This session: AP English Literature and Composition with Richard McCarthy is offered ONLINE in Event 2: June 23-26, 2025.
Meet your APSI Consultant for AP English Literature and Composition
Richard McCarthy has been teaching AP Literature and Composition for 16 years and has served as a College Board Consultant for ten. He has presented poetry strategies at the AP Annual Conference and has served on the APAC Steering Committee.
While Richard’s specialty is working with teachers who are new to AP instruction, he loves facilitating positive, productive pedagogical conversations between new and experienced educators. An expert in curriculum and instructional strategies, Richard puts a premium on offering teachers methods that will increase student engagement while also affording teachers some degree of work/life balance.
He currently teaches and serves as the Dean of Faculty at an independent high school in northern Vermont. In his spare time, Richard loves needlepoint and stamp-collecting.
In this APSI, Richard will offer teachers a wide range of highly effective strategies for inspiring students to develop their voice as writers and critical thinkers. Furthermore, we will explore how to best utilize the CED and AP Classroom so that students can benefit from the content, and the instructors can make targeted adjustments to their lessons. And finally, Richard will share decades worth of materials for teaching poetry, drama, and fiction. We hope the week will allow teachers to reconnect with the ideas and passions that drove them to be English Majors and inspired them to become teachers. In this APSI, the week will offer teachers a wide range of highly effective strategies for inspiring students to develop their voice as writers and critical thinkers. Because students have an array of experiences and understandings, it is critical to take them “from what they know to what they don’t know” in a way that will help them create insightful understandings of literature. By grounding their literary experiences with some deep, universal tensions, the students can engage with complex poetry, drama, and fiction with a bit more confidence and understanding. In short, offering frames of understanding can help students “accelerate their insight” into meaningful works of literature. Teachers will be offered an array of approaches for assessing student writing and methods for assuring that students are held accountable for content/skills while also fostering a healthy work culture for both students and instructor. As for exam specific direction, we will work with strategies for both the FRQ and MC questions that are direct and profitable for the students. Furthermore, we will explore how to best utilize the CED and AP Classroom so that students can benefit from the content, and the instructors can make targeted adjustments to their lessons. And finally, Richard will share decades worth of materials for teaching poetry, drama, and fiction. We hope the week will allow teachers to reconnect with the ideas and passions that drove them to be English Majors and inspired them to become teachers.