Before anyone goes off calling be a dirtbag or something for even coming up with the idea, please, let me explain myself. Let's start with some background about myself, I am an Asian-American 10th grader taking an AP Human Geography course that is being offered for the first time this year. Well, that was a mistake apparently.
Let's say the teacher is... sub-par. He thinks he's teaching everything that is going to be on the AP test and that his tests reflect of the AP test style but the CollegeBoard and my Barron's book say otherwise. He won't listen to anyone that asks him to change his teaching. When I go up to ask him a question or how I should study for his tests, he would always answer "what do you think?" or something really vague as if he didn't understand. I follow another AP Human Geography teacher from another district and he is 3 chapters ahead of us and we are already behind, but my teacher decides to waste more time.
Honestly, I could deal with this even though it sucks, but the real killer is, he really hates me and 3 of the people I know. Me and 3 other Asians are targeted in one of his classes and he keeps saying we are a disturbance to the class. This was sort of true in the beginning of the year as we talked then, but on the other side of the class, there was a large amount of students who were white, who talked all the time and he never called them out on anything. Apparently, according to my friends in other classes, when we mess up on assignments or we do something stupid on accident in class, he will point it out and make fun of us in the other periods. Now many of my classmates a friends look at us as class clowns and screw offs.
I honestly want to report this teacher for both his teaching and his behavior, but is it worth the trouble to work for what I believe is right? Is there any better solutions someone can provide me? Thank you for reading and any replies will be appreciated.
Hello, I am a senior in high school and here is what I would do,
How long have you had this teacher (semester just began for many schools)?
I would not report him on his teaching; if it really is that bad, the AP scores from his class will be very low. The district may do something in that case.
If this teacher continues with targeting of Asian students and you can build up a convincing case with other students, I might report him.
Teaching-wise, you apparently have a prep book and a good handle on what materials will be tested, so perhaps the best revenge would be getting a 5 on the AP test… O:-)
First of all, take a deep breath. Not all the tests that he has you take has to reflect the AP style test you take at the end of the year. In fact most of the classes I have taken have had tests that don’t reflect the format of the AP test up until a couple of weeks leading up to the exam, where we practice using some of the practice books. Don’t compare your class to another teacher from another district. The thing is people go at different paces and it may be that your class is going more in depth with one topic while another school plans to go more in depth with another. Nothing abnormal here. It’s only January. Give the teacher some leeway, it is like you said the first time its being taught
Let’s see what steps you can take to make this semester more bearable. It is unlikely that you will get a new teacher before the end of this semester and most of the issues you have mentioned do not seem significant enough to call for a change in teaching. It seems the thing that you are most frustrated about is being called out for your behavior during class. Well have you been talking or disruptive during class time? Whether other students get called out on it or not is a different story. You can only control your own actions. Have you approached the teacher to tell him that being picked on bothers you?
All you need to do is approach him and say “Hey I know I didn’t get the answer to XXX right or XXX happened in the class, but it bothers me a little bit when you tell other students from other periods this as it has been the cause of some other students picking on me outside of class.” Simple. He may not even realize that it is causing you distress and more likely than not he will modify his own behavior. If he doesn’t then I would say something, but give him the benefit of the doubt and at least talk to him about it first
@Medachimasen , I wouldn’t worry much about doing badly on the test - just make sure you are prepared for it, maybe even ask the other teacher you follow (on social media, I assume) for help.
@anxiousenior1 ‘Growing a thick skin’ is not going to help the OP here. Racial discrimination should not be brushed off as a teacher not liking you or another student as much as others. And while I agree you shouldn’t expect all teachers to be top notch, a teacher several months behind should not be teaching at all.
OP, if you genuinely think that your teacher is being racist and discriminating against Asians, I would report him for sure. I would look up anti-discrimination laws in your state and see what you would need in terms of evidence, then find a way to get it. I remember seeing an article on a kid with a mental disability (maybe a learning disorder?) who had an abusive teacher that cursed at him and called him a screw-up, etc., so he took his iPhone and recorded his teacher cursing him out, and the teacher got his just desserts. Although it may not be as apparent in your case, I’m sure your friends can do something like record several instances he makes fun of them for screwing up in the future, then present your case. Heck, maybe you could talk to the white kids in your class and see if they would be willing to vouch for you.
@IrisShadow People get discriminated all the time in the real world, for being too tall, too skinny, too fat, too short. If you ran to authority every single time someone singled you out, you might as well camp out in HR. If the OP is getting his grades lowered because of “discrimination”, that’s a different story. If the teacher was calling the OP derogatory terms, that’s a different story. But all it seems like is that the OP and his friends were being disruptive and called out for it. It’s really easy to “believe” that you are being singled out when you are the one at fault.
You were disruptive and you got in trouble. It’s kind of like being caught in a speed trap-- it doesn’t matter who else is guilty, you were guilty and you were caught. Others now see you as “screw ups and clowns”— isn’t that a result of your own actions? I’ve got to wonder why anyone who is or was joking around in class has the maturity to take an AP course in the first place.
This is an AP course, so it’s supposed to be college level. Do you really think that a college professor would tell you “how to study” for his tests?
Reporting a teacher for the actions you’ve described is incredibly unlikely to accomplish anything. There’s no way of telling that the teacher you’re following isn’t rushing the material, and that your teacher isn’t the one in the proper place. Or that the other teacher is teaching with such a poor attention to detail that his students aren’t learning anything at all. The reality is that timing the teaching of a course is a thing that each teacher does differently.
Where do you want your focus to be? Is this about keeping track of every time this teacher calls you out on your behavior, on keeping a score card on every real or imagined slight? Or is this about learning material? You’re a sophomore taking a college course. My opinion is that it’s time to stop worrying about the teacher’s actions and start taking accountability for your own.
What are you doing to learn this material? Other than “following” a teacher from another school-- how are your grades in this course? Are you giving it your best shot? Are you studying, going to extra help, outlining the information, keeping on top of the reading and the homework?
@bjkmom I understand I screwed up in the beginning, like the first week or two, but we stopped afterwards. Even though we did stop, whenever we do “something wrong” he starts getting mad at us.
For example, one of my friends was taking notes and he starts yelling at him in the middle of class to stop working on assignments for other classes. If he has done so before, it was fair for him to do so, but my friend never did something like that. My friend then comes up to the teacher after class to show the teacher that he was really taking notes. The teacher doesn’t even apologize and blows him off.
I could bring up more examples if you want, but I think it is completely unfair for him to call us out on everything we do when he ignores everyone else’s stupid actions. As far as my grades in the class I am keeping a low A but that is from studying immense amounts. I don’t think it’s right that I study for this class more than my AP Chem class and AP Calc BC class which are, in my opinion, a lot harder classes. That is why I’m saying that I hate the teacher. Not only is he hurting me and my friends for “bad” behavior, he also makes his tests worse than it has to be.
The only kid I know who has been getting consistent A’s on tests in the class is a friend of mine. I asked him how he studies and he told me at least 24 hours on each test. This is completely insane in my opinion. Before you tell me I should be optimizing my time in this class, he gives articles that we have to read to take the test. Everyone, even this kid got a low B or C. We looked at the questions and some of the questions pertained to things we have never read or learned about. He never gave a lecture for this whole unit and made us do mock trials which taught us nothing.
I understand I am in no right to judge his teaching, but I am getting the grades I want through extremely unnecessary measures and he is judging me and my friends very unfairly.
@anxiousenior1 As I have stated before, we only were disruptive in the beginning of the year, almost 5 months ago and we weren’t even that disruptive. We weren’t doing anything that would have bothered any normal teachers and the thing is, the other students who were white were a lot louder during that time period but he decides to pick on us even now. We aren’t doing anything wrong anymore, but whenever it looks like we do something wrong, like the one I explained in my reply above, he yells at us in front of us in middle of class.
@IrisShadow@shawnspencer@StringContrabass Thank you for all the suggestions and I will try using all of them and @bodangles I am pretty sure I can get a 5 on the test but it’s his class I’m worried about since I’m on the border of getting my GPA lowered.
Honestly, teaching wise you always come across teachers like this… If the county/district notices the surprisingly low grades in your class, they will investigate. Being unfair and directing dislike against you and other asain-americans is a problem. You should definitely go to a school counselor, dept chair of whatever your taking, and or another teacher. If you do not feel like reporting him directly to another supervisor, talk to him personally. Tell him whats wrong, but dont act like you think he has a problem with you. Your best bet is to personally talk with him, and act like you have a big interest in whatever your studying. Creating a friendly relationship with teachers are huge, and can really affect you and your grade especially in HS. Hope this helps ( I am also an Asian-American and i know the everyday struggles and norms. ) ---- Oh, and also, it would be best to go with several different students to other supervisors, to really convince him/her it is a real problem( And dont you switch schedules and teachers after your 1st semester?)
It seems like you might have some reason to complain about his behavior, if he is belittling you by name to other students.
However, I don’t see how you have any basis for complaining about his teaching. He is behind in the book as compared to another teacher? He doesn’t give you specific tips about how to study? Not clear how these are valid complaints.
BTW, how many times do you “mess up on assignments” or “do something stupid in class?” And if you are messing up and doing something stupid, are you really the best judge of the teacher’s teaching ability?
I don’t think you have much to report. I would stick it out and never take another class with this teacher. It doesn’t sound like racial discrimination to me. It sounds like you were disruptive in class and forgot to apologize to the teacher. Some students are disruptive in a rude way and some are disruptive in a charming way. Teachers are human and may tolerate disruption from certain students and not others because of the way the disruption happen. Since you don’t like this teacher’s teaching style and you don’t think he’s very smart chances were that you were rather rude in the way you were disruptive.
Study with your friend who gets the A. It’s normal for a college level history class to require extensive amounts of reading. You will not get hand-holding once you are in college.
It seems your strengths lie in math and science (taking AP calc and AP chem in 10th grade). Did you just take this class because it is AP?
He may be bigoted but he may also be reacting to you and your friends. There is a mentality that seems to have spread in the US. It is a corrupted understanding of the purpose of education, at least from my perspective. The purpose of a class is to facilitate learning about a topic. It is your responsibility to learn. The teacher should use his/her expertise to devise a curriculum that will provide a roadmap for you to use. The roadmap can include all kinds of material or very little. It may include instructor lectures or it may not. Regardless, the instructor is responsible for assessing how much of the material you master. Tests are used as proxy for being able to actually measure each student’s level of mastery. Sometimes the results of the tests are used for other things too-like granting certain credit or as a gate keeper to opportunity. But the test or the grade is not the point of the class. The point is to be educated. The test or grade is the result of the extent to which you mastered the material.
The mentality that I find objectionable is when students get it backwards. They want to know what will be on the test so they can study for it. They think that the closer they get to studying only the material that will be on the test, the better off they will be. Students try to become expert test takers and forget the meaning of the class. The test is actually only a small sample of what is learned. If you confine your learning to what is on the test, then you are actually learning only a small part of what you should be mastering and the test score is meaningless because it is no longer just a sample.
The instructor of your class may not like a bunch of 17 year olds telling him/her what to teach for the test. If you really know the material, you will do well on any test designed to assess your mastery of the material. But the instructor is apparently not “teaching to the test”. He/she is teaching course content and assumes that mastery will be demonstrated by those who have mastered the material. Those that have not will do less well. The curriculum will not be modified to ensure that the test material is covered. The test should be designed to show level of mastery of the information generally considered to make up the curriculum of that class. If it doesn’t, it is the test and not the class that needs to be modified. This idea is apparently foreign to a cohort of students who don’t seem to “get” the point of education. This corruption of education isn’t confined to any one demographic. But, if the OP has expressed an attitude that the test (and the OP) should rule what gets taught, I can understand the instructor being put off by that.
I’m trying to address as many replies as possible so it will take a while. @19HSHelp I’m really looking for a solution to him picking on me and my friends rather than his teaching, the teaching is really just a side problem. Thanks for the suggestion though.
@CheddarcheeseMN He is belittling us. As far as “do stupid in class goes” we never really did something you would call stupid in class. We would just ask each other questions in the middle of class since we might have missed something he said. And for “messing up on assignments” we followed all of his criteria and all I did was add something to make it a little comical since that’s how my teacher in chem did something once. He thought it was stupid even though it was completely related to what we were on.
@amy989 I understand what you are saying, but it seems unfair for him to judge us after doing something one time. We did apologize for talking in class as well yet he still picks on us.
@mommdc I have been doing so, but that is only getting me a borderline A and I still have to spend so much time to do so.
@lostaccount I understand exactly what you’re saying, but I’m not pushing him at all to tell us what is on the test, since I have learned exactly the way you explain is the “right” way to teach the course. The thing is, he doesn’t really teach anything in class and on the recent test, he did not tell us everything about the chapter and expected us to take a test on it. The average was a C on that test and he said it was because we were bad test takers.
@ClarinetDad16 I don’t understand why you think that. I believe the teacher is knowledgeable, but he isn’t really helping us.
Ok an apology is good if it was sincere. But be honest - do you and your friends look down upon this teacher? I’m thinking you probably do and it might come across which could be why he doesn’t like you. It doesn’t sound like a case of racial discrimination. It sounds like the teacher isn’t very good and you and your friends let him know that. And now his ego is hurt and he doesn’t like you.
I HAD THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM. People would regularly complain to the principal about a certain teacher and how she wasn’t teaching what was necessary for AP–she was ignorant and seemed to not know what she taught. Nothing happened though, as the teacher was part of the school for 30 years and there was some rule against firing veteran teachers (teachers of 20+ years).
( I am also an Asian-American and i know the everyday struggles and norms. ) ---- Oh, and also, it would be best to go with several different students to other supervisors, to really convince him/her it is a real problem( And dont you switch schedules and teachers after your 1st semester?)