It’s Today!

As one of the party-goers enters into Mame Dennis’ lavish New York apartment, he asks, “Mame, what is the occasion for the party?” and she shrugs and crows, “It’s today!”

And as any musical theater-loving person knows, that announcement allows the eccentric and gregarious extrovert Mame to launch into an anthem:

“Light the candles,
Get the ice out,
Roll the rug up,
It’s today!

Though it may not be anyone’s birthday
And though it’s far from the first of the year,
I know that this very minute has history in it:
We’re here!”

Well, in the world of High School History, today is the Superbowl Sunday of days.

It is the AP World History test. It is going on right now.

It’s today.

This has been a whirlwind week of trying to project calm assurance and help students review and provide private little pep talks in my apartment. Raja would buttonhole a few times a day and say, “Let’s talk history for a few minutes.” OR “I think I have a new take on Asian gender history.” I find it exhilarating and exhausting preparing students for these massive exams, and this exam, my 24th AP test group to send off to the races, is the Grand-daddy of them all.

In 2003 and 2004 I explored the AP World History exam as a possible AP test for Hackley, and decided it was just too much for high school scholars to manage. I mean, it covers everything from anywhere and everywhere, and it just seemed ridiculous. I mean, Modern European History, and United States History and Art History seemed daunting enough, but to tackle the entire world?

Here there really wasn’t a choice—so one just plunges in. It has been exciting all year, but this last week has been the real test of the year’s work.

In teaching an advanced placement course I am happy to be the rudder all year in guiding them through the murky waters of history. But in the last week, I need to see if they can take over the steerage of the ship. Can they be independent scholars and thinkers?

And my students rose to the challenge beautifully.

I ended the course last week—meaning that the teaching of new material came to an end last Tuesday when we studied how religious fundamentalism had crept back in to the world’s consciousness in the last 10 years. It was an unsettling end to the course—well, much like how the world is often unsettling to us as we live it day by day and week by week. We looked at a conference at the United Nations in August, 2000 and how it tried to outlaw violence in the name of religion as 1000 attendees signed a pledge to disavow such religious tensions. (Hmmmm…how’s that workin’ out??) And then we looked at the last decade to see how militant piety had managed a ‘comeback’ in Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. How does that square with other achievements of the late 20th century and early 21st century?

So with that we settled in on the task to review.

I mentioned in the last blog that a posse of sophomore boys and I enjoyed a lunch out last Friday to have a little study time. But that was only the beginning. About 75% of the students spent this week in earnest study, poring over their notes, figuring out holes in their knowledge, enthusiastically seeking out a better understanding of the world’s history.

Each night I would meet with a group who wanted to practice discussion on random topics and discuss documents from history. We talked about the rubrics from the College Board on how to construct a prize-winning essay, looking at the ‘architecture’ of an effective essay, acting engineer-like about how to accrue the coveted points from an essay reader. Many of them made up flashcards. A group of them took maps and created study guide blurbs on the maps about each region at various points in history. Then those who had made that contribution gave those maps to others who added in more of the minutiae of each region and each era.

They were acting a little obsessed about history!

And for most of the week, I just sat back and watched. Watched with delight as Norah looked at a past essay, and realized she hadn’t adequately explained a document’s point of view; watched with delight as Mousa spouted off data and information that was so fine-tuned and accurate; watched with delight as Raja helped students better understand how one creates relevant direct comparisons in light of the trends of a particular era; watched with delight as Rob kept trying to find areas of history we did not cover so he could cover the world with his knowledge; watched with delight as Mohammad tried out new writing techniques, seeing if his plan would make a nearly perfect essay even stronger; watched with delight as Zack explained to a friend a survey of Chinese history; watched with delight as a group created a mnemonic device of the Chinese dynasties with the song “Frere Jacques”; watched with delight as Leen cried, “Mr. John—I took a practice test and scored well!”; watched with delight as students critiqued each other’s essays and talked with them about the clarity of their writing and the pungency of their evidence.

Watched with delight—and I should add awe—they were doing this in a language other than their native language.

Last Saturday I used a practice exam from the College Board to offer a mock exam—everything would feel like the Big Dance. The questions were tough. The document-based essay asked students to explore how the Cuban Revolution in 1959 had changed gender relations over the last 50 years. The comparative essay asked students to compare the diffusion of Buddhism to the diffusion of Christianity (from its origins to 600) and the change over time essay asked students to analyze how trading patterns in West Africa changed from 600 to 1450 (they could also choose East Africa from 1450 to 1750). This was a challenging test!

What a great week though!

In 1992 when I bought my house on Graburn Road in Charlotte, I started doing a fun outdoor activity the night before the AP test. That was in the days of AP Modern European History. I often used the analogy that we were preparing for battle all year anyway in preparing for the AP test. But on the night before the actual “battle,” I wanted the students to relax and rest and call a cease-fire to the cramming and learning and kvetching. I loved the 1989 Kenneth Branagh film of Henry V, and the St. Crispin’s Day speech is among the most rousing speech in all of English literature. So I would show that clip, reminding the students of how the English felt before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415—very inferior to the French, but then King Harry comes in and galvanizes the forces and he reminds them that years from now they will remember the triumphs of this day. He whips “the few, the happy few, the band of brothers” into a frenzy and off they go and defeat the French.

It makes for a great moment to show the clip to apprehensive test-takers.

The year I bought my house I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fun to then go outside and have a real battle? A water-gun fight and release some of the tension?” So every year since that year I have kept that part secret, and pledged the test-takers to secrecy so that I could surprise each year’s group with the outdoor play.

I wondered if I could continue my ritual in Jordan. Would I be able to find 40+ water guns? Would handing water-guns to my Arab students be bashing, or fulfilling, the stereotype of Arabs with guns? Would this just seem ridiculous?

I decided to go ahead with the plan anyway. I asked my dear friend Fatina if she thought it would work, or was it culturally insensitive? Her daughter is in this class, so she is a good barometer. She replied that she would drive me into Amman and help me find the water-guns at toy stores!

We cleaned out two stores of their water-guns so that each of the 40+ AP World History warriors could have a water-gun. Fatina asked the sales people about a discount since we were buying their whole stock, but I guess the store-owners smelled the desperation in me that we wouldn’t have enough, so they refused a discount. So I spent $100 to get enough water-guns.

Last night we all gathered in my classroom to fill out the blasted bubble sheets of names and address and other sundry information for the College Board. I plied them with brownies to calm them down. Then I trotted out the speech from Henry V—since the volume in the laptop was a little too quiet, it wasn’t as effective as when one can crank the volume as Kenneth Branagh exclaims about their triumphs being known “to the end of the world!”

But then I brought out the filled water-guns and ushered them to go and enjoy a real battle. We ran outside, and in the grass we ran around and played. All the dates, all the documents, all the fears, all put aside to just laugh and shoot each other with water.

As an aside—I had warned the headmaster and the Dean of Student Life not to worry if they got a call from Security that a bunch of kids had guns by the classrooms!

$100 of water-guns did the trick. After the child-like fun, the students went back to the dorms, eager for a good night’s sleep, mentally prepared and calmed for today’s battle.

They will be emerging from the test in about an hour.

Let’s celebrate today!