strategies for helping their students succeed. They want 'meat' to take home, practical information."
Nicholson has attended AP summer institutes at other universities, but she prefers the Baylor institute. "Of course, I enjoy coming back to campus again, but this institute has been the best one, too. And Peggy is the best and most experienced consultant I've ever heard. She's generous with everything she knows, she's hard-working, and she's less concerned about looking good than with making us better. AP courses can be overwhelming to teach, but she's done so much work that will make our teaching better."
Nicholson moved to Waco four years ago from Brazosport when her husband, David '71, retired. She now teaches at Waco's Reicher High School, and she likes the fact that all the consultants in the Baylor Institute have a respect for the Christian culture and family. She adds, "It's fun to be around other passionate teachers. A lot of what you learn is from the other teachers as you trade ideas. These AP conferences are essential. I think they should be required."
If you would like to respond to this story, send an e-mail to Between the Lines Editor.
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