Dropping a math class?

Parents Forum
1

Son is a sophomore, 2 years “ahead” in math. His geometry in 8th grade will count for hs grad credit. He took Alg2 as a freshman and this year he is in precalc. They need 3 math credits to graduate. I know 4 years of math is preferred for colleges.

My conundrum, my kid now has total attitude and hates his teacher. I have to admit I myself am not a fan of this teacher and think he cares more about “following his rules” than ensuring the students learn the material. This guy is singlehandedly making my son hate math and school overall.
As a college professor myself, even I am having a bit of a hard time accepting this guys classroom rules and teaching methods. My son is in person school but with the pandemic changing things and everything else, I do care about my sons mental health as well. I have not yet told my son my opinion of this teacher and have been trying to defend this teacher thus far so my son is not influenced by me.

I dont think the school will/can let him switch teachers. I dont want my son to think that you dont have to follow the teachers rules just because you dont like them. I want him to know that in real life you will frequently run into people you dont like and you might not like your bosses but still have to do your job.

But its a pandemic and I think this teacher is just being a hardcore jerk (with a bit of total absolute, zero flexibility math teacher type thinking). As in, my son was sick with Covid and an assignment upload 2 minutes late he wont give any points for and the test my son had to miss again due to Covid will be marked 0 points until the teacher finds a time for my son to come in to take it (versus marking pending). If you get no problems wrong on your homework but dont mark a -0 with red pen on the top of the paper, its zero points. Son had to talk to a teacher after class and wasnt able to get his homework into the folder by the time the bell rang to start the class and held it up before they began to talk about it in class, still “late”, zero points. I understand some of this is easy fixes but my kid is so angry about some other things hes now digging his heels in the sand. The teacher seems to find something wrong with every assignment my son turns in and gives him zero points.

My son was an A/B high level math kid and now he has a D. I was going to talk to the school Monday to see if my son can switch to another teacher. If they cant, I was going to ask them if he can drop at the semester and take a half credit 1 semester class in spring. There are some business, tech and science electives that might work.
This means my son would have to retake precalc his junior year. Then take AP Calc AB senior year (which would be 4 credits of math) but not sure how that would look for colleges. He isnt planning on top schools anyways and would simply state he dropped the course due to having Covid. He could possibly double up on math his senior year by adding AP Stats or Intro to Computer Science.

WWYD? As much as I would like to just give my kid an attitude adjustment, with Covid and everything else thats gone on with this teacher I dont think its possible and Im trying to think of the best case scenario. Getting a D or F kind of seems worse than dropping and retaking next year. Parenting is hard.

2

Tough situation you’re in for sure. Is dropping it and taking it over in summer school an option, so he odesn’t fall behind? Or, just retaking it for grade replacement?

When my kids have had horrible teachers (as a teacher myself I sympathize with you), I have often just told them to suck it up and do what it takes to get through it, that sometimes some of the rules that teachers have make no sense and have nothing to do with the subject material. As long as they know I back them 100% they just get through it. If your son isn’t going for uber competitive schools, then it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have AP Calc as a Junior or even a Senior. Plenty of kids take only AP Stats as a Senior without ever taking Calc, and plenty more never take either.

Or, as you mentioned, plenty take 2. If your school counts AP CS as a Math then yes, that’s an option as well, but colleges may not count it as such. Our hs has CS covered in both the Applied Arts and Math department but initially when letters of recs were used, it was not considered a core subject. I think in the last few years (since my oldest applied to colleges in classe of '15) it has come around to be considered more relevant.

Bottom line, let your son know he has your back, but also rules are rules and no matter how dumb they are, just suck them up. My son earned 1/2 on something for his AP Stats class because of how it was turned in remotely yet if he were in person it would not have been an issue. He didn’t want to bother mentioning it to the teacher because it was so small in the scheme of things.

One last thing, it sounds like your son’s grade may only be a D because he has a 0 in as a placeholder. If that’s the case, then once he takes that quiz/test, his grade should only improve and I wouldn’t worry about how the teacher put it in. There’s a reason for that as far as how some of the high school grading programs work and it is much easier for a lot of teachers to do that than to put in an exempt or incomplete.

Good luck!

4

This.

IMO, I think you help him to succeed in this class. There is going to be the bad professor in college. The horrible boss at work. Still you need to find a way to be successful.

Sounds like it isn’t a question of your son not knowing the material but adhering to the professor’s time tables. I wouldn’t derail the math track, especially this late into the semester.