AP Calculus AB
AP Calculus AB is a college-level course covering aspects of differential and integral calculus. The class is currently taught by Mallory Clark and Josh Weddle, having been taught by other teachers in the past.
The course is designed to be a first-semester college calculus course. According to the College Board’s overview of the course, the class involves learning the skills of “determining expressions and values using mathematical procedures and rules, […] connecting representations, […] justifying reasoning and solutions, [and] using correct notation, language, and mathematical conventions to communicate results or solutions.”
Students describe the class as primarily involving derivatives and making graphs. Other topics included in the class are limits and continuity, differential, integration, differential equations, and applications of integration.
Whenever someone mentions calculus, most people associate it with a lot of work and difficult course material. While calculus may be known as a very hard and vigorous class, students describe the class as fairly easy.
Students commented on how the material is pretty easy to understand.
“It’s pretty easy if you do the work; if you do the homework,” said Omandee Karunanayake (‘26) when asked about the difficulty of the course.
The workload seems to not be that bad either. While there is daily homework, it is not very time-consuming.
Iliana Melendez (‘25) talked about the homework more in-depth.
“[Mr. Weddle] gives us a sheet of homework every night. … He’ll pick one day of the week to actually collect it. He kind of makes you do it every night. … It’s usually like two hours, an hour and a half,” said Melendez.
However, this class is said to be material-dense.
Avery Wright (‘26), when asked if the class was fun, mentioned that it was more packed than anything.
“It’s pretty focused on the content without a lot of breaks,” said Wright.
Overall, this class seems to be not that hard, but there is quite a bit of work to be done in class and at home. Many students mentioned that the teacher, Mr. Weddle, makes the class more enjoyable with jokes and humor.
Melendez commented on how he makes it fun.
“But Mr. Weddle, he actually finds a way to make it fun. He throws in these, like really bad dad jokes,” said Melendez.
Karunanayake, when asked if it was a fun class, agreed due to his jokes.
“It is a fun class to take if you have Mr. Weddle because he makes a lot of jokes and he’s really funny,” said Karunanayake.
AP Calculus BC
AP Calculus BC, sometimes referred to as Calc BC or just BC, is the highest-level math course available at Chamblee. Usually taken after precalculus or AP Calculus AB, students move quickly through the same curriculum as AP Calculus AB, but continue into more content.
With Calculus BC being more packed than Calculus AB, this course is a lot more fast-paced and has a lot of work. Students described it as a very hard class with a huge workload.
Many students complain about the amount of work they have every night.
Aspen Heimer (‘26) expressed their dissatisfaction with the amount of work they get.
“He’s given me more work than I’ve ever had before in my life,” said Heimer.
They also mentioned the amount of paper they get.
“I’ve had to go through two binders already, and we’re only on unit six… My first binder broke because of how much paper is in there. The second binder I’m on, I can’t even flip them because there’s no room on the little ring,” said Heimer.
Other students mentioned that they were not expecting this amount of work at all.
Mehezabin Kabir (‘25) touched on the topic of the workload.
“I was expecting less work. I expected it to be this fast, … but I didn’t expect this much work,” said Kabir.
Overall, most students only touched on the subject of how much work they have. The class seems to be very challenging, and it seems like students are spending most of their time working on their Calculus BC work.
Advanced Math Decision Making
Advanced Math Decision Making is a course made to help students understand practical uses of mathematics and is mostly populated by seniors not interested in calculus courses.
Many students agreed that the class was not too hard.
Ashley Chay-Chay (‘25) said, “It’s not too difficult if you just do the work.”
This class does not contain too much classwork. There are daily assignments, but, in contrast to AP Calculus, rarely any homework assignments.
Amelia Deweese (‘25) said, “There’s about 30 minutes of work per period… Not really [much homework]”
Chay-Chay gave her overall opinion of the class.
She said, “I guess for me, it’s not like there are times that I do find myself trying to figure out how to solve certain equations, but if you’re good at math, then you should take the class.”
Advanced Math Decision Making is being taken by many senior students and seems to be a great way to get a useful class credit.
AP Statistics
AP Statistics is a college-level course on statistics outside of the set math course pathways. The class revolves around the ideas of collecting, analyzing, and making conclusions from data, with the College Board’s overview of the course stating “There are four themes evident in the content, skills, and assessment in the AP Statistics course: exploring data, sampling and experimentation, probability and simulation, and statistical inference.”
Students seem to think the class is not too difficult.
Trisha Kamat (‘26) said, “I don’t think the class itself, like the information we learn, is difficult.. I think it’s just tedious because there’s a lot of different technical formulas and slight differences in the different topics that we learn.”
Students interviewed had varying opinions on the amount of homework assigned in the class, some saying there was a lot of homework and others saying that there is not as much.
Julie Wang (‘25) said, “I have no homework in it until it comes up to test day, and I have to do all these FRQs and quizzes on AP classroom and guided notes.”
Kamat shared a similar interpretation.
She said, “It’s not much homework, but before the test, the review can take an hour or two.”
When asked how fun the class is Kamat gave her opinion
She said, “I think it’s a fun class, but you have to be interested in the topics we cover because if you’re not, it does get pretty boring and tedious. However, I recommend it, and I think it’s a fun, interesting thing to learn about.”
Wang was similar in her level of enjoyment of the class.
She said, “I would say it’s definitely been a good class to take my senior year to ensure I still have course rigor when it comes to math but also not make me want to die, because it’s not that hard.”