At first glance, Brady Gunnink might seem like only a College Rhetoric teacher helping Jones students write at a college level. But now he has taken on a new challenge: joining the AP Research team alongside English teacher, Caitlin Miller.

Gunnink has been teaching for 19 years, 15 of which have been at Jones College Prep. He has taught a multitude of classes such as AP Lang, College Rhetoric and Composition and AP Seminar.

AP Research is a rigorous college level course in which students are asked to develop original academic research and present their study to a panel of teachers in a dissertation style presentation.

“You learn about what people have learned about a topic, what’s out there, what’s already been researched. Then they have to identify a gap in the research, something that hasn’t been covered yet.” said Gunnink.

Even with his previous experience teaching AP Seminar, Gunnink has done a lot more to prepare to teach this class. Before he started to teach this class, he worked with fellow AP Research teacher Ms. Miller to prepare. In previous years, he attended many student research presentations showcasing their final projects.

“I’ve sat in dozens of research presentations for AP Research students at the end of the prior years, so I do have some familiarity, and so I think that helps,” said Gunnink.

Miller is one of the first teachers to teach the course at Jones College Prep and has been teaching it ever since for almost a decade. With Miller working alongside Gunnink, he has been able to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to other school’s AP Research classes.

“I am lucky that the other AP Research teacher is Caitlin Miller, who has been teaching the class since the beginning and who is easily the top AP Research teacher in CPS, and probably one of the best in the country… I also communicate daily with Miller, so I think that’s helped a lot in terms of how I’m doing,” said Gunnink.

Gunnink tries to be open and give his students freedom and choice within their work.

“I try to incorporate projects in that class that also involve a lot of student choice and picking things that they’re passionate about,” said Gunnink.

Occasionally, Gunnink struggles to help his students in a class where they need to become well-versed in unknown topics

“So there’s 28 students in the class, and I’m trying to help each one of them, and each one of them has sort of a different path that they’re taking. Not to mention I am not an expert in most of the areas that they are studying,” said Gunnink.

To make up for this, he provides resources to make them succeed in his class:

“Yeah, so I try to share research databases with them to help them find information. I try to help them understand what a gap is,” said Gunnink.