<p>My youngest just started high school 2 weeks ago. I have already noticed quite a few differences in her experience from that of my older children. One of these differences is a greater emphasis on self-instruction. It seems the kids are more frequently being told that certain course material will not be covered in class, but that they are responsible to learn it and may or may not be tested on it one day. Obviously, good students have always needed to study some things on their own and generally commit to the learning process. But that is not what I am talking about.</p>
<p>For one thing, due to curriculum pressures, our teachers are not taking time at the beginning of the year to review like they used to. Rather, they are simply testing the students the first week of school and bumping them down to a different course level or out if they fail that initial test. I don’t have big problem with that, since there is a lot of material to get through. But what does concern me is they are skipping some fundamentals in the process, partly because so many students in our district do all day summer tutoring and pre-take classes. That’s great for them, but what about the child who did not already take the class over the summer?</p>
<p>Secondly, the teachers seem to be handing out a lot of worksheets, vocab lists, and problem packets without teaching about the content first. They are told there is no time to teach it and the teacher WILL NOT go over it. The kids have to do it for homework and are directed to sites like Kahn Academy for help learning. This concerns me. As an example, I think it’s fine to have students look up and learn the definitions of “motif” and “theme,” or “conceit” and “hubris,” but I think the teacher should help them amplify their understanding to make sure they are grasping nuances and distinctions. At least this should happen before testing them on it, but it does not.</p>
<p>Thanks for the kind and understanding response. </p>
<p>No, STUDYING WHAT YOU’VE BEEN TAUGHT is normal for high school. You know that’s not what this is about. It’s about kids having to teach a bulk of the curriculum to themselves, or it’s about the parents and tutors having to teach them, when there’s a teacher being paid to do the job and isn’t doing it for various reasons. As stated, there has always been some need for high schoolers to study and learn on their own. This goes beyond that, to getting taught by youtube and yahoo answers rather than the human in the classroom.</p>
<p>That sounds like what our districts says at back to school night about the difference between college prep classes and honors classes. In the latter, you are expected to not need to be taught the material but rather are expected to be able to discuss it and analyze it. We do not have what you described about kids pre-taking a class over the summer as we are a less-competitive type school environment. I’ve looked at Khan videos and think they’re really not that helpful if you don’t understand something.</p>
<p>In college the professor teaches and you’re tested on what they teach. I don’t see why high school should be different. The difference in this regard might be in respect do doing examples in quant classes, the content of discussion in literature and history classes. I haven’t taken any literature or history classes in college but what I imagine is that they talk about interpretations of what is read, not directly what is read like in high school. In quant classes in high school they would go through a proof and then try to squeeze in 10 examples problems. In college, it’s usually just the proof. That sort of thing I think might make sense to do in high school (especially in honors/AP classes) but it doesn’t make sense to simply tell students to learn entire concepts on their own without any discussion in class about it.</p>
<p>Boy, way to snark in a first response. The GFG, that sounds like a flipped classroom, but if it is, as I understand it, class time should be devoted to the teacher responding to questions, clarifying ,and in general, solidifying and facilitating the learning which started with what they read/watch at home. </p>
<p>What are they doing during class time? If it’s worksheets etc, that’s a problem.</p>
<p>Edit: I’m not an expert on these new techniques, nor do I know enough to be a fan yet. But there’s a lot of that going around (and sending them to Khan is a tipoff.)</p>
<p>My kids sneer and call this technique “Teaching through worksheets.” </p>
<p>I understand the flipped classroom concept. In a flipped classroom there would be good instruction online with clarification and further in-depth discussion in class. Properly done, it’s an updated version of read the chapter and we’ll discuss it tomorrow.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, for my kid in an intro science class, this was not the case at all. Instead there were confusing and incomplete online slides, and when kids asked questions in class they were completely ignored, belittled for not understanding, or given the exact same explanation that was online. The kids spent most class sessions doing worksheets, when they had to figure out the solutions themselves without teacher involvement. This same teacher claimed both the standard textbooks that she had to choose from didn’t cover the material properly, and she refused to use them. In my opinion, in this case the “flipped classroom” claim was an excuse to avoid teaching.</p>
<p>I pulled my kid from the class halfway through the year. I was not going to allow that teacher to continue to instill a hatred of science. Yes, the fact that the kid is making up the class through an online class will have to be explained in the college aps. The GC understands the issue and supports what we’ve done.</p>
<p>So far, I’m not seeing this. I don’t think. I’m not sure I understand. I’m confused about what is covered in class, if all (much?) is self taught? And if teacher won’t go over it, if the kids don’t get it on their own, why go to school? Aren’t teachers supposed to go over homework and answer questions? What is the point of homework if you don’t get help with the things you can’t figure out on your own (or even with the help of You Tube).</p>
<p>One of her teachers is definitely doing the teaching by worksheet thing. It wouldn’t be so bad except the worksheets so far are not covering the important points to understand about the material. As an example, if it were civics class, the situation would look like this: Rather than have the students outline the advantages and disadvantages of the Articles of Confederation, or have them list the reasons the founding fathers were afraid of a strong federal govt., the teacher gives them a page with a list of 20 names of people like George Washington and the kids have to write something about who they are. Valuable, but not if that’s the only assignment they get on the chapters. It seems like that was the easiest possible thing to type up and took no thought, so that’s what she did. Somehow I think the eventual test will look a lot different and the kids who don’t on their own answer the other important questions will fail.</p>
<p>GFG, when I pulled my D from the class, I told her that she’d have to come up with a simple straightforward answer to the inevitable question about why she wasn’t in the class any more. I think you can relate:</p>
<p>“I was prepared to not be taught, but I wasn’t prepared to not know what I was supposed to be learning.”</p>
<p>GFG- I do understand your concern for most topics. But in hs honors English class, we were given vocab sheets for memorization. (We were actually given the work and the definition - having student look it up sounds better.) The teacher did quiz us verbally, calling on random students. At that point perhaps she did explain some nuances of usage.</p>
<p>A friend reported that in her D’s history class, the teacher said that there was simply way too much material to cover, so rather than even attempt it, she planned to discuss in class various (minor) topics of special interest to her. However, the students were not to assume these would be important to know for the test.</p>
<p>Sorghum—S attended an Ivy and D is at Stanford, so we are not unaware of the academic rigors now required to earn a very high GPA in an extremely competitive high school. </p>
<p>The extent of reliance on teaching oneself by internet is new, as is the expectation that students learn so much on their own, especially since it’s just freshman year. Only the few students who are 4 years or more above grade level in math would have any AP classes their first year. Also, there is no honors level available yet for foreign language.</p>
<p>If there is too much material to cover, maybe something needs to be adjusted? I guess the trend is to try and cram more and more information somehow into courses, even if it doesn’t make sense and the info can’t be taught/learned within the time frame? I admit that I often don’t know what to tell my kids when it comes to weird classes and off the wall teachers. I usually say, “someone is getting an A in that class. Figure out who that is and do what they are doing . . .” They never follow my advice anyway . . .</p>
<p>As much as the worksheet ethos of what’s going on at The GFG’s kid’s school sounds awful, there’s definitely something to what mstee says. My H teaches AP Bio. There is more to that than he can possibly cover in class. They HaVE to do the reading. He’ll be happy to answer questions, stay after with them, and of course he does go over things, but mostly, he’s teaching how to understand the stuff–the critical thinking part–which is what is emphasized on the test.</p>
<p>And he can’t figure out what they’re not getting and meet them there, if they don’t do the reading. He does keep emphasizing that they need to understand processes and how to work with and apply them; that if they instead attempt to memorize everything, they’ll be lost.</p>
<p>But there’s definitely an enormous effort on his part to help them through their part.</p>
<p>I think the teachers are sometimes victims in this too, as curricula keep expanding. At the same time, I took a variety of AP classes in high school, as did my older two kids. I was never told by my teachers that there was too much material to cover in class and therefore I had to learn on my own. The only course in which my other kids were given such a message was APUSH, which by all accounts is a legitimate issue. Even so, the teacher properly prepared the students and most earned 5’s on the AP exam.</p>