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AP Physics Class Reflection

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Westchester High School has always offered a limited number of honors and advanced placement courses. Last year, to my dismay, only Mr. P. was teaching the AP Physics class I had my heart set on. From my peers, I had heard that he was an unskilled teacher because of his poor classroom management and lack of instructional time. Taking this class was very important to me because I enjoyed science, wanted a challenge, and hoped to get AP credit. So beforehand, I already knew that I would have to learn AP Physics on my own, but since I have had experience with terrible teachers before, I felt that I could handle the class and was ready for the challenge. Mr. P. did prove to be incompetent, giving large packets of homework, failing to instruct, and playing favorites. I could have switched out to avoid having the class affect my GPA, but my goal was to pass the AP Physics exam and I needed resources to do so. …show more content…

I was also assigned physics work that I used as practice even though no instructional time was given. I was confident that this strategy was going to succeed, and cooperated with my friend to get ahead since he was the only other person in the class willing to do any work. Second semester, I began to lose determination and focus, seeing my peers get higher grades by cheating. While I would put effort into my work, the rest used phones, iPads, and other recourses to cheat. I worked extremely hard in the classroom and at home trying to grasp the concepts in the packets. I knew cheating would give me the advantage in class, but not while taking the AP exam. I exhausted many of my resources that year, which ranged from a free tutor website that the public library offers, Khan Academy, tutoring with the Upward Bound Program, and

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