<p>I'm taking Honors Physics this year. My teacher is an absolute you-know-what. She cannot teach at all. We do pointless lab activities, watch some videos, and then she gives us a graded problem set.</p>
<p>We NEVER do problems in class on the board. We have to figure it out ourselves, look up answers on the internet, etc. She gets angry when people ask for help. Nobody understands anything about Physics, and the only thing I know from Physics is that F = MA. </p>
<p>The teacher loses papers all the time. She breaks promises (she said you get 10 extra credit points for coming for tutoring after school, but she never does it).</p>
<p>The ONLY good thing is that she gives us long extensions for our problem sets.</p>
<p>I literally walk to her class dreading life and crying on the inside. No joke. </p>
<p>She doesn't even understand Physics herself. She contradicts herself a lot, gets facts wrong, etc. She doesn't have a degree in Physics.</p>
<p>All I want in this class is an A but it is so hard when your teacher cannot teach.</p>
<p>What should I do? I don't really want to complain to the principal or anything, I just don't want to be that person. Advice please?</p>
<p>My life would be 390429482042830948 times easier without that dreadful class..</p>
<p>I’ve had some incompetent teachers, and it’s impossible for me to change my schedule, as there really aren’t any choices to begin with at my school. (For senior year, we weren’t even given a scheduling form.)</p>
<p>I’ve found that Wikipedia and YouTube have been my saviors in physics and chem - there’s lots of professional tutors who have recorded what are basically lectures on many of the topics you’ll cover at the high school level, and you can also turn to the college professors’ lectures when you need to do so.</p>
<p>Really, all there is to do is remain patient, be sure to remind her if any grades need to be changed (but do so politely!), and learn as much of the material as you can on your own.</p>
<p>Alternatively, you could try talking to your school’s administration, which may be able to correct some of the issues with grades and losing papers (but which can’t make her suddenly understand how to teach), but this is usually ineffective unless done in a massive group. When there’s too many people to fit in their office all complaining about the same thing, they have to at least pretend to do something about it.</p>
<p>RedSeven is right-try teaching yourself the material.
MIT has tons of videos, and I believe you can take an MIT class on Physics purely by watching the videos on their website.</p>
<p>DO: sit at the front of the room. Fight to keep focused. Get an AP study guide and do the chapters that correspond to the material that your teacher was supposed to be teaching that day. DO NOT: stare at the clock.</p>
<p>If other people have agreed that it’s a big problem, then you should take it up with whoever’s in charge of the science department. Don’t go straight to the principal; first take it up with someone who’s lower in the school hierarchy.</p>
<p>If other people don’t seem to care as much, then just work as hard as you can to learn the material on your own, and learn it in advance before she teaches it wrong and confuses you.</p>
<p>The best thing you can do is to learn the material on your own. Teach your stuffed animals how to do problems from the book if you have to. It’s difficult to deal with teachers like this (my IB Chem II and III teachers were/are like this), but the only way to deal with it is to learn the material.</p>
<p>reggiefitz, I seriously could have written that entire post. Physics was by far the worst class I’ve ever been in; I can’t even think of anything I learned other than fg=mg and I don’t even know what it means. At this point in the game (middle of March) I really suggest that you just grin and bear it. I don’t know if it’s like this at most schools, but the science classes at mine are double periods so it was just constant, boring, never-ending torture. There was nothing I could do about it; I did whatever it just took to physically get through the periods. I ended up with only a B+ (we don’t even have honors physics so it was just a regular course) and a lot, lot, lot of doodles but I did it. And I learned that physics is not, nor will it ever be, for me.</p>
<p>Do you have a textbook? I’d recommend re-reading the day’s lesson in it, that way you can read it over as many times as you need to comprehend it and you know that it’ll be factually correct.</p>
<p>I’m in a dual enrollment physics class and I have a ton of problems learning from the teacher. I’m pretty sure he knows the physics but he just can’t teach it well. And we have to take the college exams but he just decided to stop teaching physics and do global warming instead. I’ve found that I can do okay by watching videos online (try khan academy) and going to see the TA for the same class I’m in at the university.</p>
<p>reggiefitz: Is there another physics teacher at your school? Why not show up at his/her doorstep for tutoring? Just say you are having problems understanding the material and you can’t seem to get on your real teacher’s schedule. This will serve 2 purposes: 1 you will get help, 2 there will be a non-student in the same dept as your teacher who may get the idea that there is a problem here. Depending on the 2nd teacher’s level of motivation, maybe things will change.</p>
<p>You’ve got to grin and bear it. In college, you may end up with a professor who likes research, but hates teaching or is not good at it. And it may be a class that is mandatory to pass for your major. So you will need to do all the things the other people advised and more to suffer through it. There is a saying “What doesnt kill you, makes you stronger” (was in a rap song, too, so it must be correct) this is one of those events. :)</p>