After 14 years teaching AP psychology at a large high school in Gurnee, Illinois, Sean Mahoney needed new ideas to keep his courses fresh. So he applied to attend the APA/Clark University Workshop for High School Teachers, a three-day forum of presentations, networking and other professional development activities aiming to enhance the teaching of high school psychology.
The workshop, hosted by APA's Education Directorate and Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS) in partnership with Clark University and the American Psychological Foundation, is supported by a gift from Lee Gurel, PhD, a psychologist and Clark University alumnus.
"This was by far the most meaningful and lasting professional development opportunity I've been a part of," says Mahoney, who heard about the event through other teachers who help score the AP Psychology Exam. He and 23 other high school teachers attended this year's workshop — the 10th annual — at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in June. "I came away with probably 10 different ways that this conference will really contribute to how I teach next year."
For example, Randy Ernst, a social studies curriculum specialist in Lincoln, Nebraska, shared creative ways to teach positive psychology, such as by having students talk themselves out of negative thought patterns by writing to their brains as if they are someone else. Nancy Fenton, a teacher in Lincolnshire, Illinois, demonstrated how to teach theories of motivation by describing them in the context of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — an activity developed by past TOPSS chair Steve Jones. One person might do it to satisfy her hunger, meeting the drive theory of motivation, for instance, while a cafeteria worker does it to get paid, representing the incentive theory.
Other presentations featured Clark University professors who talked about their latest research on such topics as men's mental health and learning environments, while Ball State University professor Mary Kite, PhD, delivered the keynote address on multicultural competence.
"That's one of the things that makes this a valuable workshop — the mix of pedagogy and cutting-edge research," says Emily Leary Chesnes, assistant director of precollege and undergraduate education at APA.
Participants also toured the archives and psychology laboratories at Clark University, where APA was founded in 1892, where adolescence and emerging adulthood were formally established as stages in human development, and where Francis Cecil Sumner, PhD, became the first African American to earn a doctoral degree in psychology in 1920.
For Mahoney, who double majored in psychology and history in college, the opportunity to learn about Clark's history in addition to hearing from experts in teaching and psychology was unexpected — and welcome. "It brings you back," he says. "It's a chance to feel like a student again, to recharge your intellectual side."
— Anna Miller
