AP Human Geography Offers College Experience to ELHS Freshmen

By Katie Powell ’27

The 2023-2024 academic year marks the first school year that ELHS offered the AP Human Geography course as a social studies course option. AP Human Geography was officially created in 2000, and is primarily designed for freshmen in place of a traditional freshmen year social studies course. The goal of AP Human Geography is to teach students how humans view, use, and modify the surface of the Earth and their environments. AP Human Geography teaches students to understand, analyze, and draw conclusions from geographic information displayed in maps, tables, charts, landscapes, and images. In addition, the course teaches students how to understand and analyze spatial relationships and patterns, as well as multiple geographic theories and models. This course is a very interesting, anthropological, and flexible course with a heavier workload typical of most AP courses.

Ms. Heather Burakewicz recently sat down for an interview with the Spartan Spectator. 

Spartan Spectator: What made you want to teach AP Human Geography?

Ms. Burakewicz: I’ve been wanting to teach this course since 2015 because I went to a training over the summer and was curious about the course in general and I loved the content and the people who were teaching it. I got to meet with teachers who taught abroad and at programs such as semester at sea; it was awesome. That’s when I was teaching at Springfield, but it wasn’t in their program of study. Then when I came here in 2017 I still really wanted to teach it but it wasn’t an option yet, but they finally introduced it this year and I was so excited to teach it. 

Spartan Spectator: What do you think is the most important lesson or takeaway from this course? Why?

Ms. Burakiewicz: I think that everything is connected in someway in our world; you can’t quite tell what is going to have an effect where, almost like the butterfly effect, but there are patterns in society and human nature that are thematic that continue and that can be cross referenced with anything else, math, politics, geography, etc… and so just to have that understand that all these major things are connected is so important; its all about complex relationships. Plus, the skills that you learn to think more deeply about cause and effect and to study things more carefully; you will use those throughout your life. 

Spartan Spectator: If you could change one thing about the way the course is taught or presented, what would it be and why?

Ms. Burakewicz: I would give more time to do more engaging activities for the course. With every AP class it’s the same thing; there are so many things you have to cover but so many cool activities you could do for each unit. If we could have the exam at the end of May instead of the beginning it would be huge.

Spartan Spectator: What about the course do you think makes it a good introductory AP course for freshmen?

Ms. Burakiewicz: Well, just the time management skills that you have to have to stay on top of the workload, the analysis skills and study skills that you work on as an individual student; all those things you will use again and again. I think the most important one is self reflection, instead of thinking I’m a bad student or I didn’t get an A, thinking, what tripped me up on this and figuring out strategies for improvement; that’s what life’s all about. 

Spartan Spectator: Reflect on the way the course’s first year at ELHS went. What were some good things about the way it went this year? What do you want to change for next year?

Ms. Burakiewicz: Well, I love my group of students, I have to say I have one of the best groups I could’ve ever asked for. It’s been exposure for me, teaching it is a completely different thing than knowing the content, adding more engaging activities to make it relevant and working on more topics as well as cross referencing topics. Good things: it’s enjoyable content, for the most part people seem to enjoy it, and it’s about learning new things about the world we live in, things about our food, things about our politics. 

Spartan Spectator: If you could add or take away one unit from this course, what would it be and why?

Ms. Burakiewicz: Ooh, I don’t know! I think unit 1, map projections, it’s just memorization and not very practical. I understand it but it’s not enjoyable to learn about because it has to be more memorized than anything else. 

Spartan Spectator: What are some possible professions, job fields, and/or majors that this course would help with/relate to?

Ms. Burakiewicz: Every single one. There’s not any field that you could go into that this wouldn’t have an application for. If it’s an engineering field and using data, just the learning process of learning how to retrofit or improve on a system, awareness of the world around us, appreciation for different cultures and ethnicities and understanding that there’s no right and wrong when it comes to culture, and for getting more comfortable with travel and understanding that the world isn’t as big and scary as we think.

Spartan Spectator: What do you think is the most effective way to study and prepare for this course and its exam?

Ms. Burakiewicz: Well, I think focusing on what AP Central offers is really important because that’s the highest standard to learn from. The textbook is good as a content overview and then to see some specific examples, and then just keeping up with world events and practical examples in the classroom. 

AP Human Geography is an extremely interesting overview of our global patterns, processes, and the way humans organize themselves on the land. No matter what changes the College Board will make to the AP Human Geography Curriculum in the future, it’s clear that its content and teacher at ELHS will impact the lives and world views of students for the rest of their lives.