Been to this rodeo with colleagues several times.
It's always gone nowhere for two main reasons. First, ETS doesn't foresee its generating enough revenue to justify the costs of developing it - a process which in itself takes years before a test actually goes online. After all, theatre teachers are far outnumbered by music and art teachers in American high schools. Second, many college theatre programs have said they wouldn't accept it for credit if it were developed because "we want our students to learn theatre
our way." Of course, that may be a budget-conscious (or even paranoid) way of saying, "We already have such a small enrollment in our classes that funding our department is a problem, and we don't want students skipping one of our classes because they already got AP credit for it in high school." Fewer students means fewer jobs for professors, right?
It's interesting to speculate what such a course would be. Didn't most of us have to start in college with "Introduction to Theatre," or something like that, before we could take other, more specialized courses in acting, directing, writing, literature, history, tech, etc.? The intro course I had to take used a condensed version of Brockett's history book along with an anthology of plays from different periods of Western theatre. We read some plays, skimmed other plays, and learned about about the history of theatre and the process of making theatre. Seems as if that might be prime territory for an AP Theatre course.
Maybe one day ETS and the various college programs will see it our way and work with us.
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Jeff Grove
Drama Teacher
Duval County Public Schools
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-24-2014 10:31
From: Ryan Moore
Subject: AP Theatre Course
A parallel question...will we ever see National Board certification in the subject of theatre? There is such certification for other fine arts areas (e.g. music, visual art). I've investigated this a couple of times over the years (though,I admit, not recently), even placing calls to NBPTS, who told me that I should either pursue the middle childhood generalist track (I teach middle school) or the career/technical track.
The course is too rigorous for me to want to invest in anything "general," nor do I view my program as primarily a career/technical track (like many theatre teachers, I have nothing but profound respect for theatre professionals and technicians, but what about "art for art's sake?" I do not get out of bed on cold Michigan mornings to help in the creation of better workers. Rather I seek to cultivate better human beings, better thinkers, better citizens, and students with improved aesthetic capacities.)
As far as I can tell this is a path of not only professional enrichment but also (in many districts) increased pay that is open to many of our non-theatre colleagues but, for the forseeable future, closed to those of us who are lucky enough to fill our daily schedules teaching theatre.
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Ryan Moore
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-23-2014 18:28
From: Catharine Rademacher
Subject: AP Theatre Course
Dear All,
This is my first time on open forum, so I hope this isn't a repeated question. Does anyone know if an AP Theatre course through College Board is in the works? I know that we have music theory and art history, but no theatre. How would one go about making that happen for our students?
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Catharine Rademacher
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