Almost 800 Advanced Placement (AP) teachers are participating in the AP with WE service learning this year. Fifty of them were hand-selected to attend the AP with WE Champion Teacher Summit which was held January 2-4, 2020. Attendees included residents of 23 states, China and India. One of those was Valley View High School’s Computer Science teacher, Jeanine Rioux. Organized by the College Board and hosted by Microsoft, the event was held at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
AP with WE is available to all AP teachers and is intended to take content into the real world and engage the students in hands-on service learning. Projects can be individual, small group or a whole class. Examples from last year’s projects included AP Chemistry students working with a local refinery to evaluate data, AP Environmental Science planting a bee garden in a Special Education yard and, AP Spanish Language and Culture collecting school supplies for the poorest school in Sonoma, Mexico.
Ms. Rioux’s AP Computer Science A students look for solutions to problems relating to accessing education. Her students continue learning industry practices when they revisit this project the following year in Advanced Java Topics with Android Studio. Code maintenance and readability are essential skills not typically taught in high school courses.
“I think it is important for students to have experiences connecting classroom learning with the real-world. That is why I use AP with WE as my final project in AP Computer Science A,” said Ms. Rioux. “I encourage all AP teachers to consider this program as well.”