Spotlight On: AP Seminar
Ms. Higgins’ AP Seminar class researches their next topics. Photo: Anna Bukhman
By ANNA BUKHMAN
AP Seminar is a college-level introduction to research course that gets students thinking about real world issues and the multiple angles to approach them. Classes consist of mostly sophomores and some juniors who submit both team and individual research papers and video presentations at the end of the year, in addition to completing a written AP exam.
Teachers Ms. Menat Aly and Mrs. Jessica Higgins stress the class’s value as a crash course for college.
“A lot of students who don’t take AP Seminar go to college and realize, ‘Wow, it would have been really valuable to know how to use APA citations or a database or actually know how to paraphrase properly,’” said Ms. Aly.
“The level of writing you will do in this course is directly reflective of the level of writing you’ll have to do in a college course,” said Mrs. Higgins. “We teach you how to do college-level research, read academic journals, cite, structure research papers, and do high level oral presentations.”
The current AP Seminar students recently had their first mock oral presentations. Like many other classes, group presentations in this class can be unnerving, but group work is crucial.
Christian Gabelman ‘25 said, “Collecting research and presenting the information along with various arguments and counterarguments were the easiest and ‘funnest’ part of the assignment for me,” though he noted that a group’s lack of preparation and coordination can be a challenge.
“The experience overall was stressful,” said Adrian Perez ‘24, “but I feel like I learned a lot because of it.”
For the actual Team Research Presentation that gets submitted to the AP College Board, the students get to choose their own groups and can use the mock presentations as not only a practice, but also a way to look for reliable partners.
Both students and teachers warned that the course’s workload can get intense.
“The class requires a lot of work, especially because we do a mock version and then we do the real performance, so we’re basically doing everything twice,” said Ms. Aly. “What we try to do is give [students] breaks when it's possible and do small celebrations – whatever we can – to make it a positive experience.”
“We are in a particular chokehold as AP Seminar teachers because the official projects for the College Board start at the end of December,” said Mrs. Higgins. “We hear your complaints, and knowing that, we try to be as open to our students’ concerns as possible, as much as we can.”
Alexandra Carbajal ‘24 and Matthew Ginzburg ‘24, former students, said they could spend about two to three hours on Seminar a night, especially for the research papers. Still, they said it was worth it.
“I developed many skills that helped me in my junior year classes,” said Ginzburg. “I think I made a good choice to take the class because I gained communication skills and reading and writing skills, and I’m much less shy in front of larger audiences now.”
Carbajal said, “I think it’s an important class for students to take because it helps them develop their writing skills much more than a normal English class would have, and it gives students a genuine insight on the time and effort you need to put into an AP class.”
Ms. Aly said, “It's going to challenge you and really push you, but at the same time you are gaining such valuable information, knowledge, and skills that will help you in college, no matter what major you go into, so just go for it!”
“My advice is to not procrastinate, but also to know that we know it’s hard,” said Mrs. Higgins. “But we believe in you. Give yourself the grace and kindness to feel stress, recognize you're feeling stressed, and then recognize that you're capable of doing what we're asking you to do. Take that confidence and run with it!”