We made the decision at our school to make AP Calculus BC a second-year course in high school Calculus so our kids in BC have all completed AP Calculus AB with some measure of success. I am pretty firm in believing that we are doing them a favor (and doing our teacher – right now it’s me) a favor as well. Our kids had been ‘succeeding’ in BC by the measure of the AP test, but they were exhausted and had no time for reflection. We probably have a bit TOO much time for reflection with it as a second-year course, but that’s the problem I’d rather have. So, we use Stewart’s Calculus text (I inherited it and I’m not in love with it but it’s more than acceptable) and he has these clever sections at the end of each chapter called Problems Plus. I spend the first four weeks or so reinforcing AB topics through the use of these problems. Our AB calendar doesn’t lend itself to too much of this so I feel like it is not simple repetition for the kids. We just finished chapter two on derivatives and I’ve been mixing in some AP FR problems for HW. I’m completely at a loss to explain the wide range of reactions from the kids and their range of performance on these problems. One of our more ambitious kids – a junior girl from China who earned a 5 and A’s all last year – was presenting an AP problem with a linear piecewise function. We were told that this was function f and a function g was defined to be its antiderivative. We were presented with a triangular area. She carefully explained how she found the line equations for each piece of the graph and then proceeded to anti differentiate them. I pointed out that her work was correct but perhaps it would be more efficient to simply calculate the area of the triangle bounded by the curve. She was not moved AT ALL by my argument. I’m torn between being happy that she knew how to convert into a function (I actually AM happy that she can do this) and troubled that she is so rigid in her approach to antidifferentiation. Rather than recognizing that it is also a geometric concept, she is locked into the function interpretation. I don’t want my students to spend so much extra time and energy on problems like this. I also don’t want them to think that I don’t respect their thinking. I don’t want them to think that this is all about doing it the way that Mr. Dardy wants them to do it. Figuring out how to respond in a genuinely positive way while also pointing out how much more efficient she can be was such a challenge. I need to work on this. So much work to do in this job, no matter how long I’ve been at it…