Reading for Advanced Placement (AP) and Honors classes

“I wish I had taken this course as a freshman – it would have changed the entire course of my undergraduate career.” - Khadysha Reinhardt, University of Washington Honors and Comparative History of Ideas senior

We teach students to read and think at the college level. We love our work, and do a good job of it.

In the past we’ve taught students individually, but we’ve recently had great success teaching this material to a small class of students at the University of Washington in the Comparative History of Ideas program. Now we’d like to translate our class to the high-school level.

It’s no secret that students can’t read at the level teachers and professors expect of them. Students are expected to carefully read copious amounts of dense material, and routinely fail, resigning themselves to SparkNotes and lowered test grades.

But this should be expected – students don’t read well because they’re not taught to. Schools, even good schools, ordinarily teach students to passively absorb information from texts, and read everything at the same rate.

In contrast, our course trains students to –

- speed read easy material
- slow down on dense, important text
- understand what a book really is, and why it’s of utmost importance
- exploit a textbook’s layout to comprehend it quickly
- take intelligent and useful notes
- get fascinated, and stay fascinated by the text
- pre-read to save time and increase comprehension
- attack a book, quickly finding its thesis and structure
- learn the best books to read about different topics
- read multiple books against one another to write a term paper
- build a massive vocabulary with minimal fuss
- use the Internet for all it’s worth
- read SAT and ACT passages confidently and get questions right

We also train students to slice through complex prose to boil down the essential meaning. For example, we show students how to start with this sentence:

“In working toward such an expansion of the conceptual envelope in which, one can, of course, move in a great many directions; and perhaps the most important initial problem is to avoid setting out, like Stephen Leacock’s mounted policeman, in all of them at once.”

and end with these:

“One can move in many directions. The problem is to avoid setting out in all of them at once.”

Throughout all of this, we present reading as part of the intellectual life – the probing, engaged mindset that attempts to make sense of our place in the world.

Students are given a copy of Mortimer Alder’s How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, a workbook, and a blank commonplace book.

Besides keeping the course affordable, doing the course as a small group allows students to learn from each other’s problems. Homework each week includes coming to class with a problem in school reading: “I fall asleep when I read x,” “I keep re-reading the same material, but can’t keep it in my head,” and the ever-popular “I have to read Of Mice and Men this weekend – what do I do?!” To each, we give helpful advice.

Thus, we’d like to work with a group of 4-8 students. It helps if the students are in classes that demand hard reading, especially honors or AP classes, as the course will revolve around applying what we learn. Students will bring their class books to the lessons and do exercises out of them.

The class is two hours long, meets once a week, and will run 8 weeks. Though it’s a large time commitment, we’re confident that the time saved in reading will more than make up for it.

To make this class financially make sense for us – we also work as test-prep coaches – we need to make about $100 per class, which works out to $25/person with four students or $12.50/class with eight.

We’re also happy to work with college students and adults.

Please contact us with questions at the address above, addressing letters to Brandon and Kristin. You can also learn more about who we are and what we do (including full resumes) at our website, seattleSATcoaching.com

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