I know what you mean, FairyChatMom. I took Physics (actually…it was Honors Physics), last year, when I was in high school, and god did it suck. I ended up getting a tutor for it, it was so horrible. Thankfully, our school let the teacher go. But even my physics tutor thought, based on my notes from class, that our teacher had no idea what he was doing.
I wanted to drop the course after the first exam but the teacher discouraged it- probably because it would look bad and he wanted to get tenure. Of course he didn’t…and now some other luckless school has him. Sigh.
You know, when I read your first post, it occurred to me that I didn’t make the history of this class very clear. I was just blowing off steam about the latest insanity. But she and her classmates have been frustrated from the start. Little things like: He’d assign homework, then spend the next two class periods working all the problems - whether there were questions from the students or not. Or running out of time to “teach” and giving them worksheets the night before a test so they can cover all the material necessary.
And these are just the things I hear about. Her classmate/coworker/friend was also bemoaning the class when I was helping both of them with a test review.
SpazCat - c’mon down! I’ll personally escort you to the school for an interview!!
FCM, is your daughter planning on visiting the colleges she’ll apply to? I found it very helpful to sit in on classes. I picked the college where what happened in the classroom was actually difficult and interesting. So were the students. It was a good match.
Look at it this way: while your daughter isn’t learning all she could about physics, she is getting an invaluable life lesson in how to deal with moron superiors. And let’s face it, morons have more day-to-day effect on us than any two of the laws of physics.
Shoshana, she thinks she wants to attend the Univ of Central Florida (like her dad did) but I did suggest she visit several campuses. I also suggested my alma mater, but she doesn’t like the idea of Indiana in the winter. Neither did I, but it made me tough! No really!!
Miller - she’s gotten that lesson already from the manager of the roller rink where she works. Not only is he a moron, but he’s a sexist moron. If he was a bigot, she’d have an all-in-one idiot boss.
In the same vein as Miller, this can be great chance for your daughter to learn how to deal with an instructor like this before she hits University/College. Chances are very good that she will have waste-of-skin instructors during her advanced education (and pay handsomely for the privilege, too!), and she will need to deal with them there, as well. It is too bad, but that’s the way life is.
That’s the most important thing – those standardized tests. Gotta hit that FCAT.
Are there any students in the class who are still confused, even though the teacher is going too slowly? Those students can drag down a class, making any teacher seem awful.
In my opinion (I’m a high school teacher), the most important thing for any particular class is this: Are the students understanding something? If I teach to “cover the material, and hope the kids can keep up,” then I get the same complaints from parents that I get if I teach to “the lowest common denominator.” Only I get the complaints from different parents.
In other words, please put yourself in this teacher’s shoes. How fast/slow should he go? Are the majority of the kids in the class like your Perfect Child? (I get the idea that they are.) Or are most of the students way behind anyway, even with the lowered intensity of the class?
I think it’s wonderful that you’re taking such an interest in your child’s education. The details you’ve shared with us suggest to me that this teacher may be better suited to teaching a different class.
AlbertRose - Don’t get me started on standardized tests. My blood pressure is too high as it is!!
I can only go by what my kid relates, but she thinks most of the kids are either bored out of their minds or confused because he doesn’t explain things well. They’re fairly bright because it is an Honors class, but you know even the smartest person can struggle if they can’t follow what another is trying to say.
I’ve taught on the Junior College level, which isn’t too far removed from high school. I know students absorb material at their own rates. But it seems to me that part of being a teacher is recognizing when you’re not succeeding in your attempts to transfer knowledge. And once you are aware of that, you need to determine what changes you need to make in order to get that transfer going. If you can’t read your students, you’re not doing your job. (That’s a generic you, not a shot at you personally…)
I hope I remember this when I teach again. It’s so easy from the outside looking in.
Some teachers really shouldn’t be allowed to teach.
9th grade experiences of inept teachers:
I was looking forward to World History class as I love that subject. Guess what we did all year? Busy work, listening to stories about our teacher’s cat, and about her wedding plans. Honors English9: We read out loud all class. Test questions were inaccurate. We did practically no writing. The only analyzation of the stuff we read was initiated by either me or my friend. And guess what? We understood the texts better than he did! And I suspect he never read my writing. In Algebra II/Trigonometry, our teacher gave us inaccurate examples and didn’t understand what she was teaching.
10th grade horrors:
Everyone is afraid to ask my chemistry teacher questions because she yells at everyone. My precalculus teacher understands what she’s doing, but she understands it so well that she can’t comprehend our questions. My Honors English 10 teacher hates me because I know more than her and am not afraid to show it. We actually do more writing and analyzation of writing in Spanish (my second language) class than English (my native language) class. We’ve been circling nouns and underlining verbs.
And these are just my high school experiences. Don’t even get me started on middle school.
I had some bad experiences with science teachers in high school. *My honors chemistry teacher had no clue what he was teaching in the honors course, where we had a sophomore level college textbook, but being in regular chemistry for the first week of school drove me nuts with how simple the whole textbook was. I made it out of the class with a C from teaching myself the material 'cause nobody else really got it either.
*My physics teacher last year was a graduate from Harvard, but couldn’t manage to really teach the material to a majority of the class. At least the book was mildly easier to comprehend because they didn’t leave out as much information as the chemistry book. I ended up taking notes from a friend of mine who simplified everything. Due to the fact that all the tests and quizzes were open notes, I did well when I had copies of the notes that my friend had taken, complete with formulas stated out in the most simple form possible for all situations. I made it out of that class with a B, I think.
My ecology/biology teacher, OTOH, was really good at explaining things to everyone in a way that they understood, even though he was an ass and had the humor of a 12 year old boy. ::thinks back to the “happy sperm” depictions of sexual reproduction in her 9th grade biology class:: It really depends on the kind of teacher you get, but, more often than not, it’s the ones who are passionate about their field [but also down to earth about the subject] that tend to teach a little better about it… but that’s just my experience.
I had a horrid Physics teacher in high school. He was extremely timid and almost seemed afraid of us girls (all-girl high school). At the beginning of each chapter, he’d hand us a chapter outline with the major headings. Then there would be sentences from the book with ONE WORD taken out, and you’d need to fill them in. He’d have space for the practise problems at the end of each section, too. That sounds good, right? It might have been, if he didn’t spend each class period * doing the problems FOR US on the board* and then collecting the sheets from us as our chapter grade! :smack:
Fast forward to college. I need to take two Physics classes. This time I have the best professor in the world. He’s a geek who’s proud to be a geek, LOVES physics and loves teaching. He never rolls his eyes at beginning questions and always presents Physics in an entertaining manner (he even has themes for his tests, like his Buffy test :)). He honest-to-God makes Physics fun. I’m actually looking forward to Physics 2 starting in a couple weeks.
I’d say that hope is not lost, in the long run, especially since your daughter still seems to enjoy Physics (if not the teacher). I detested Physics after high school, and even now I’m enjoying it.
I had a history teacher in 8th grade who thought I hadn’t said “thank you” for something and decided to hate me for the rest of the year. He was mean, rude, surly, and made fun of me in class.
The following year he burned down one of the portable classrooms trying to teach his class how to do a bucket brigade. Heh.
Seriously, Fairy Chat, your daughter does deserve a challenging education and an interesting and motivating teacher. Every child does. I am a retired public high school teacher. I have seen for myself examples of the nightmare that you describe. I would continue to insist that the teacher provide your child with more challenging work.
As for that middle school report, you should never have allowed your daughter to revamp an old report. What did you think that she would learn new from it? (No offense intended.)
Believe me, Zoe, we didn’t make the decision about the science report lightly. My husband and I discussed it, and we both talked with the kid. Ultimately, we let it go for several reasons:[ul]- She’d already done Science Fair projects 5 years in a row, including 2 that went to Regional fairs. We had fully expected last year’s project to garner some awards, but she was sick (contagious) on the day of the fair and couldn’t do her presentation.
The purpose of these projects is to apply the Scientific Method and present the results in a clear, logical manner - she’d proven time and again that she could do that.
After looking forward to doing a Physics project for two years (her school requires Biology students to do Bio projects, Chem students to do Chem, etc) she was completely discouraged by her teacher’s lack of interest in having the class do projects.
This has been an exceptionally stressful time for her scholastically and personally, including my Dad’s death in October, and we decided it just wasn’t important enough.[/ul]What did she learn? A life lesson - sometimes you have to make choices that you know aren’t the best. Sometimes you make bad choices. You have to decide what matters at the time and in the long run, and you recognize that you take risks in all decisions. That’s life, isn’t it?
FCM, what your daughter describes is similar to complaints the Physics teacher back in my HS had. I never took physics in HS, but I remember the complaints from my peers. Once, in Honors math, a couple of students who were taking physics asked the math teacher a question. The teacher spent the remainder of the class explaining the concept (similar to what she was already explaining), and everyone understood even those who weren’t in physics (like me).
About rehashing old projects: One of my classmates did a science fair project in seventh grade (the school is from 7th to 12th grade). She kept adding, taking out, updating, rehashing, adding surveys, updating surveys, etc. for the rest of her HS career. It went on to compete in mainland US, even. I consider her smart for taking a project and squeezing all that she could from it, but I sometimes wonder why nobody else suggested she might also investigate something else. You know, just for a change.
