<p>I just started Honors Pre-Calculus this year, and my teacher (Who also teaches AP Calc) is a really tough but good teacher, he is from Sweden, He teaches Honors Pre-Calc and AP Calc (AB) (My school doesn't have a BC) but anyways, almost nobody get's an A in his class, even the smartest kid's get B's and C's in the class, because he makes it a lot harder than the curriculum requires. But at the same time, almost everybody in his class get's a 5 on the AP Test, like 75-80% of his student's.Even kids who get a D in the class wind up with a 5 on the AP Test. But he also has a reputation to be the toughest teacher in my whole school, so are most AP Calc teachers like this or is he unique?</p>
<p>Not necessarily calc, but there’s an apush teacher at my school who does that. At least it gets people a 5.</p>
<p>Yeah, it screws up your GPA, but If you get a 5 he will bump up your grade a letter grade.</p>
<p>Nah, most of the really good teachers here have kids get both high grades and high exam scores. Our Calc BC teacher at my school is an incredibly good teacher, but he’s also very lenient with his grading, so most of kids end up with at least an A and at least a 4.</p>
<p>Every school seems to have a few really terribly difficult classes in terms of grading. At my school, that was IB English, both years of it (taught by the same teacher).</p>
<p>My pre-clac/calc teacher was definitely unusual, though. He didn’t actually tell you what your grade was at any point except when you saw it on your report card. You couldn’t calculate it, either, and if you tried to ask he’d say you were too focused on grades rather than learning. Homework wasn’t required for the class (hence I didn’t do a single problem of math homework for two years…), so it was entirely based on test scores. And all you got on the test was a negative score - how many points you got off. But you never knew how many points it was out of. When we did indefinite integration and someone forgot to add “+ C” to everything, he just made their score “-3000,” and no one knew what to make of that. I would have also been extremely frustrated, but I always seemed to get fewer points off than my classmates and ended up with "A"s, but if I hadn’t I would have been seriously annoyed by his system.</p>
<p>In my school three got below 50% in BC. One got a 2, one got a 4, and one got a 5.</p>
<p>That’s the sign of a good, challenging class. Many college classes are designed so that the average is around a B or C, and A’s are only given to students who perform exceptionally well.</p>
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<p><em>insert stupid comment about how I’m glad I don’t have your English teacher</em></p>
<p>My school doesn’t have AP Calculus of any kind, and most of the teachers aren’t all that challenging. We have a few teachers who spend the first few weeks of class acting like the work is going to be really hard and scary, but it’s all just talk.</p>
<p>Ooops I meant to say does.</p>
<p>Yeah. Standard rul e ij my class is pass the class, get a 5.
More than 90% get a 5.</p>
<p>Rule in***</p>
<p>my calc teacher is kind of like that but shes fairly lenient with grading tests if you have work that supports your answer. most people have Bs and there are a few As and a few Cs, i think. she gives out at least 1.5 hrs of homework every night, though (last night was 3-4 hours…) and 90% of her students in the past have gotten 5s on the ap exam</p>
<p>See on tests he makes you write a written explanation for how you did the problem, you have to use proper grammar, and you have to have your work neat and orderly so he can see how you got your answer.</p>
<p>He also gives 50-60+ problems of math homework every day, and not short problems either, a lot of them have 5 parts or more. It takes me up to 4 hours just to do math homework.</p>
<p>First day of accelerated calculus at the U of Washington (im a high schooler though) today… </p>
<p>Professor made several jokes about how many people were going to drop the class… Then he went on to say that several people who have gotten 3.6s or 3.7s have gone on to win Goldwater Scholarship (prestigious scholarship for undergrads in hard sciences).</p>
<p>All in all I’m excited for a hard class after years of patty-caking around.</p>
<p>Having to write your solutions isn’t a bad idea…you learn how to write a solution clearly and logically, which isn’t taught in many high schools (I honestly think it should be).</p>
<p>However 50-60 problems a night is a bit overkill IMO.</p>
<p>YEP! my calc teacher is insane but i love him. He’s so enlightening. Whenever he’s teaching, he’ll go into a philosophical tangent about how his class is “not about math.” He reads letters to us a few times from past students, and apparently a week doesn’t go by when he doesn’t get a letter from a past student on how he changed their lives. my math teacher is the bessstt!! but he mumbles and talks as fast as the Lamborghini he owns:(</p>
<p>How does a teacher have enough money to buy a Lamborghini? Teachers aren’t exactly rich.</p>