My S is encountering for the first time in his hs career a teacher who doesn’t particularly like him. He is very charismatic and funny (unlike my 2 D’s who are quite introverted and only funny among friends/family). I’ve always told him the parent teacher conferences are not very useful because they all say “He’s doing great, very engaged and so funny!” Not so his AP Lang teacher who made clear early on that she runs a serious class and gives him the stink-eye when he attempts his usual humor. At his last conference she said he needs to come talk to her about his essays, which have not been going well. He’s hanging on to a B.
The funny part is that he really likes the class (aside from being “unappreciated”) and thinks the teacher is excellent. He doesn’t talk to me much about school, especially if I don’t ask. But a few weeks ago he was going on about the beauty and rhetoric in the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
I think this is good for him as he’s never had to concentrate much on overcoming academic and social challenges the way my D’s have (one hs senior and one college senior).
Any other kids having unexpected hs experiences this year?
@snoozn – D18’s AP Chem class is really bad. Everyone is complaining. This is the first time we’ve thought about contacting the school about a class. D18 says she doesn’t know what she’s doing and now hates chemistry. She’s doing OK grade-wise so we feel silly complaining.
I’m watching the “Parents of the HS Class of 2017” to see what’s in store for next year.
@droppedit, ouch, AP Chem is already one of the hardest classes and not the one you want a bad teacher for. My D17 had an excellent teacher and still found it brain-draining. S18 decided to take honors chem instead of AP. He has a great teacher and I think he made the right decision. Also, getting good grades doesn’t mean the class is good. D17’s worst class by far was one in which she got all A’s, but was a horribly stressful experience. Maybe the parents can get together and express their frustration as a group. Tough situation.
AP Physics is kicking D18’s booty (and my engineer husband’s too). The teacher stinks. Teacher was out for two week’s and had a sub, oddly class test grades for the material covered over those weeks (test was administered by actual teacher after she returned), were significantly higher. Homework answers, provided by teacher, have been wrong on a consistent basis. You must have below a 75 to drop an AP class and D18 is averaging a 78, even though the grade ended at an 83 at the last 9 weeks report card. Thinking of checking with school about switching to regular physics at the semester, but imagine that will look bad on her transcript. There is no honors physics, just AP or regular and at this point she is really learning nothing and is limping from one test to the next. Husband has a co worker (mechanical engineer) who also has a daughter (a very smart, top 10, daughter) in the class who is doing only slightly better than D18. The dads discuss the physics homework in a van pool, to and from work, and are stumped at the teaching method/homework. D16 took the same class 2 years ago from a teacher who has since quit (went to teach at the local directional university) with a much better result. The material and syllabus has been nearly identical, so it really seems to be the teaching methods. It’s been very frustrating.
On a different note we are headed to a campus tour at Stephen F Austin University tomorrow. It’s not a school that D18 is particularly interested in, but a senior friend is going and invited us to tag along and D18 happily agreed. It was the first time D18 voluntarily agreed to a campus tour, so I was quick to jump on the bandwagon. Hoping it will get her thinking about her own future, even though I suspect that she is just going because she will get to skip school for the day. Also headed to Louisiana State Universit (LSU is on her list) next Monday & Tuesday for a campus and dorm tour. We are taking her senior boyfriend and another Class of 18 friend along to check it out too. Right now University of Washington is at the top of her list, but I refuse the schlep all the way to Washington state unless she receives an acceptance. She registered for the January SAT and needs to register for the February ACT.
A teacher who doesn’t like your kid? - or so says your kid?. Mine gave me the same story last fall. By the end of the year that same teacher dropped me an email to congratulate me on “raising such a fine son”. Give the situation time and your son may win over the teacher
@labegg we had to hire a tutor to get D17 through IB physics last year. How it’s taught is so important that a bad teacher is just devastating in that subject. If I could go back and do it again I would have hired the guy two months sooner, when I first saw trouble, rather than doing a lot of intensive “catch up” and stressing over recovering her grade to where she was happy with it.
I’m eyeing D18 and her precalc class right now-if it looks like it’s going to go south, I’ll hire the same tutor for her. He’s awesome at math and physics-just a gifted old dude who makes it fun to learn.
Ugh, college prep history is going to make me nuts this year. The teacher has a policy I disagree with - although props to him for explaining it to me - and it’s creating a lot of work and angst in our house. So it’s not always the honors classes.
The history teacher not only didn’t bother to teach one section, but gave a test over the chapter today that included what he didn’t teach. An illegible map was part of it. This guy gives quizzes on the chapter sections to “make sure the kids did the reading,” and then “teaches” it (I don’t think he can teach his way out of a paper bag) and then tests at the end of the chapter.
Of course the gutless coward tends to be absent on test days.
This is the first teacher where I’m really about to go apeshit. We’ve been emailing back and forth and he’s trying to tell me all the other social studies teachers do it this way. No, they don’t - my daughter has asked kids who have other teachers. He’s an old teacher, and I’m sure complaining will get me nowhere. He coaches an award-winning social studies competition team here, and I suspect he feels it’s demeaning to him to have to teach a non-honors course.
In lieu of him actually teaching, we figured out there are really good summaries and worksheets in the online textbook. I have a history degree, so I’ve tried to help. But I have no idea what to help WITH. He says names, big ideas, big events. Um, the chapter is about 20 pages long. Care to narrow it down a bit for a 20-question test?
I’m not upset about her not doing well in the class (although she squeaked out an A last quarter). I just feel he is setting these kids up to fail. And doesn’t really care.
Ugh. Thanks for letting me vent. I have signed up for a parent teacher conference - first one ever in high school.
Kaplan isn’t working out for my son. He signed up for classroom instruction but the class didnt fill We had to go with online group lesson. His opening practice test was 100 points below his PSAT 10 projected score and the second Kaplan proactive test was 80 points below the first. How is this possible? He’s freaking out, We are at a loss to explain it to him. First SAT on Dec 3rd oh boy
Was he taking official CB released practice tests or something Kaplan designed? I’ve heard that some of these companies use their own practice tests that don’t reflect the actual SAT.
@JerseyParents - One of the tricks of the testing trade is to give a couple of initial “company designed tests” that are intended to be much harder than normal so that the kids get a low score. Then, at the end of the course, the “final test” is much easier and the kids now score much higher - showing how the course & instructor helped to raise their score by X number of points.
This might account for your son’s score being 100 points lower than normal.
Thanks for the help folks It was the Kaplan practice tests
I bought him the Panda math book to get some extra sample questions. People seem to like that. It’s just not logical to Ace every math including AP Calculus and then score low 600 on the SAT math
I think I’ve read that SAT/ACT math can be hard for kids that are accelerated because it’s designed to test concepts and problem types they last worked on one or even more years ago. So they know the material but it’s not fresh for them, they need to review.
I don’t know…S18 took the Oct. ACT and he said there was definitely material in the math section that he has never learned - it was completely unfamiliar. He is not especially advanced in math but he is in pre-calc and has always done well with his math classes. I was under the impression that as long as you have finished algebra 2 and had some trig under your belt that you’d be okay for the ACT. But I think they may have made some changes to the math section recently…
Actually, @Aida I think you are correct. You have reminded me that I also heard that the ACT math had been undergoing some progressive changes, nothing big like with the major SAT change, but perhaps more challenging for the kids. Smaller incremental changes each test adding more challenging questions. Harder to prep for using old tests because older tests didn’t have those types of questions, that kind of thing. I think they’ve been doing the same with the science section, adding more real science knowledge questions into the mix, rather than just the scientific reading comprehension.
My D took the June ACT and her math and science scores were lopsidedly bad compared to english/reading. They weren’t bad in the general sense, just when compared to the other two, and her composite is within the zone it needs to be for merit at most places. I’m conflicted on whether to advise her to retake to try to bring those other two scores up, with the changes, my concern is they’ll go down! She also loves the idea of being done with testing. ;))
