• Course: Pre-AP English
  • Dates: June 4-7
  • Instructor: Mary Ellen Ackerman, email - meackerman@comcast.net>

    • Mary Ellen Ackerman has had a variety of teaching experiences ranging from teaching Project Headstart in Chicago, starting an alternative school for juvenile delinquents in Minnesota, to teaching freshman English at Norfolk State University in Virginia. As English Department Chair at Dennis-Yarmouth High School on Cape Cod she helped establish Curriculum Team Leaders/Vertical Teams within her school system. For over 10 years she served on the team comprised of English teachers from grades K-12. She has been a teacher trainer in Portfolio Assessment for the Massachusetts Department of Education, a consultant for the College Board, and a Reader for the AP Literature and Composition exam. For three years she served as a member of the Steering Committee for the AP National Conference. Ms. Ackerman has facilitated AP English Literature and English Vertical Teaming Summer Institutes in Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

  • Included:
    • Materials (Textbooks, Assessment Resources)
    • Lunch & Snacks
  • Emphasis:
    • Establishing collaboration and co-operation among teachers across grade levels.
    • Honoring the significance of the roles that all middle and high school English teachers play in the preparing of their students for academic success in advanced courses.
    • Learning strategies that create, foster, and maintain effective team work.
    • Familiarizing middle and high school teachers with skills and concepts tested on both the AP English Literature and Composition and AP English Language and Composition exams.
    • Helping middle and high school teachers identify and practice effective strategies that help all students engage in active, higher-level learning and to develop skills, knowledge, concepts, and habits of mind that support such rigor.
    • Practicing teaching strategies that deeply engage students in becoming close readers, effective writers and reflective thinkers.