Meet your AP Comparative Government Consultant, Scott Rivinius:
College Board endorsed consultant for AP Comparative Government & Politics
Scott Rivinius has been a public school teacher for sixteen years, teaching in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Texas and Maryland. For the past nine years, he has taught AP Comparative Government and Politics at Winston Churchill High School, a school of 2200 students outside of Washington, D.C. He has worked at the AP Comparative Government and Politics Reading since 2013, as both a reader and table leader. He has served as an AP Consultant and has provided instruction and support to AP Comparative Government teachers through one day workshops and APSIs.
He has previously taught AP World History, AP U.S. History, and AP U.S. Government and Politics. He received his B.A. in History from Elon University; his M.A. in History from Salem State University; and his MEd in Educational Research and Evaluation from Ohio University.Mr. Rivinius has a passion for political science and teaching Comparative Government and Politics. He believes this is a course that is greatly beneficial to students’ academic development, prepares them well for collegiate courses and helps them better understand the world.
APSI Session Description for AP Comparative Government and Politics
This APSI will have an emphasis on the 2019-20 course changes and how to best prepare teachers and students to meet the challenges of the new Course and Exam Description(CED), foster student skills and develop engaging lessons. This course has challenging content and there will be opportunities to introduce, review and dive into all five units of the CED, that will benefit both new teachers to the course, as well as veteran teachers. The APSI will provide numerous resources for teachers to bring back to their classrooms, including multiple choice questions, free response questions, lesson plans, activities, projects, print resources and video resources.
A particular area of focus will be free response questions. There will be opportunities to work on question development, best practices, samples and how to best prepare students for the AP exam. Conceptual, quantitative, comparative and argumentative free responses will all be addressed. The APSI will benefit both teachers that teach the course thematically and those that take a country by country approach. There will be discussion on the pros and cons of each approach, as well as using a hybrid approach for the course.
This APSI will be different since it will be online but it will still focus on how enjoyable this course is to teach and will include plenty of secondary sources, video clips, simulations, solo projects, group projects and cultural activities that you can bring back to your classroom. It will be interactive, collaborative and high energy.
If you have any questions about the Comparative Government and Politics APSI, please contact Scott Rivinius at sfrivinius@gmail.com .