The Impact Different Teachers Have on the AP Class Experience at Stuyvesant

With thousands of students and teachers walking the halls of Stuyvesant, each experience at Stuyvesant is inevitably vastly different. The Stuyvesant experience for the majority of students is shaped by their decisions, from where they spend their free periods to the clubs they join. However, a key influence on the Stuyvesant experience is entirely out of students’ control: their teachers. Schedules are released, and students are seen flooding the Dear Incoming Facebook groups, while complaints about teachers echo through the hallways. Ultimately, a defining feature of a student’s experience at Stuyvesant all comes down to the teachers they have, especially in Advanced Placement (AP) classes. 

Students generally agree that teachers do play an important role in their success in a class. “One teacher may go easier on their students throughout the year, have a higher class average, but then less students score well on the AP, and vice versa. Some teachers go harder on their students, and many students struggle, but then they think the AP is extremely light,” sophomore Ramona Weinstein stated.

The work a teacher does in an AP class deeply affects a student's preparedness for the AP exam. “I felt prepared, but I feel like I had to self-study a lot of important concepts that I probably would’ve understood if we learned it in class,” freshman and AP Biology student Kayla Cheung explained.

At the same time, the work that some teachers do helps students feel more prepared. “I think I could’ve done more self-studying, which I kind of regret, but overall, my teacher prepared me and my class really well with our testing and spacing of the material,” Weinstein stated. Dissimilar students will self-study more or less depending on how well their teacher's teaching style matches with their learning style. 

Students concur with this idea, also citing teaching differences as a factor in class experience. “The teacher's teaching style definitely makes a difference. Often, one AP teacher says something really important that another class doesn’t learn. It makes it harder for them to feel confident when approaching problems,” Cheung explained. The approach a teacher takes to teaching an AP course dictates how well the student will do in the class. 

Although many teachers may teach to supply their students with a broader understanding of the topic, individuals taking an AP class want to stay on a set path that leads them to success on their AP exam. Senior Sophia Tom added to this point, expressing that in her AP Precalculus class, her teacher “posted one and a half hour long videos right before the midterm that were teaching the material.” She believed her teacher should have gone over the topics in class, and the videos were not supplementing her learning. The teaching style of this teacher did not match well with Tom’s learning style, and it hurt her learning experience. 

Teachers can help students learn more in all their classes in a variety of ways. All students learn differently, whether that means more visuals or getting assigned different homework assignments,” Weinstein shared. When asked about what was helpful or hurtful to her learning, Weinstein stated, “I think taking practice tests and active recall made me feel the most prepared for the test. Solidifying the gaps in my knowledge of what I got wrong on the practice test was the most efficient way to study last minute. My teacher didn’t try to cram anything last minute and gave us good advice leading up to the test, which I think calmed a lot of nerves.” Weinstein’s teacher is an example of a teaching style that may have been beneficial to other students like Tom, who felt that her teacher was cramming in material. 

The methods teachers use can also impact the way students feel about a course or an upcoming exam. “My first AP was AP World, and there were Cornell notes every night. It was a lot of work, but I went in and came out and felt prepared,” stated Tom, further expanding on her experience by speaking about a different AP course she took. Different teachers impact students’ inner confidence about their knowledge and do different things that change the way a student feels about a test or a class. 

The impact an AP teacher has on a student impacts them in many ways and even stays with them in the future. “On the other hand, my teacher for AP Precalculus did not assign a lot of work, and I did not feel prepared, which has carried over to my senior year, where I’ve struggled with Calc AB a lot because I lacked a lot of the foundational skills from precalculus,” stated Tom, adding on to her AP Precalculus experience. Tom was negatively impacted by her teachers’ teaching style, and her struggles in the class carried with her into Calculus AB. 

The work an AP teacher does goes beyond the classroom, though, and impacts the ways students think overall. “I went into Stuyvesant as a STEM person, but my teacher influenced me to become more of a humanities person. His teaching challenged how students were raised to think about history and acknowledged both the good and the bad parts of it. He taught us ‘total history,’” junior Olivia Cisse stated. Cisse went on to explain how she would likely be exploring women’s studies in college, and how her AP U.S. History teacher’s teaching encouraged her to explore activism more. It is evident that teachers play a huge role in not only students’ academics but also in their personal lives and futures. 

Overall, a variety of factors determine how a student performs in an AP class and how they will perform during their respective AP exams. While students are responsible for doing their work, paying attention, and ultimately performing well on the final test, teachers also share a huge part of that responsibility by ensuring they are keeping students stimulated and teaching the curriculum in a way that helps, not harms, students. AP teachers even impact students in ways that students carry with them as they grow and go through new experiences. The onus is on both the student and the teacher, but teachers play more of a deciding role due to their greater influence on class structure. Students need to develop many key skills in AP classes for their future courses; thus, it’s important that teachers aid their students in this goal.