Maya McFadden photo
Imani Bryan and Alexis Aguirre unpacking first AP African American Studies class.
After learning about everything from Africa’s Mali Empire to Black rebellion during Reconstruction to the history of slave codes and slave ships and convict leasing — and with coursework still to come on the Black Panther Party and the Black Arts Movement — Career High School senior Eliana Brito Castillo praised her school’s inaugural Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies class as opening her eyes to “a huge part of history that isn’t taught.”
“Now,” she said, “I feel I have a more complete view of how America came to be.”
Castillo offered that assessment on Thursday as she joined a classroom full of students in the pilot AP African American Studies course at Hill Regional Career High School at 140 Legion Ave. to debrief about what they learned this year, and what could make the class even better.
The new class, taught by history teacher A’Lexus Williams, is the College Board’s most recent addition to its Advanced Placement courses offered nationwide.
In a second-floor classroom Thursday students reflected on their experiences only days after taking their AP exam.
This year, Williams spearheaded bringing the pilot AP course to Career for the first time.
The students spent Thursday’s class period reflecting on the year of learning, how engaging the course content and pace of instruction was, and its personal impact on each of them.
Williams began the lesson by guiding the students through an intentional breathing exercise to decompress after the year’s four units of coursework. “In through your nose and release,” Williams told her class of ten students.
The students then followed suit with the class’s typical structure of answering an “opener” question. Thursday’s task was to write three or four sentences describing their experience with the AP exam’s difficulty, content, and test format, and how prepared they felt.
The students shared their thoughts by writing on index cards. The class avoided discussing specific AP exam questions as that is a College Board policy for schools.
The students agreed that they felt prepared for the test thanks to Williams’s efforts to help them practice answering opened-ended questions thoroughly.
Senior Ty’Jae Fain praised Williams and the class for helping the students hone such skills as critical thinking and learning event timelines. About the AP exam itself, Fain shared that the “hardest part about it was how long we had to be in front of our computer, it’s too much for me.” This year is the first time an AP test was offered digitally for a course.
Fain said while the computer offered some convenience she would have preferred the test had been given through a traditional paper format. She said the screen time made her drowsy throughout the test.
Senior Eliana Brito Castillo agreed, saying the Chrome Books hurt her eyes, though she was able to get her answers down faster by typing.
Senior Imani Bryan said she preferred the computer’s convenience during the test compared to other AP tests on paper she’s taken.
Senior Adnan Ahmad Rizal said he preferred the digital test because it doesn’t require answers to be bubbled in and it only gave one question at a time as opposed to a paper test, which can look overwhelming at times.
Next the class transitioned into their course reflections, which they had been tasked with thinking through in advance of Thursday’s meetup.
Williams encouraged the students to be honest during the class discussion to help her to teach the new class even more effectively in the years to come.
Bryan singled out for praise the lessons on life in Africa before enslavement in the Americas. She said she knew nothing about ancient African tribes before taking the course. “They usually just tell us that Africans were taken here and that’s it. But learning about how they rebelled before, during, and after adds that background that we never really got. We actually got the meat of the story. They resisted and fought and didn’t just get taken. I finally got the real beginning of what we were before we were taken.”
While reflecting, the students also offered tips to Williams like their struggles with understanding the context of reading packets and analyzing them on their own at home.
Williams took notes while also letting the students know that the course is meant to reflect college practices like reading lengthy and complex text before a professor’s lecture. “I wanna set you up for what you’re about to experience,” she said.
Another student suggested the class have field trips to historical sites in the future.
As students also reflected on their month-long independent research projects completed during the year, Williams offered them a tip: to connect with their college librarians to help get guided support with databases and finding resources for projects.
When asked about the real-life impacts of the AP course, senior Imani Bryan said the class helped her to challenge a “procrastination spirit” she developed while experiencing remote learning during the pandemic as a freshman. That’s because the class was challenging, engaging, and relevant, she said. “This class helped me to break those bad habits,” she said.
Senior Jasmin Demps added that the AP course “actually felt like school again.”
Others agreed, saying that while the class’s workload was complex, they enjoyed the challenge of learning histories that aren’t typically taught.
Robinson concluded that the “whole school system went a little wonky when Covid hit, but this class honed it back to what it used to feel like. I had to put in effort to learn,” she said.
Brito Castillo agreed with Robinson and Demps. She added that the course gave her a newfound sense of pride. “I haven’t done this in a while, but there were days when I went home and told my mom about what I learned because I wanted to remember what I learned so bad,” she said.
For the remainder of the course this year, the class will dive deeper into the course’s fourth unit. Williams plans to focus the rest of the year on learning about Black pride and diasporic solidarity, the Black Power movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Arts movement.
Williams added that the new course helped her to refine her lesson planning, curriculum development, and creativity skills in her classroom. She continued her work outside of the classroom finding relevant resources for the class.
“My own learning, as a life long learner, it pushes me to really study the field more than I really have ever gotten an opportunity to,” she said. “This course has allowed me to pursue reading and other sources in my personal life as a result of having to be prepared to teach something.”
Her goal for the new course is to improve students’ understanding of history through exposure and the centering of resilience and empowerment. “I hope if nothing else students are able to take away a more complete picture of not only U.S history but African American studies as a whole.”
When asked about the first year challenges that came with teaching the pilot course, Williams said they ranged from having fewer teaching models as a result of the still-developing course to pacing the course because of the school’s block schedule.
“I am flying the plane as I am building it,” she said.
AP African American Studies students with Williams.