<p>Can I share two high school teacher stories? My son, a sr, was signed up for Intro to Calculus. His teacher was also assist baseball coach at a nearby college. Son received a calculus text that he never used. Whenever I asked what he was learning in Calc, the answer was some topic other than calculus. Then in mid-January, the teacher died of a heart attack (he had called in sick the day before, turns out he wasn’t sick- he went to Florida for a college coaching convention. He died in Florida). When the dept head went into the class, she found out the teacher wasn’t following the Intro to Calc curriculum at all - he had been reteaching Algebra 3/Trig. Son took that last year - no wonder he was cruising with an A. Of course, the school had a problem finding a qualified math teacher in January, so son had a sub for 6 weeks who didn’t know math, finally in March they hired a girl straight out of college who FINALLy started teaching the Calculus that should have been introduced in October. </p>
<p>HS freshman daughter had the dept head for honors geometry (same woman who discovered the curriculum problem in son’s class in January). Dept head had to have back surgery in Feb, there were complications and she’s still not back. Daughter got the same sub son had (after son’s class got the new hire), she has learned nothing since Feb and should be in for some real fun next year. Not to mention that all the honors geometry classes take the same tests, although the others have “real” teachers and daughter’s class has had to resort to teaching themselves.</p>
<p>Obviously, no one to blame when a teacher dies and another has to have back surgery, but somehow both my kids got the shaft in math this year.</p>