That’s an excellent suggestion. I’ll help her look into that. Thank you.
I dont see if anyone has asked, what does your daughter want to do?
Mathematician.
Honestly I think she has only the vaguest idea at this point. The latest and longest lasting has been pediatric nurse or nurse practitioner.
Some people find geometry easier, and/or more interesting, than algebra. They’re different enough that it’s fairly common (in my experience) for someone to like one much more than the other (and it can go either way).
Like Jackmannii, geometry killed me too, so I understand completely. It made sense later on in life when I looked back on it, but my “toolkit” wasn’t quite gelled enough at the time.
Maybe your daughter has the advanced algebra toolkit but it hasn’t ripened/baked/whatever yet. Or, maybe she doesn’t have the toolkit, which is doubtful. People with good general intelligence tend to be capable in many areas. It’s extremely rare when an intelligent person has a glaring deficit in one area and is wildly successful in other areas.
So, I’m going with maturation. It’s just not ready yet. That’s a possibility you might want to entertain. She may struggle this year and then it will be a slam dunk for her next year, so it might be worth delaying until the next time around. Or, it may suddenly become ready and she may sail through the 2nd half of the year. It’s hard to tell, which makes being a parent (and an advisor) even more difficult.
Either way, there are going to be trade-offs. Do you delay and reshuffle her schedule to gamble on a better grade next year? Or, do you carry on with the status quo in the hopes that the switch will turn on and she’ll start mastering the material? Tough call.
Good luck.
But that doesn’t jive with the whole class failing. If her grades are among the strongest in the class, the problem isn’t that she isn’t ready, the problem is either with how things are being presented, or with how things are being assessed.
It’s not always the teacher, but sometimes it is. If the whole class is failing or nearly failing, I think it’s worth pursuing.
I didn’t find Geometry easy, but I found it a lot easier than Algebra. I needed daily tutoring to pull out a D- in Algebra 2. I’m very good at doing basic functions in my head, and kick butt at logic problems.
No, I’m asking what does she want to do about this class? does she want to quit and try another?
Does your district offer summer school? If so the world will not end if she retakes the class over the summer. My son got D and F during the year and an A in the summer.
I was in a very similar situation with respect to one of my son’s physics classes in high school. You’ve already gotten good advice, but let me just add a couple of thoughts from personal experience:
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Regarding the data on student performance, there is nothing wrong with politely asking the school for grade averages for the class compared to other classes. Getting official data can really help pinpoint the source of the problem.
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Don’t know if this will apply in your case, but if you band together with other parents and meet as a group with a teacher/department head/principal, make sure everyone stands up for the positions you’ve taken and that other parents don’t end up hiding behind you, letting YOU be the outspoken trouble-making parent while they sit in innocent silence, having spoken up loudly when no school personnel were in room but suddenly losing their voices when someone else was willing to take the lead.*
*In my case it was especially hilarious because I just happened to be on campus when a group of concerned mothers, who hadn’t contacted me, were meeting to discuss what to do. One started to ask me to join them, and another mother hushed her, saying, “That’s CairoSon’s mom!” The assumption was that my son was so brilliant that he couldn’t possibly be struggling in a physics class, so I would not be an asset to a group concerned that the teacher was the source of students’ academic difficulties. When I told them their assumptions were wrong and that my son was also having trouble learning from the teacher in question, I became their new favorite person. Not the school’s favorite, though!
I’m sorry I don’t have any advice. I do remember how annoyed I’d be at some of my daughter’s honors classes. It seemed as though one of her teachers just thought Honors was synonymous with accelerate, like 0-250 in under a class period. IMO, an Honors class should offer more challenging material, or take a more in-depth look at the material studied. As far as the grades, I know some kids that were straight A students through school, and got into honors classes and began seeing their first Cs and Ds. If the class overall isn’t scoring well, I question why the teacher isn’t asking why they aren’t mastering the material and what needs to be fixed.
It goes back to the basics of teaching:
- Teach the subject.
- Check for feedback (reteach if necessary).
- Test for mastery.
The second step is the most important and its more than saying (any questions?) you actually walk around and make sure the students understand the material before they leave the class.
When I was in HS the head of the math department taught Calculus. He had a 50% failure rate so I never took it. I liked algebra (or at least got it) and I genuinely liked geometry. I got lost in trig side of things.
I only write this because I ended up dropping out of engineering and I’m pretty good at building things. My feeling is that HS is to prepare you for college. The brutal fact of college is that the concern for the student wanes considerably after the check clears.
If this is an “honors” math class then the expectation is a little higher over other classes. There’s a certain “suck it up buttercup” to it. But in general I think they should focus on cramming as much real information into students. Even in the honors classes.
Math is a building-block subject which means you have to learn the material before moving on. If that’s not happening in large numbers then adjustments should be made. Learning the material is important for success in the next levels of math. If the next math teach has to reteach early instructions then the delay in training snowballs.
This is your argument to the school. If it takes more resources then the school should look into it. I bet there are a lot of retired engineers who would volunteer their time. Heck there are probably a lot of working engineers who would do it.
What have you discussed with other parents besides scores? Because if the teacher is showing a pattern of not being responsive to many parents, and not just one, the administration could be part of the solution.
My oldest sister was a good student until civics in high school. The teacher was unbelievably condescending to my parents at the first PT conference. A big mistake since my dad was an adjunct instructor at the local community college and a trainer at work, so he understood what teaching is. It turned out the teacher failed all her female students and passed all the males despite grades. The administration was not happy to find themselves having to explain that to an irate parent.
Your description reminded me of my high school chemistry teacher, the Evil O. (Olive spelled backwards.) He always said “My door is always open,” but I never saw it open. I wouldn’t have asked him for help anyway, because my problem was that he never taught, just lectured. He would write 4 very large numbers on the board in an arrangement that looked like they were written in the quadrants of a giant +. Then he would tell us what this equaled but never explained the operations involved. I was clueless, but knew enough about the guy from other students to never ask him a question. Every kid in school knew he was not a teacher you could ask for help. My younger sister swears up and down he was the best teacher she had, so either he improved or just didn’t teach to my learning style. I got the basic concepts of chemistry, but these magical numbers and things called moles utterly blew my mind.
Thing was, I didn’t need help in math when I was given decent instruction. [I couldn’t start Algebra in 8th grade because the school I was at (Geilenkirchen American School, a DODDS school at an Air Force base in Germany) didn’t offer it.] 9th grade, Algebra I. Piece of cake. 10th grade, Geometry, first semester at AFCENT and second semester in the states. I got constructions twice that year, and aced all of it. Geometry was a blast, because doing those proofs reminded me of the mystery novels I read. Junior year, Algebra II. Easy, peasy. Senior year 1st semester Trigonometry. Kicked my butt. First test I ever got an F on. 2nd semester, Advanced Topics in Algebra, no sweat. College Algebra was review of what I learned in high school, so that was so easy I got A’s on all tests and didn’t need to take the final exam.
Bad teachers drive me nuts. I see them all the time, and I want to confront them and ask why in the world they are here if they don’t like kids enough to do the basic requirements of their contract. I know a few that if I had kids, I would move heaven and earth making sure that teacher could never get near them.
Oh, Ha. She doesn’t want to quit. I think she would be fine moving to the other section so long as it didn’t mess up the rest of her schedule.
I just checked their summer school schedule from last year. It looks like most of the offerings are for “catch-up” courses or for students trying to move up a level. They don’t offer this particular course.
I sent a message to her advisor with a list of questions and asked him to call me. Hopefully I will hear from him today.