2006-2007 Fall/Winter Directions - Friends' Central School

CAMPUS LOG – UPPER SCHOOL
Last year, Friends’ Central School announced its decision to stop offering Advanced Placement courses.
Although our students may still choose to take Advanced Placement tests (as a means of self-evaluation and as
a measure to share with the college and universities to which they are applying), teachers are no longer
obliged to follow the curricula mandated by the Advanced Placement program. The faculty’s response to this
decision was overwhelmingly positive. As Beth Johnson, Dean of Students, and Bill Kennedy, Dean of Faculty,
explained in a letter that went home to the community, “the Advanced Placement curriculum often emphasizes
breadth over depth and rote learning over true understanding. With our highly trained faculty and very able
students, we can be more productive with our time when not harnessed to a prescribed one-size-fits-all curriculum.”
Below is a student account of how the decision has directly affected their experience in the classroom.
FCS Chemistry II Advanced Moves Beyond
Advanced Placement
by the students of Phyllis Gallagher’s Chemistry II Advanced
This fall, Dr. Phyllis Gallagher’s
Chemistry II Advanced class undertook
a unique interdisciplinary
research project. In addition to following
the recognized chemistry curriculum
that prepares Friends’ Central students
to succeed in first year college
chemistry courses, we embarked on a
research-based experiment that furthered
our conceptual understanding of how
chemistry operates in the “real world”
while simultaneously developing the skills
we need to perform valid scientific
research. The project has evolved to
include many other disciplines, including
statistics, biology, botany, environmental
sciences, international studies, and experimental
design, and the cooperation of
other classes and faculty throughout the
Upper School. We are excited about this
experiment in experimentation, one that
would not have been possible without the
freedom awarded by the removal of the
AP course designation. And we believe
that we are ushering in a new age of interdisciplinary
cooperation at Friends’
Central School and look forward to this
exciting research process.
The journey began when we were
introduced to a little known plant called
‘duckweed.’ Most of us were hesitant.
How, we wondered, could a little known
plant be of enough interest and complexi-
28 DIRECTIONS Fall 2006 / Winter 2007
ty to function as a vehicle to understand
chemistry and scientific research in general?
As we learned more, our hesitancy
disappeared and our curiosity grew.
Duckweed is a small, floating aquatic
plant that is grown in third world countries
as a feed additive and valued for its
high leaf protein content, often greater
by weight than soy. Duckweed is also a
hyperaccumulator plant used in
phytoremediation applications.
Hyperaccumulator plants can concentrate
metal contaminants in their leaf
and root structures. In fact, these plants
are often used to “mine” contaminated
Ashley Beard ’07 working in the Haverford College library
Oliver Backes ’08, Chris Hall ’08, Noredy Neal ’08, and Megan Lundy ’08 at Haverford College