ECONOMICS 

   
 
Richard Trinkner
richard.trinkner@bvsd.org

AP® Macroeconomics and AP® Macroeconomics: APSI Agenda

Day 1
• Setting Up Your AP® Economics Courses
• AP® Economics Course Descriptions, Organization, and Expectations
• Equity and Success in AP® Economics enrollment
• The Exams
•Concepts Common to both Macroeconmics and Microeconomics
◦ OpportunityCost
◦ ComparativeAdvantage
◦ ProductionPossibilityFrontier ◦ DemandandSupply
 
Day 2
• How to use AP® Classroom as a teacher and in your classroom
• Macroecononmics Topics
◦ Definitions:GDP,Unemployment,Inflation,Growth ◦ AggregateDemandandAggregateSupply
◦ MoneyMarket
◦ LoanableFunds
◦ Fiscal andMonetaryPolicy ◦ Mulitipliers
 
Day 3
•  Review of Commonly Used Textbooks
•  Macroecononmics Topics
◦ PhillipsCurve
◦ ForeignExchange
•  Microeconomics Topics
◦ Elasticity
◦ ConsumerChoice ◦ CostsoftheFirm
◦ PerfectCompetition
Day 4
•  Microeconomics Topics
◦ Monopoly
◦ MonopolisticCompetition ◦ GameTheory
◦ FactorMarkets
•  Exam: Review Sample Free-Response Questions
•  Secondary topics as requested by particpants as time allows
Richard Trinkner loves teaching AP economics and has shared his enthusiasm with students for 25 years in six countries. He has taught at Boulder High School, in Boulder, Colorado, since 2005. Richard graduated with a Bachelors of Arts degree from Pomona College.  He received a Masters of Arts degree from Stanford University.  He holds graduate certificates from the University of Colorado in both economics and finance.  He is certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in Secondary Social Studies education. Richard has served as a reader, table leader, and question leader at the AP Macroeconomics exam reading since 2012. He has been leading AP Economics seminars for the College Board since 2018.

Richard has received the Economics Teacher of the Year award from the Colorado Council for Economics Economics and the Colorado Stock Market Experience teacher of the year. He received Boulder High’s Mary Taylor Award, awarded by students and parents to the school’s most outstanding teacher. He twice coached state-champion Fed Challenge teams and one of his teams finished in the top seven nationally. His students have won the Colorado Stock Market Experience competition several times and were twice state champions in the NCEE’s Econ Challenge in the AP division, finishing 13th in the nation.

While away from teaching between 1997 and 2003, he worked as a technical writer, software engineer, and business strategy consultant. He served as Research Director for Gartner, Inc, the world’s largest IT research and consulting company, where he worked with leaders of several Fortune 500 companies to improve their business practices.

Richard lives in Boulder, Colorado, and enjoys birding, playing piano, mountaineering, scuba diving, homebrewing, road cycling, jazz, cooking and reading.
Course Description: AP Economics (Macro & Micro Combined) 
   
This summer institute will give you the knowledge, pedagogy and confidence to teach both AP® Macroeconomics and AP® Macroeconomics. You will learn the classroom practices to help your students score well on both AP exams, including a solid foundation of economics theory, the latest teaching resources (including the AP® Classroom resources) and active lessons. You will also take away from this workshop electronic resources to get you up and running, including fully polished lectures for every topic, class-ready graphics of the economic models and their use, and student activities.  You will also learn how to complete the AP® course audit to ensure that you are approved by the College Board to teach the class.

This course is primarily designed for teachers new to AP Macroeconomics, AP Microeconomics, or both, as well as teachers who would like to grow their confidence teaching the theory underlying the economic models.  Because this course will cover both AP Micro and AP Macro, we will introduce all the theory and graphs of AP economics, and then delve more deeply into the most important models. You will also learn techniques for how best to bring the topics of economics to life for adolescents.

Topics common to both courses will include: production possibilities; comparative advantage, and supply and demand. For Macro, we will go into greatest depth with aggregate demand and supply, the money market, the foreign exchange market, and other topics as time and interest allow. For Micro, we will go into greatest depth with advanced supply and demand, the costs of the firm, perfect competition, monopoly, and other topics as time and interest allow. You will also learn the ins and outs of writing excellent free-response answers for the AP test.

You are invited to bring any best practice ideas and activities to share with the group. Bring a flash drive to share electronic resources.  Mr. Trinkner will share digital copies of nearly twenty years’ worth of lesson plans, lectures, graphics, and activities.