Van Nuys High School is nestled into the heart of concentrated poverty in the San Fernando Valley — Van Nuys has one of the lowest median household incomes in the Valley, wrestling Pacoima and Sun Valley for its position.
But excellence is hard to dim. Here at Van Nuys High School, four exemplary educators have taken on the role of guiding their students and school, busting through AP rigor and creating real results.
Advanced Placement courses are college-level classes offered to and made for high school students distributed by College Board where the curriculum is centered around the standardized AP exam during early May. The scores released in July range from a one to a five, with only a three and above qualifying for transferable college credit.
The culture surrounding AP classes is relentless, often manifesting as a concentrated class of students who take academic distinction upon themselves, and at other times, manifests as expectations of who exactly should take AP classes.
Hispanic and Black students are both particularly marginalized in AP classes. For many, Van Nuys is their home school; however, when as much as 20% of the Van Nuys population lives below the poverty line, that relationship isn’t ambiguous. This is compounded by the fact that nationally, low-income AP exam takers, on average, have a 60% chance of failing the exam with a score of one or two.
Intentionally or not, AP culture has become a quantifier of success for mainly those who have the resources to excel. But some try to change that: Jacob Ferrin-Eoghan, Maricela Garcia, Peggy Shim and Angelino Simuban.
These teachers serve as the keystones for their respective subjects; social studies, language arts, science and English. Each demonstrates just what it means and takes to cultivate “AP students” in our corner of the world.
Simbulan and Shim, as instructors of introductory courses AP Seminar and AP Biology, are given students capable but must turn them into flourishing ones for their first AP class — but that mixed bag of fresh-eyed students is often still the cream of the crop.
But those who aren’t serve as the ultimate example of what it takes to push students across the finish line.
Simbulan’s heavy workload and Shim’s constant involvement with her students’ work are their self-proclaimed methods of caring. With whatever assignments Simbulan gives, he has to grade the same amount, and the time Shim stays after school for tutoring goes unpaid — the only boon these teachers get from doing their work is the pride of seeing their students succeed.
And for the sake of those students, they feel as though the work they give is essential to not only temper their students’ expectations of their exam performance but also to build the confidence they can not impart onto their students — for their class, that has to be organic.
In this way, both Shim and Simbulan acknowledge that their work is foundational to not only their students’ success in class but even beyond it.
Similarly to his peers, Ferrin exerts a remarkable amount of discipline in constructing his AP U.S. History curriculum to keep up with the pace of the class he teaches. Dozens upon dozens of help videos, assignments, outside resources and note guides were compiled across years of experience, and in his experience, it’s paid off.
Despite the “AP kid” cohort being littered with cheaters, he says results don’t lie. Despite the difficulty in teaching teenagers responsibility, his structured discipline and rigid planning have proven to bring out the best in his students, no matter where they started from.
A similar sentiment is present in Garcia’s AP Spanish Language class. Most of her students aren’t geniuses or precocious brilliants but rather those who would not fit into the archetype of who should be in AP classes.
After all, in a school predominantly Hispanic, that demographic, and many others in a similar position, aren’t portrayed in AP class rosters. Despite the Van Nuys population being 60-63% Hispanic, they’re seldom extended these opportunities.
Garcia’s classroom provides the space and introduction that can help change that — when combined with targeted aid and rigorous challenge, Garcia sets a standard that pushes her students to achievement, with measurable success.
In 2014, every student of Garcia’s AP Spanish class received the highest score of a five on their exam — just a certificate alone could not encapsulate her true feelings of success. Similar results have come from Mr. Simbulan’s 100% pass rate for both of his AP classes.
These AP teachers don’t always start with the most advanced or accomplished students but they highlight just how a classroom should thrive. What they do is create quality that proves just how indispensable the best of us are. But now, the concept of being an AP teacher is rapidly changing.
The block schedule introduced in the 2025 school year has been the single most underlying grievance these exemplars have shared, citing the impersonalized teacher-student relationship as being a fault to learning and the less consistent face time with students stirring new worry for less-than-satisfactory AP scores this coming exam season.
Ultimately, these Van Nuys High teachers represent the model that education is supposed to optimistically follow. And despite the difficulty of circumstances for both teachers and students, the perseverance needed to push forward is demonstrated in bulk at Van Nuys High School.
Tangible success in numbers means something, and for the paradigms of that achievement, it’s nothing more than earned. Wholehearted dedication to their students is what keeps any teacher afloat — its incarnates here at Van Nuys High School are no different.
