I am routinely the only educator on my campus teaching my subject. Throughout my career, I have been the only active AP Chemistry teacher at my school. I have no one to plan with, no one to develop assessments with, and no one to evaluate laboratory experiments with. Because of this, all decisions about how to teach, what to teach, and when to teach fall to me. In essence, I have to motivate myself to plan and innovative within my classroom. One example of how my confidence in my own judgement, self-motivation, and flexibility are demonstrated in my teaching is through the level of differentiation needed to teach my two AP Chemistry classes.
I am currently teaching AP Chemistry to two distinct student populations. I teach 30 students who are taking the course as a second year chemistry class following a yearlong course in pre-AP Chemistry. These students are highly prepared for the course, and most are 11th or 12th graders who are
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These 10th graders have a limited science background, having only taken AP Environmental Science before entering my class. They are brilliant, though, and some of the most motivated students I have ever taught. While the College Board dictates that the AP Chemistry exam is identical for all my students, it is impossible to teach these students as I do the upperclassmen in the other class. I must find materials for use with these students that support their learning while also allowing them to gain the experience needed with the topic under study. I must create learning activities that enable them to remember these topics nearly an entire school year before the AP exam in May. Additionally, these students come to my class with no practical experience with the glassware or equipment used in a Chemistry lab. I must create experiences for them that are safe, yet also allow them to learn lab techniques and chemistry concepts in a short amount of