Michael Otto, a beloved teacher who transferred from Trinity Springs in the 2014-15 school year, experienced his first year being an Advanced Placement United States Government and Politics teacher for the 2016-17 senior class.
“I felt pretty enthusiastic about teaching government, I definitely think this was a unique year for the teaching of the subject and I think all the circumstances, the real world circumstances actually promoted a greater degree of enthusiasm that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise so I felt like in that sense at least all the stars align,” said Otto.
Otto will continue his teaching in government for the 2017-18 school year. He will be able to adjust to the pacing of the half a semester class.
“I’ve definitely learned how to pace myself between the fall semester and the spring semester I realized in the fall semester I probably dragged my feet on content and barely got through it all, where as in the spring semester I went through a little bit too quickly and so hopefully by next semester I’ll have it nailed down just right,” Otto said.
He has learned what seems to be the most difficult to comprehend for his students and plans to work on that more next year.
“Honestly I would probably say Congress is the most complex because there’s more going on where as the President and the Supreme Court, students have learned about and their actual processes are fairly simplistic,” said Otto. “Congress really is the first time students have approached it in every sort of detail so that and its inherent complexities make it difficult to learn.”
Along with teaching government, Otto also taught one class period of AP U.S. History. He taught AP U.S. History for Timber Creek since the 2014-15 school year. This was not his first year teaching that class, unlike AP Government. The teaching of both classes have given Otto an advantage to teach the students because of the way that the subjects overlap.
“They have actually played off each other. I’ve allowed some of my AP Gov content to actually inform some of the things I’ve taught in APUSH, and its actually frankly given me a better understanding. [It’s also] given me more context to teaching things in APUSH, things like the New Deal and Great Society, I’m able to explain with a little bit more thoroughness and so they really actually helped each other,” said Otto. “It’s been a lot of work to teach AP Gov, but I think it will benefit in the long run.”
Now that the class of 2017 is graduating Otto can be relieved that the AP tests are over and can attest to hard work put in by the seniors.
“I think [the class] went well, they seem to have come out with a great deal of enthusiasm especially anybody from the Fall that went to any review session. They thought they did better which is obvious because over 3 months you’re going to forget it all,” said Otto. ” I’m absolutely thrilled, I felt like especially for senior year the students went ahead and gave a lot of push right there at the very end and I felt like that helped a lot.”