@carolinamom2boys definitely not one size fits all. We’ve had to use a different approach with each of the 4 kids so far!
One frustration we have on missing assignments is it can take teachers 2-4 weeks to update the online grade book. Which makes it hard to know if the kid really has or hasn’t.
I totally understand @eandesmom . We had another issue this week in that DS19’s teacher was hospitalized and she had offered extra credit assignments which we weren’t sure would be counted after he had completed them,but she has returned , so problem averted. It is frustrating that some teachers hold students to a higher standard than they hold themselves to. One email I received from her was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. It was all I could do not to correct it and email it back to her, but I didn’t want to “poke the bear”
@carolinamom2boys we had a similar situation with S17’s AP physics teacher. She didn’t input the 1st semester final test grades until after the report cards went out! S had to go through a formal grade change request to get it counted, and he needed it counted!
That’s insane @eandesmom . How do these people keep their jobs?
@carolinamom2boys it was one of the few times I actually attempted to interject myself and was completely shut down by the school with a response of “S will need to discuss it with his teacher when she returns from leave”.
I do understand respecting medical leave (family member, not the teacher). However, in this case the teacher had told the class that if they did well on the final in the grade was better than their current semester grade she would replace their semester grade with their final test score grade. And then she doesn’t actually grade the tests, let the kids know how they did before the report cards go out as she is out on leave. S worked his tail off studying do
Her argument when S approached her was that most kids did worse and she didn’t want to rub that in as she wasn’t going to take anyone’s grade “down” However S has done better and she did “make good” on her promise but it was a royal pain.
It could be worse. A friend just enrolled her son in summer school as it is mathematically impossible for him to pass physics. Apparently along with 8 friends and another 15 acquaintances all who have the same pro bono Ph.D. teacher!
Hi! I’m from the HS Class of 2019 thread and I have a question:
Many students over on the HS thread for this year are really strong math students. We’ve even got one who was taking college calculus as an eighth grader.
Are your DCs also math people?
@awesomepolyglot My DS19 is not a math person. He is taking Geometry 1 Honors as a Freshman. His brother DS16 just finished AP Calc BC
@awesomepolyglot our S19 took Algebra II Trig H freshman year, will take Pre Calc H sophomore year, Calc BC junior year, and AP Stats senior year. 90 percent of the high ability math kids in our very competitive high school go this route. Maybe 10 percent on faster track that would include having to go to the community college while still in high school in order to take advanced math classes past Calc BC.
Many, many honors students take Geometry H freshman year and end in Calc BC.
@eandesmom Your situation sounds very much like my son’s . I also try and let my kids handle it, but I have had to step in in the past.
@awesomepolyglot S19 is on the top track our district offers which will be Alg3/PreCalc/CalcAB/CalcBC. This track is only available to 10% or so of each class and AB is required before BC is allowed.
The standard “advanced” track is Geometry/Alg3/PreCalc/CalcAB. S17 is on that track. The older kids had different paths, one doubled up senior year to get her to Calc and the other only made it to Algebra3 but with some extra math in college managed to get his college degree just fine. Great if it’s something you are strong in but it is ok if you are not as well.
A lot of it will really vary by what a school and district offers or what track a child is put on in middle school.
My S is taking Algebra 1 honors as a freshman. He is on track to be in honors precalc senior year. My older D is just finishing up her senior year and she is in regular precalc. Not everyone is a math genius.
@me29034 I agree, not everyone is a math genius. My Freshman is a history and science whiz , and very artistic .
@awesomepolyglot , my d is a math person. She is taking algebra 2 this year (took algebra in 7th and geometry in 8th). Next year she is taking PreCalc and AP Stats. She thinks she might want to go into engineering.
@awesomepolyglot My son17 is kind of a math person. He likes it and is good at it. He took Honors Algebra as a freshman and he has the highest grade in his class. They want him to take 2 math classes for sophomore so he can take Calc as a Senior. He just realized this year as a freshman has an interest in math.
My older son17 is going to end taking honors math thru high school and finish with Pre Calc senior year. But he doesn’t love math. He does pretty well, but doesn’t enjoy studying it like son17 does.
Son19 is interested in robotics/engineering/design and Son17 is interested in entrepreneurship and making $.
I stink at math and it was my least favorite subject going thru school.
I hated it too. I don’t think I was as bad as it as I thought I was at the time, but it didn’t come easily like English and social studies. So I thought that meant I wasn’t good at it and so I didn’t try very hard. I also didn’t know how to ask for help.
My d has said she “loves proofs”. It’s so strange, lol.
@awesomepolyglot, S19 is good at math though he doesn’t love or live math. He took AP Stats this year along with Common Core Secondary III (mostly precalc concepts) this year as a freshman. He found the AP Stats test relatively easy. He will have AB Calc next year, BC Calc as a junior, and HL IB Math as a senior. This is the same math timeframe as S13, and it worked well for him. Some of S19’s classmates took AB Calc this year, and S19 knows some kids who have had a very accelerated math schedule…students who took BC in 8th grade for example. I think advancement in math is partially due to how much a student has taken in the past and how comfortable and confident a student feels. Most of the top student mathematicians I’ve known have had parents who were math professors and who did math with their kids pretty much every day (probably similar to the way other parents read to their kids every day). I do know one or two geniuses, for whom math is like oxygen. They are different, in many ways.
S19 is not a math person but just finished H Alg 2. He was one of few freshmen in the class. He will take H Pre Calc next year and then BC Calc.
He was thinking of AP Stat for senior year. I told him that an Admission Rep from Case said that AP Stat is not a math course. The AO meant to encourage students to take Calculus class after Pre Calc not sidestep to Stat.
Since multivariable Calc is available at HS and S19 wants do engineering, we will go toward multivariables class.
S19 did math club and his middle school team once won a MathCounts regional trophy. He does not like math club so is not in math team anymore.
Don’t the concepts in AB Calc and BC Calc overlap? Not sure why any school would have kids take one and then the other. At our high school, many kids take AB Calc as seniors. The BC Calc kids are the math whizzes. This is what the College Board says about the two classes.
"The difference between AP Calculus AB and BC is one of scope, not level of difficulty. AP Calculus AB includes techniques and applications of the derivative, the definite integral, and the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. It is equivalent to at least a semester of calculus at most colleges and universities.
AP Calculus BC includes all topics in AP Calculus AB, as well as additional topics, such as differential and integral calculus (including parametric, polar, and vector functions) and series. It is equivalent to at least one year of calculus at most colleges and universities. AP Calculus BC is an extension of AP Calculus AB, and each course is challenging and demanding and requires a similar depth of understanding of topics."
Kids at my girls’ school also take either AB or BC but from reading here on CC, I’ve seen that there are quite a few schools that make AB a prerequisite for BC. Maybe because it boosts overall AP scores for those schools?
My school gives either AB or BC, but one is not a prerequisite for the other.