When I was first handed a class of eager AP World History students, I felt totally overwhelmed before the year even began. I knew this would be the first of many AP classes for these 30 students and I wasn’t sure if I had the expertise to guide them to a passing score. There was the 10,000 years of content to cover plus an exam structure that was completely foreign to me.

There’s a stigma that comes with teaching AP courses that sets the bar all the way up at expert, as if you cannot lead students to success without a degree in the content. That’s how I felt. The odds were stacked against me and even more stack against my students, but after 5 years of building and re-building my course, I can sum up my advice to all AP World History teachers in one sentence:

“To create a successful classroom in AP World, you just need to be organized, curious, and flexible.

Been there.

I know, I know. It takes a million other things to have success in an AP World classroom, not just pretty posters and color-coded systems of organization.

Let’s get to the nuts and bolts. How do you actually tackle AP World? I have put together five tips for all AP World History teachers as they go back to school this fall.

The only thing to remember is that it is a continuous process. There aren’t any secrets to unlock success, but there are plenty of resources to help you get there and even a full virtual summit to kick-off your year (more on that later).

1. Plan ahead and stick to it.

I recently interviewed 8 different teachers and historians with decades of experience in this field. Every single one of them discussed long term planning strategies in teaching any history course. In the case of AP World History, before school begins, you should plan out your entire year. That doesn’t mean planning every single day of the school year in great detail, but rather outlining every week of the school year by topic.

This will help you for two reasons:

1. If you plan ahead and stick to it, you’ll actually get to all of the material you need to cover and won’t have a situation where you basically skipped the last unit.

2. It will keep you from falling into a cycle of “what should I teach tomorrow”. That’s definitely not a good place to be and it’s avoidable with a solid long term plan.

How do you plan for 10 months of teaching? In my interview with Patrick Lasseter, a well-established AP World teacher in North Carolina, he discussed some historical math that will help you plan your year.

First, how many school days do you have? Subtract any breaks, days off, and subtract a few more if you typically have snow days. You’ll have a number around 160ish.

Then, use the course description to determine how long you should spend on each of the six periods. In AP World History, the current time periods break down like this: Period 1 is 5%, Period 2 is 15%, and Periods 3, 4, 5, and 6 are each 20%. You should plan to spend just 5% of your class days on period 1 and so on.

Plan all the way ahead assigning every school day to a time period, which then can be broken down by key concept.

2. Use the key concepts as your guide, not the textbook.

Textbooks are as much of a liability as they are an asset. We all need them to drive student learning outside of the classroom, but they often include far more information then you actually need to cover. Although I don’t like my class becoming a narrow focus on the exam, it is ultimately what you and your students are marching towards.

Your best friend in teaching AP World History is the course description, which includes 100+ pages of specific key concepts that College Board has identified as assessment worthy. This is the exact point of contention that brought me to the public showdown with Trevor Packer this past May. These key concepts may be significantly trimmed in the future, but for now, you have 19 concept-packed ideas to cover in your course.

A good example of why you should stick to the key concepts is when you look at period 5, which covers 1750–1900. While textbooks more or less mirror the four key concepts in period 5 with Industrialization, Imperialism, and Revolutions, many textbooks don’t specifically isolate the concept of Migrations. They might include discussions of long-term migrations in this time period, but not in a way that you would spend a day or two on this topic.

Follow the key concepts and plug them in to your long-term plan, week by week. Then, track the resources you want to include for each week including textbook chapters or excerpts, primary and secondary sources, and videos.

3. Take tests and essays with students.

This is probably the least followed tip on this list, but it’s my favorite and critical to a classroom culture that’s a safe space for learning.

AP World History is a difficult course, both in the content and skills. Even teachers who are five or ten years in are constantly learning with their students. Be open with your students about your learning journey through the course and find ways to be vulnerable with them. It will encourage them to take more academic risks because they see you doing the same.

Take tests and essays with students as often as you can. You won’t take them all, but do at least one of every essay type and as many multiple choice sections as you can. Your students will love the idea of you taking assessments with them and you can even let them grade your work.

You’ll make mistakes and you won’t have perfect scores, like the kids might assume. That’s honestly ideal. My students sometime would compete to beat me and I scored lower than students more than I would like to admit, but I never lost respect from students when that happened. I learned with them. I improved with them. And we all marched on together.

4. Use technology in the classroom.

Technology is one of the most polarizing subjects with teachers. There’s a spectrum from hate to love when it comes to technology in the classroom. On one hand, I know that there is a serious technology gap in schools and some students have far more access than others. I taught in a school where we were physically limited because without ramps, we literally could not get the Chromebook carts into about 20 classrooms on campus.

However, at this point, I think it’s safe to say that most students have smart phones. There are tons of amazing apps that will benefit your classroom throughout the year. Here’s a few that I love:

Quizlet: Instead of having your students create physical notecards for key terms, use Quizlet for students to digitally organize vocabulary. There are also some really fun and interactive games they can play to learn the words. Flipgrid: This is a new app on the block and it is so cool. You create a “grid,” which functions as a community for your students to post short videos. I would use this every week and attach it to textbook reading. Write 1–2 interesting discussion questions for each week, post them to your grid, and have students submit short video responses to you and to each other. So. awesome. Fiveable: While I was in the classroom, I had to stay after school at least once a week, more when the test rolled around. With Fiveable, students can jump into live sessions every week taught by high-quality teachers. It takes a village to get students ready for the exam and Fiveable is a new tool that you can lean on for support. It’s like the Peloton of education.

5. Join a professional learning community.

I was very lucky to always have 3 other teachers who taught the same thing as me at my school. We had a strong collaboration team and even built in time to work together. However, I know many AP World History teachers are isolated at their school or even district. Teaching this class takes collaboration and a whole lot of creativity.

If you don’t have a network of teachers you can rely on locally, there are several you can join online: