Did you read part one of How To Become a Spanish Teacher? If not, start HERE, and then come back to this post! Part 2 deals with what comes next to start an AP Spanish course, after you have approval from your district and have attended training. The next parts involve creating a course syllabus that needs to be submitted and approved by College Board.
Want To Become an AP Spanish Teacher?
To get official approval from the College Board, you must submit a syllabus, or course audit. There’s good news and bad news here….
I’m going to start with the good news.
- During your training, you will likely be guided and asked to begin writing part of your syllabus
- Additionally, there are several syllabi you can choose from that the College Board has already approved. You can use one of those and submit it as your plan for your course if you do not want to make your own.
Designing Your Own Course Syllabus
If you want to have more control and creativity over your course, you will want to create your own syllabus/course audit. The bad news here is that it is very time consuming. The silver lining is that you will have a guide to your entire year, ideas already ready for what you might do in class, and you get to choose your own contexts! If you are paid to do this work, I recommend taking this route.
If you are designing your own course, there are a few things to keep in mind on your path to become an AP Spanish teacher. It is very helpful, though not totally necessary, to have access to textbooks or other published materials. For day-today teaching, a lot of people use either Temas or Triángulo aprobado as their textbooks. Next is a grammar review book. Again, nice to have but not necessary. I use the Avance book. Last, to prep students for the AP Exam, it’s great to have some test prep publications. There’s one
**However, over the years, I have moved away from the textbooks and created almost everything I use by myself. One can never get everything they need from a textbook. And when the pandemic hit and schools were closed- we didn’t have access to any of these resources. I designed everything from authentic resources I found online or from my own brain. (This was, of course, a time before AI!) I won’t lie. It took hours upon hours to do this, and also years.
To give you my very best advice…. if I could go back in time…. I would have purchased many things and created some things myself. It was a very difficult time in my teaching career those first several years of teaching AP Spanish. As much of an honor as it is to become and AP Spanish teacher, it requires a much higher level of planning and correcting than any other course.
I’m Going To Create My Own Course Syllabus
In order to become an AP Spanish teacher, you need a course audit, or course syllabus. The benefit to creating your own is that you will already know about at least some of the important assignments you will have your students do!
There are very specific things that College Board is looking for when you create your course audit.
First, you must include the 6 required themes: Families in Different Societies, The Influence of Language and Culture on Identity, Influences of Beauty and Art, How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives, Factors That Impact Quality of Life, and Environmental, Political and Social Challenges.
Each of these 6 units needs Essential Questions, which guide your course work.
Within the course audit, you will include a short chart of tasks, their modes of communication, and the skills they target. (College Board will give you a list of skills you must target.) You will also provide examples of anchor activities, the summative assessment you plan to give, and a list of additional resources you will use during the unit. Last, you also must state which parts of the AP Spanish exam you will simulate and practice during each unit.
I’m not going to lie. It’s a LOT of work. But again, the silver lining is that you will have a great outline and several activities. At the very least, you will have these ideas and sources, even if the activities themselves are not fully created.
And if I may reiterate… you should be PAID for your time to do this. Take advantage of time in the summer to do this at your curriculum writing rate. The thing is…. you will have to do these things at one time or another. I highly recommend doing it during vacation time, for pay. Trying to keep up during the school year with other classes and all of the other teaching responsibilities we have makes things VERY difficult.
Using a College Board Syllabus
One way to become an AP Spanish teacher and save some time at the beginning is to simply choose one of the sample course audits that College Board offers, and submit it. This is 100% permissible! There are several to choose from, so it’s just a matter of choosing which one most appeals to you. Here’s what one looks like, taken from the College Board website!
A huge benefit of using one the College Board offers is that you know it’s going to be approved! But as I said above the drawbacks are not having the creative liberties creating your own allows and not having the materials/sources ready to use (which you would have if you created your own, because you would have had to find them!)
Please see the resources below for more help on how to become an AP Spanish teacher and starting an AP Spanish course and for more information about how to become an AP Spanish teacher! And email me anytime if you have questions! Jamie@SpecialtySpanish.com
Resources
AP Spanish Week 1: Everything You Need to Get Started!
AP Spanish Lesson Plans for the Whole Year without a Textbook
AP Spanish Language and Culture 10 Projects with Rubrics for All 6 Units
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How To Become an AP Spanish Teacher: Part 1