my grades are falling apart help!!! Plz respond ASAP

bjkmom
Sat, 29 Sep 2018 12:12:14 +0000

If Bio honors were “really easy”-- then wouldn’t your grades already be higher?

Of the two other grades you’re unhappy with, two seem to be the teacher’s fault. You have 2 bad teachers. Everyone else is doing poorly. You took a hard course in Geometry (before taking algebra) over 2 months instead of 10, and you’re unhappy with that grade. And you also lost a family member .

Lots and lots of excuses.

I’m a math teacher. If the answer is -6 and you say it’s 6, you’re wrong. It’s like the difference between owing a million dollars and having a million dollars in the bank. Your Algebra teacher is teaching you Algebra. That means you follow the process. The points are mostly for the process, not necessarily the answer.

I don’t know you or your school. Perhaps everything is exactly as you say and every single poor grade is someone else’s fault.

Or perhaps-- probably more likely-- you’re having a temporary pity party. And that’s OK. You’re a kid. You’re expected to sometimes see the world through a lens that has you front and center, and to sometime miss the big picture.

You asked for help, so here goes as a high school teacher and a mom:

1. Try very hard to stop blaming others for your grades. Your job as a student is to try to do the assignments as the teacher wants them done. There’s a reason for every single point a teacher has deducted from every one of the assignments you’ve done. Your teachers can see the big picture that you can’t. That Algebra I teacher knows what will be expected of you in Algebra II & Trig and Precalc and Calc. If he allows you to be sloppy with the details, or to shortcut the process, he knows just how much you’ll struggle down the road. You mention that he grades YOU so hard-- is he being harder on you than on the other 100+ students he’s teaching?

That French teacher is trying to teach you a language. That means it’s going to be cumulative. Think about it logically. If you’re going to become fluent in a language, you’ve got to know it all. You can’t NOT KNOW the stuff from September if it’s going to make sense in January. So he’s trying to keep expanding your body of knowledge to help you really learn French.

English: Everyone has a B. Doesn’t matter. If you’re happy with your grade, wonderful.

1. Let me begin this point by saying I think your grades are absolutely OK. Nope, not in the 90's. But not everyone needs to be an A student. Some B students I know are wonderful kids, involved in school activities and charity work. Could you work to change your mindset to simply accepting that for the amount of work you're willing to put in, these are the grades you'll have? There are plenty of wonderful colleges that will be happy to have a kid with your grades.

2. You don't mention any sort of a plan of action. Have you been to extra help? How often? With concrete questions? and I don't mean "why did you take off 5 points instead of 3?" type of questions. Have you ever gone to your math teacher--- or another Algebra teacher in the school-- and asked for an explanation of the method your teacher prefers?

Big picture: You’re a kid. You’re allowed to be disappointed if your grades aren’t where you want them to be. So have a brief pity party-- I strongly recommend ice cream, with extra points for hot fudge. Then call it a day and figure out how to solve this problem. Get extra help, set up a study schedule, start a study group with your classmates-- figure out how to get what you want.

Good luck!