AP and regular Environmental Science combined into one class

For the first time, all four periods of Kristen Thomson’s environmental science classes have a combination of AP Environmental Science and college prep Environmental Science students. The number of non-AP Environmental Science students in each period ranges from one to three, with a total of nine students taking the course.

Thomson said the goal of offering students the option to enroll in non-AP Environmental Science was to make material generally reserved for APES more accessible to students who wish to learn it without the heavy workload and pressure that comes with AP classes and to ease the scheduling difficulties of dropping the AP version of the class.

“If you walk into a class, you shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between an AP student and a non-AP student,” Thomson said. “They’re learning the exact same material and the curriculum is accessible to both groups.”

According to Thomson, the primary differences between the two groups of students are assessments and labs. 

Both APES and regular Environmental Science students are expected to keep up with class readings, but APES students have daily homework quizzes while regular students are only required to take notes on the readings. 

Additionally, Thomson prepares a different version of each test for regular Environmental Science students, with the intention to make the test more conceptual, rather than asking the critical thinking and skills-based questions the AP exam tends to ask.

In the past, Thomson has created several versions of each test for her AP Environmental Science classes. As such, she is used to creating multiple versions of tests, and does not feel that creating the regular Environmental Science tests was particularly challenging or time-consuming.

“For AP tests, I have to review them and make sure that each version is at approximately the same level of difficulty,” Thomson said. “For my non-AP tests, I don’t have the same issue. It’s often just a matter of lowering the amount of questions and simplifying them.”

In order to encourage regular Environmental Science students to study the subject rather than stress about the grade, Thomson also removes several questions from labs in order to further facilitate a lighter workload for non-AP students. For example, she often does not require the CER, or “Claim-Evidence-Reasoning,” paragraphs for regular Environmental Science students’ labs.

Additionally, Thomson emphasized that students who wanted to transfer from AP Environmental Science to regular Environmental Science before the deadline would be able to keep the exact same schedule. The goal of this was to incentivize students to make the right decision for themselves without the pressure of scheduling constraints.

Junior Mary Cambell, a student taking the non-AP pathway, said she finds that the class is fun and engaging, but provides a more relaxed workload.

She believes that the culture of the class is inclusive and that there is no stigma against regular Environmental Science students.

“Everyone just feels the same,” Cambell said. “We often forget that there’s a distinction between AP and non-AP.”

Cambell also said she enjoys the class’s labs and projects more than the reading and quizzes. Enrolling in the regular class made sense for her because she can spend more time engaging with the material interactively without being bogged down in studying for difficult tests and completing homework quizzes.

Thomson wants to make sure that all students who wish to learn environmental science have a supportive environment, regardless of whether or not they want to take an AP class.

“I opened it up this way because I didn’t feel right that the curriculum was exclusive to AP students,” Thomson said. “My main goal is to retain as many people in the sciences.”

In particular, Thomson wants students genuinely interested in the subject but unwilling or unable to commit to an AP-level workload to be able to gain exposure to the subject material.

“It has always killed me when students loved environmental science but found it too hard,” Thomson said. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to prevent here.”