<p>Are you speaking as a teacher at Stanford? Considering what he wrote, only one teacher was problematic which infers that there weren’t problems with any other teachers. You are ready to throw out a kid you barely know and assure him he won’t last in Stanford based on a few paragraphs you read on an anonymous website? Ridiculous. </p>
<p>OP, ignore know-it-all’s like that. Pay attention to the constructive criticism in this thread to get yourself back on track.</p>
<p>Do your best to get into the class again, but if you can’t get back in, you probably still have a shot at Ivies.</p>
<p>Avoid angering any more teachers, though…that’s more problematic than the classes, as it can affect your counselor’s recommendation.</p>
<p>you need to apologize and show some respect
there are a lot of really smart kids with 2350s
if you cannot be bothered to pay attention or adhere to a contract that you signed, you don’t deserve a spot in the class
use this as a learning experience, eat some humble pie, and self study for a 5</p>
<p>absweetmarie:</p>
<p>I admit that I do not know the full situation described by the OP but neither do you. Maybe the teacher is unreasonable and draconian in how she runs her class. My S has experience with such a teacher and it can be a difficult and trying situation. Bringing in a third party (school board or district) may help. Or perhaps an independent mediator could be retained to sort out the matter.</p>
<p>dad1518: I understand your feelings and applaud your desire for parents to be involved. With that said, I would strongly recommend against getting the school board, district, or a lawyer etc involved. I have a few friends that are teachers and I can’t tell you how many times they groan and get ****ed off because they get the feeling people are trying to pressure them or game the system. (Not that I am saying this is what happening, but they feel like it is.) Including the fact that a behavior contract of some sort was signed beforehand, it is safe to assume there was previous issues and we can be sure that there is no way to wiggle out of this situation. Calling in a 3rd party will be see by the administration as a student just trying to game the system and get out of his situation underhandedly. Not to mention that it will probably initiate a nuclear reaction on the teachers part and reduce his chances of perhaps mitigating the situation with him/her to near zero.</p>
<p>I am with most of the responses in this thread to either take a bite, use maturity and try to work out a deal with the teacher or move past it and do other things to improve his chances.</p>
<p>dad1518,</p>
<p>Fair enough. You are right. I apologize for being hasty. My child has been lucky enough to have teachers who are either excellent or quite good enough; I should be open to the possibility that not all teachers behave reasonably or mete out justice impartially. I am doing a bit of reading between the lines and making some assumptions about the situation when I do not have all the information. Nevertheless, based on what the OP said about his behavior, it seemed the teacher was within her rights to call him on it.</p>
<p>Why did you sign the contract?! It looks like the reason you can’t protest this to the administration is because of the contract, and if you’d never signed it she wouldn’t have been able to kick you out.</p>
<p>You have two options: Escalate the problem by going to “the powers that be”; or accept your punishment and take study independently for the exam. A previous poster mentioned a valid option for this earlier:
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<p>The problem with going to an administrator is that you signed a contract. Whether you were being truly disruptive or not, you agreed to be on your best behavior in your class. The fact that you were specifically asked to sign an agreement to be respectful in class means that you should have done your best not to anger your teacher. Frankly, it’s hard to be sympathetic with someone who signed a contract laying out specific actions and consequences–and who then violated that contract. Your teacher may be unreasonable, but you signed your own death warrant.</p>
<p>IMO, your best option is to back down and look for another teacher to finish the year with. Talk to your GC about how this will look on your transcript–will it be a withdrawal? If so, ask if studying with another teacher could change that designation (because yes, a withdrawal will affect your chances at top schools). At this point, it’s about damage control.</p>
<p>Agree with glassesarechic. You signed that contract; whether the teacher’s actions were just or not, NOW is not the time to contest the punishment. The time to contest the contract, and accordingly, the punishment resulting from your behavior, would have been when you were presented with the contract. So you really have no recourse if you go to parents/the administrations. And, after all, this will likely only antagonize your teacher further.</p>
<p>The idea of finishing out the year with a research project is really good. And you should self-study APES and hopefully you can get a 5 when you can take the test. Finally, it’s very important that you find out how this is presented on your transcript, and if you can rectify the official designation (if it is bad), perhaps by going to your counselor.</p>
<p>If you write the letter of apology, I highly recommend doing so in a remorseful manner. By this, I mean to make it apparent that you are sorry for pulling out the packet, NOT for getting caught. Sentences like ‘I was out of line’ and ‘It was utterly unacceptable for me to work on outside assignments in class, and I assure you it’ll never happen again’ should do the trick. </p>
<p>Even if you feel your actions were justified and she was too harsh, make it seem as if you completely agree with her and that you’re in the wrong. Criticize yourself and your actions–it’ll go far. </p>
<p>If you really want to best chance of getting into your top choice schools, take my advice. Should you do this, my bet is that your teacher will reconsider.</p>
<p>I don’t think the ops issue is respect. Everyone in high school zones out occasionally. Personally, I have witnessed many different students get caught with unrelated material out and the punishment was never worse than. A warning.</p>
<p>Show some maturity. Apologize. Going forward be respectful of the teacher, the subject, your classmates, and you (you signed the contract and you went against your word - have some self-respect). This will not be the first time a difficult situation comes your way - learn to handle it now. Your stats are good but, based upon this story, why would a top school want to choose you to be a part of their community? The type of school you aspire to attend has their choice of applicants just like you so you need to stand out. You may stand out by being disrespectful, immature and entitled but it will not get the acceptance you desire.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for the responses. I am planning on writing a letter of apology to her, however I am going to wait for a little. This is because I was originally going to apologize to her a few days after the incident, and I told my parents that it would be better if they did not contact her until I did. This is because I wanted to allow some time for her anger to subside.However, they emailed her the day after, and as I suspected, she never replied to their emails.</p>
<p>If it does not work out, I am going to go with the suggestion that a few of you have given me; I will change the period into independent study, and I will do my own research in a science subject that interests me, and is relevant to my future major.</p>
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<p>'bout time. Show real remorse and promise not to do it again. Just like the governmetn clerk at the DMV, she has ALL of the power. Now is the time to grovel.</p>
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<p>Baaaadd move.</p>
<p>Why is that? My parent’s email was not responded to, and I believe this was because they emailed her the day of the incident, when the anger was still fresh in her mind.</p>
<p>I can relate to your situation in many ways: I was a high school student who wasn’t challenged by my classes so I did homework or reading in class; most teachers allowed me to do so, but one teacher insisted that we put away all materials except his; I taught school one year (which was enough for me); and I am quite familiar with contracts from my experience as a lawyer.</p>
<p>You should know that many people, particularly those of my generation (I’m 50), do not believe there is such a thing as a personality conflict between a teacher and a student; the term “personality conflict” is merely an excuse for disobedience. Even if a personality conflict existed, it wouldn’t put a teacher and a student on an equal footing. A student might have a different personality than the teacher or might not like the teacher, but that is not an excuse to break the rules. If a teacher asks a student not to do something and the student does it anyway, that isn’t a personality conflict. The student has broken a classroom rule and has been disrespectful to the teacher. This would be true even if there was no contract involved. A contract does, however, remove the possible defense that the student didn’t know that the behavior wasn’t allowed.</p>
<p>You need to know this because it will be impossible to write a sincere and convincing letter of apology until you realize that what you did was wrong and stop blaming a personality conflict.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the rule that no other class materials are allowed on a student’s desk is ridiculous. When I was a teacher, I allowed other materials, as long as the student contributed to discussions a reasonable amount and wasn’t disruptive. However, my opinion is irrelevant, and so is yours. The teacher has the right to make such a rule, and any decent school administration will support the teacher. Going over the teacher’s head in such a case can only make your situation worse because it would reveal that you do not really believe you were wrong.</p>
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<p>Are you clairvoyant? Are you a mind-reader? Or, are you just speculating/guessing/looking for an excuse to delay what you know you have to do – grovel? The fastest way to reduce the teacher’s anger (if there is any) is for YOU to apologize, not for your parents to e-mail the teacher. If your apology is ignored, then and only then should your parents request a conference so your teacher can tell them what YOU did that was wrong. i.e., you broke your word (and written contract).</p>
<p>btw: why is an Ivy wannabe taking APES? Have you already finished the big three sciences? Or, are you doubling with AP Bio?</p>
<p>I’d like to chime in here and I’ll go back a read all of the posts later when I have time.</p>
<p>For those that doubt the OPs story this happened to me too. A teacher just didn’t like me and would lie in wait for me to do something wrong, as small as speaking to someone sitting next to me during class. For those who doubt my version of events my best friend who was also in the class observed it too. By the way, I was a very good student and have typically been well liked by teachers. This particular teacher and I just had a personality conflict. For the whole year her class was an ordeal. I dreaded it and I ended up hating the subject material. Maybe I would have anyway, who knows.</p>
<p>It is impossible to get through a class without doing something out of turn, it just isn’t realistic. To the OP, you never should have signed that contract, but you didn’t know any better. If you are out of her class now, stay out. She is a terrible teacher and it isn’t worth it. If you have more problems over this incident then get someone to advocate for you with the administration. Go over people’s heads until you find someone who will listen to you.</p>
<p>You still have a shot at those schools, but those are reached for everyone. Just explain what happened and let the chips fall where they fall. You are obviously very bright, but it comes across as you were bored and not disciplined enough to conduct yourself in a manner that would please your teacher. You are young. There is still plenty of time to learn to avoid power struggles. Just take the AP and get a 5. None of this will matter when you have your graduate degree and are gainfully emplyoyed - unless you keep getting into power struggles at the workplace.</p>
<p>I agree with Pea’s advice, that you should stay out of this class and away from this teacher. Do not attempt to take a class with the same person next year. No one knows what Stanford admissions will do until they’ve actually done it, but I could even see this working in your favor, in a strange way. </p>
<p>Take a look at the profile of Richard N. Zare in Discover magazine, from 1997. You can find it by Googling Dick Zare Discover The Light of Life. Zare is the Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Stanford. He had a really serious personality conflict with a teacher in middle school–so serious that he was actually advised by the principal to leave the school. Which he did. Luckily, he was admitted to a really good private high school. But if anyone is going to understand that a teacher might have an issue with a bright student, where the student is not entirely at fault, it would be Zare.</p>