There are a lot of great resources for teachers online, from Teachers Pay Teachers to Facebook groups. In the past couple of years, Instagram has emerged as an exciting new forum for teachers. There really is a wonderful, thriving community of AP® students and teachers we’ve recently discovered there.
We love great teachers. We especially love when great teachers go the extra mile to support their students and fellow educators, after school and outside the classroom. The best accounts share information about new resources they use for the classroom and do it with a sense of humor. Instagram has the added benefit of being a resoundingly positive social media platform, where students and teachers can encourage each other through the daily grind of school. In some ways, Instagram is the best possible medium for this kind of exchange.
The @marcolearning Instagram account would never have been able to build a community of students and teachers without the encouragement, ingenuity, and support we’ve received from various teachers all over the country, both directly and indirectly. We would like to extend a huge thank you to all the fantastic teachers we’ve met along the way and would like to share just some of the teacher accounts that have truly inspired us with their smart, engaging content.
This is a no-brainer. Tom Richey is a legend. How could we NOT be drawn to this fantastic fount of knowledge? His subversive humor and his funny memes?! From his dynamic Instagram lives to his epic guitar solos, Tom is the AP® Euro and APUSH superstar that everyone wants to be friends with.
He makes his followers genuinely excited about learning, and we are incredibly proud to have him as a new addition to Team Marco. Over the summer, Tom is going to be working behind the scenes with us on our newest course content, but keep an eye out for him in some of our Instagram Live events.
Anyone who brags about lesson planning with The Office playing in the background is alright in our book! Even without our shared affinity for Steve Carell’s Michael Scott, English teacher Katie Upton would still be one of our favorites. Her account is packed with great advice for her AP® English Language students in beautifully designed photo posts and helpful video stories for students and teachers.
We also love how Mrs. Upton is building a positive, encouraging community with her students. Her sunny optimism and helpful advice are the perfect antidotes to the stress and uncertainty of AP® classes.
Katie has also joined the Marco team recently and will be contributing to all things English Language and Literature in the coming months.
Emily Glankler is disrupting the AP® World and U.S. History classrooms. This Austin-based high school history teacher initially started her Anti-Social Studies podcast to remedy countless requests from friends and family to teach them things they wished they’d learned in high school.
All of this witty history content can now be found on her Instagram account, which is proving to be an incredible resource for students and teachers alike. Bonus points: check out @antisocstudies’ stories for a constant stream of insightful teaching tips.
Audiophiles and history nerds unite. Mr. Beat is a sometimes singing, sometimes dancing livewire of the history teaching community. Though most of his videos and live sessions stay on his YouTube channel, Mr. Beat’s Instagram page is full of great, behind-the-scenes looks at his unique educational approach and brilliantly obscure history memes.
He posts new videos religiously every Friday night, and is always ready to answer any questions you can throw his way—history-related or not.
Here’s an English teacher who really understands how much the ‘struggle is real’ when it comes to teaching and taking AP® English Language. Ms. Wattner has a great eye for funny, relevant AP® Lang content… and her whiteboard handwriting is practically an artform.
She has cultivated her Instagram page to become a safe space for positive student-teacher interactions outside her classroom, and isn’t afraid to fly the flag for grammar nerds with a twinkle in her eye. We will always stand by teachers like Ms. Wattner (and indeed Tom Richey and Katie Upton and Emily Glankler and Mr. Beat), who wear their passion on their sleeve, and teach in the belief that “You, dear student, are more than just a number.”
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