College Board International Hosts Largest Ever AP Event for the South America Region
In October, College Board International partnered with Colegio Nueva Granada to deliver Advanced Placement® (AP®) Program professional development workshops to nearly 50 educators, the largest AP event in the region to date.
“(The workshop) was excellent!” said one participant. “I learned new strategies and ways of teaching the learning process.”
The two-day event supported by the U.S. Department of State Office of Overseas schools covered the following subjects: AP Calculus AB, AP Physics 1 and 2, and AP Spanish Language and Literature. All workshops were bilingual and were conducted in both English and Spanish based on the needs of the participants.
The AP Physics session was led by Jesus Hernandez, who has taught physics at Lawrence High School in Massachusetts and at The Manhattan Center for Science and Math High School in New York for the last 14 years. In addition to teaching, he is member of the AP Physics C Test Development Committee and recently authored one of the Course Planning and Pacing Guides for AP Physics 2.
Eliel Gonzalez, currently in his 25th year as a mathematics educator in the East Longmeadow (Massachusetts) Public Schools, led the AP Calculus session, and Maria Govea, an AP Spanish teacher at The American School Foundation of Guadalajara, A.C., served as the AP Spanish workshop instructor.
In addition to AP professional development, educators from the area also had the opportunity to participate in an AP Open House. This half-day event hosted by the College Board included an overview of the AP Program, as well as insights from Colegio Nueva Granada’s Assessment Coordinator, Alex Aristizabal, who discussed how educators could lead an AP Program at their schools. The event ended with the AP professional development workshop instructors providing Open House participants with strategies and skills taught in their own AP classrooms.
In 2014, over 10,000 AP Exams were administered in South and Central America. Over 6,000 students attending 176 schools in 32 countries and territories in the region took AP Exams in 2014. The top three countries with the most AP Exams administered within the region in 2014 were Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Colombia, comprising over 40% of all exams administered in the Americas region. The most popular AP exam subjects in 2014 were Spanish Language, English Language, and Calculus.
College Board International will be returning to the Central and South America region to present a session titled “AP Capstone & the Future of AP: Interdisciplinary Rigor & Skills-Based Learning” on Thursday March 26, 2015 during the 2015 AASSA Educators’ Conference in Curacao.