AP Lang Students “Give Out A Heart” <3

By: Bella Aldridge

As the 4th marking period comes to an end, AP Language and Composition (AP Lang) finishes a multi week invigorating and interactive “Heart Transplant Project.”

In this rigorous project students are split into 8 groups, each group is given a patient in which are requiring a heart transplant. While they all need the heart, there is only one heart available and students must fight and represent their patient as to why their patient is the most crucial and deserving of the heart.

Bethany Tolbert, Redwood’s AP Lang Teacher is known as the director of this project. 

When looking back at her years at Redwood and the history of this project, Mrs. Tolbert said, “My first couple of years I was helped very much by a teacher who is no longer with us at Redwood, though still part of the district, name Shannon Moore.” 

She applauds Mrs. Moore as, “she was really a wonderful mentor, she had been at this for a long time and she really taught me everything I know about teaching AP.” In correspondence, Mrs. Tolbert credited her fellow mentor acknowledging, “The Heart Transplant Project is her brainchild. She is the one who came up with this and so I’m just really happy to carry on her tradition.”

This project has been going on throughout the Redwood AP Lang classes for approximately 5-7 years. 

The Heart Transplant Project in its entirety is designed to challenge students in both collaborative arguments both rebuttal and counter arguments.

Mrs. Tolbert says, “Lots of times we just write our essays, everyone claps and we move on.” In this project however, “students are actively encouraged to almost in a competitive manner find fault with one another, find issues with other arguments.”

She notes that there is, “a competitive edge to this project that I think makes it really unique among the other things we do in class.”

“A lot of times teachers are afraid to surprise their students or afraid to blindside them to some degree, but I do think it is healthy for some students to realize that this is gonna be a little different, this is going to be something interactive, something where you will get some push back.”

Mrs. Tolbert Redwood AP Language and Composition Teacher

Mrs. Tolbert emphasizes this idea that “our argument doesn’t exist in a vacuum.” She acknowledges the students who come to terms with the idea that, “People are going to pick it apart, people are gonna ask questions, but then of course they realize that ‘we can regroup and we can refine our argument.’ ”

Mrs. Tolbert says that a main take away students receive is the idea that, “We can take that critique and we can take that opposition and use it to our advantage.”

When looking at long term effects of the project, Mrs. Tolbert says, “I know I have students in the future who may become heart surgeons themselves, maybe they work in the medical field.” In correspondence, she understands that, “these types of conversations are had everyday in real life.” 

Mrs. Tolbert says, “I think it’s that reality, this kind of life or death reality, even though it’s hypothetical that really hooks onto students and makes them really do the best for their patients.”

She recognizes that the students who take this project as more of a competitive one rather than a “hostile one” are the ones that truly benefit as they are able to, “take opposition, they take criticism as a positive and as a growth opportunity.”

Dina Seoudi ‘23 is involved in this year’s Heart Transplant Project. When reflecting on her personal growth throughout the weeks, Seoudi says, “I now know how to present more in front of a lot of people as anxious as I used to be.”

Seoudi explained that in the future she hopes to work in the medical field. She says as though, “knowing such information about plenty of different conditions about the heart really expands my knowledge in the medical field.”

Rose Candelaria ‘23 is yet another student in AP Lang competing in this project. Candelaria reflected on the project saying that to some people, “constructive criticism was taken as a personal attack and seen as a negative thing rather than a tool that could be used to improve your own arguments.”

Candelaria also liked the idea of hearing feedback from fellow peers in the class. She says that when the newly eliminated teams would funnel into the new remaining groups, “we’re able to see their perspective on our team, see the outside perspective, to see new ways to view our own patient in order to strengthen our case and eligibility for receiving the heart transplant.”

One thing Candelaria saw personal growth in as a result of the project was that, “It has gotten a lot easier to communicate I’d say and being able to rely on others, I think that was one of the key things, is cooperation.”

When reflecting on the class as a whole, Mrs. Tolbert explained, “AP Language and Composition is very different from other English classes, our focus is different we’re not focused on literature, we’re focused more on non-fiction and on rhetoric, rhetoric being the art of persuasion.” 

Mrs Tolbert followed this by saying, “so if that interests students, then I would say that AP Lang as well as this Heart Transplant Project is the place for you.”

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