At Barnsdall High School in northeastern Oklahoma, teacher James Cole prompts his Advanced Placement English students to write an opinion essay about the recent presidential election and what direction the country should go.
A student chooses to take the stance of “indifferent,” but isn’t sure how to develop the required counterarguments for the essay.
“You’re 15. In four years, you’ll be 19,” Cole offers. “You’re a legal adult. You’ve graduated high school in four years, you’re in the working real world. So you’re not old enough now, but in four years, you will be, and you’ll be affected greatly because of it. Okay? So that’s an argument I would say.”
It’s Cole’s first year teaching AP, and he said he loves that it allows him to delve deeper with students. Before him, media specialist Wilma Logue taught it. She’s been at Barnsdall for about 70 years and started the school’s AP program in the early 2000s.
“It’s rigorous. It’s challenging. And it’s making people think,” Logue said. “And we’re living in a world right now that we’d better do a lot of thinking. And I think AP lends itself to that.”