To kick off our new Albert teacher spotlight series, we chatted with Dr. Brad Clarke. Dr. Clarke teaches at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine. Known lovingly by his students as “DC,” he uses Albert in his AP® Government and AP® US History courses. Dr. Clarke has 20 years of teaching experience under his belt and believes that the Harkness style of teaching, where the class is centered around student-led discussion and there is minimal teacher talk, has transformed engagement and rigor in his classroom. On top of teaching, he serves as the Associate Dean of Academics, the history department head, and the running coach. He has served as a teaching assistant at Brandeis University and Harvard University and received his Ph.D. in political science at Brandeis.
Dr. Clarke began using the using Albert with his students two years ago and has found that it’s an excellent tool to supplement a discussion- centered classroom. We wanted to know a more about Dr. Clarke’s teaching methods and how Albert has helped his students. Here’s what we learned:
Q: Brad, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. To start off, what are some of things that you care about what it comes to teaching history classes in general and AP® classes?
A: My predominant teaching style is discussion based, we have a Harkness table in our history classes at Gould, so my day-to-day in the classroom is based on a discussion.
Q: What are some of the topics that you’ve discussed recently?
A: Well with AP® Comparative Government, I did a lot with Brexit, the European Union, we follow a lot of current events, the parliamentary election in the UK, there was an Iranian parliamentary election this spring, the election in France…. And each year in Comparative Government I prepare a different theme in the course. So this year our theme is migration and immigration. And so the summer reading was this book called Exodus by Paul Collier — then we weave that theme of migration and immigration through the course. It works really well to keep it fresh, using a different theme for the course each year.
Q: Wow that’s great. I’m sure your students really appreciate that your class is not just a boring lecture. That leads us engagement on Albert. We know that you’ve been using Albert for two years to supplement your classroom. Can you tell us a bit more about how you use it?
A: Sure, the assignments feature has been great to be able to pick questions that correspond with the curriculum we’re going over. So, if we’re learning about political parties, then I choose the questions on political parties. Or if we’re learning about the Civil Rights Movement in US History, then I can choose those questions. And, typically what I do is, each week, I assign questions that are due on Friday, and kids can work on it whenever they like, outside of class, for homework. I tend to make it a weekly thing. I usually make the Albert 20% of their term grade. Half of their grade is on participation and the other half is on accuracy. The questions are pretty challenging which is why I don’t just grade on accuracy.
Q: Are there ways you’ve implemented competition using Albert?
A: On my screen, I can see the number of questions kids have answered and the number they’ve answered correctly. So I might periodically show that to the class to say, “Hey these kids are in the top three.” I do that every couple of weeks and that worked pretty well. I coach cross country and one of the great things about that is that over time they see their time drop. So I think down the road it would be great if someday kids could see in the first month maybe they answered 50% of the questions correctly on the first time, but then by the third month that had gone up to 60%. I think that seeing that over time could be pretty valuable.
Q: That’s definitely something we’re trying to improve upon in the upcoming months — just general student trends. You said that you used our assignments feature quite a bit, how do you determine what is an applicable question versus one that you might want to leave off?
A: It’s a bit easier for US History because the course is chronological. So the way you have it set up on the website is chronological, so it’s pretty easy for me to just look on the site for the era that we’re studying. If there are 30 questions on the Progressive Era, I assign those for this week. Sometimes I’ll customize an assignment by going in and making a template and adding individual questions. I’ll do that about a quarter of the time — for example if I want to make an assignment that will review material questions for the entire term and I want to pull from different time periods — or if I want to do a hybrid assignment. That takes a lot more time — so the way I usually do it is with the “Quick Assign” feature. In AP® Gov, it’s a little more complicated because the course isn’t chronological so it’s a little bit trickier to find questions that relate directly to my curriculum, so I have to pick and choose a little more.
What I like about Albert is that I can start with it at the beginning of the year, and then continue working with it weekly all throughout the year. The kids always say after the exam, that using Albert was so much of a help and that the questions on the AP® Gov test were easier than the ones we had on Albert. During the year, there’s probably about a third of the kids that like it a lot, a third that is ambivalent, and a third that hates it, but then ALL give me feedback after the exam that it was really valuable.
Q: So how do you address the two-thirds that aren’t fans?
A: Well it’s like running, not every kid wants to run five miles during practice. But if you want to get better, that is what you have to do. And I tell them, practice in anything in life is going to make you better. Some kids are naturally good at multiple choice questions, some kids take longer for those critical thinking skills to develop. But what I tell them, is that the more you practice the skill, the better you’ll get. And I believe that’s true. For the kids who aren’t naturally good at it, I’ll try to find ways to make it more fun. During class, I might take 15 min to give a short 15-20 question assignment, and I’ll tell them they can work with a partner, or you can use resources to look up the answers, so that makes it more collaborative. I can vary the way we use it. Sometimes individual for homework, sometimes in class with a partner.
Q: Great. You’ve mentioned in the past that you sometimes use the timed feature. Can you tell us a bit about when you timed vs. untimed in class?
A: The kids do way better on the untimed. Sometimes in the fall, at the start of the year, I start with untimed assignments, and then as we move through the year, I make it timed. Because ultimately on the exam they will have to do it in a timed fashion. For some kids who are perfectionists, the assignment might only be 20 questions, but they spend 2 hours trying to get the questions right. And, I think if you do it untimed, there is a strong chance that a lot of kids will be looking up answers. On the one hand, if I want them to look up the answers as learning material that’s ok, but there might be times when I want to evaluate how much they know without having the opportunity to look things up. So that’s one of the reasons why I vary it. The kids definitely prefer the untimed, but, again, it can sometimes take so long, and I don’t intend for them to spend so much time on it.
Q: Have you done any studies in terms of the how students who use the site consistently do on AP® exams, or have they given you any feedback in terms of their confidence and preparedness?
A: I use it with all of my kids, so it’s not like I have a control group, so it’s hard to know for sure. Anecdotally, after the exam, so many of the kids say, “Wow, that was easier than the Albert questions — both on Gov and US History. This year they felt very confident, very well prepared for the multiple choice section of the exam. I think I have more work to do in the Free Response/ essay part of the exam. I haven’t used as many of your resources on the site for FRQs, so I’m going to be doing more of that this year.
Q: In general, what do advice do you have to other history teachers around how to use Albert effectively?
A: I would say first, use it consistently. Use it deeply. Like anything in life, if a student makes it a habit, and they know that each week there’s going to be an Albert assignment, that normalizes it. The other thing is to teach them test taking skills — how to answer multiple choice questions effectively, how to work quickly, how to use their critical thinking skills, a lot of times you can just eliminate answers using logic. I think it’s also important to debrief two or three questions that kids found challenging during an assignment. I had several kids that emailed the website because they were sure that an answer that was given was incorrect, and I try to encourage that kind of thing, they’re thinking critically. If they think a particular question reads incorrectly, then let’s do something! Let’s email the website to make it better. That’s some advice I’d give — just like with running. You gotta run every week, it’s not always going to be fun but it’ll make you faster. That’s the same thing with the Albert questions.
Q: Definitely. I know a few other teachers use Albert in your school. Do you ever get together and share best practices?
A: I think I may have been the first one, and now there’s an English teacher and a Humanities teacher using it. So there have been a few other teachers that have started to use it. We’ve talked about it a little bit with our academic steering committee. We’ve been doing more blended learning, so we’ve brought up that Albert has good tools to use in a blended classroom. It’s gotten a fair amount of attention, it’s one of the strong tools that kids can use in that type of environment.
Q: And how did it spread throughout the school after you started using it?
A: It was mostly word of mouth like “Oh you should check this out.” We were having a discussion about blended learning because that was an initiative that’s been coming up in the last several years. So we’ve been asking, “What are some online tools that students can use in an English classroom or a math classroom and Albert came up in that context — most of it, with teachers, is word of mouth. If I tell a teacher “ This works for me,” they’ll be willing to try it. I was just down at an AP® reading in Florida and I mentioned it to a few people down there, so I think people are willing to try it if they meet a teacher and it works really well for them.
Q: What are some of the things you said to get your administration on board?
A: The cost of it is so affordable, it works out to about $10 per student. Because we’re in an independent school, we’re in a different situation than a public school, where there is going to be a lot more bureaucracy the average teacher goes through to get a book or resource approved. So in our case, it was very easy for one teacher to want to use it, and then to go ahead and get it. At a public school or district wide I imagine that would be more of a bureaucratic process. At our school, kids buy books, so it was just very easy to have the kids each pay $10 in their bookstore account and then it took me about 10 minutes to get the paperwork filled out.
Thanks so much for your time, Brad. We learned a lot from you and best of luck using Albert this year!
Want to use Albert in a discussion centered-classroom like Dr. Clarke? Check out our Quick Guide to Using Albert to supplement Class Discussions!
