<p>Ok, so my Hon pre-cal class at my school is known to be the notoriously, evil killer of all honor kids' dreams! Literally, in my period alone, more than HALF of the people are failing. Just in my period. And it is worse in the one of the other periods. SO heres the question all of us crying juniors and seniors are asking- is it our own fault that we cannot get good grades in this class or is the burden on the teacher WHO CANNOT TEACH??? im not trying to bash the teacher, shes a wonderful person, but we just feel she cannot present us the information in a way that we actually learn.
What do you all think, is there something that we students can do or are we completely in the wrong?</p>
<p>Have you tried communicating with your teacher? If someone doesn’t know they’re doing a bad job, then they’ll keep on doing it under the assumption that they’re doing a good job. If your teacher is as nice as you say, then she probably wants to teach for the sake of teaching and wouldn’t mind some advice.</p>
<p>Best course of action is to choose one-two students to represent the entire class or classes and tactful(keyword here) discusses ways she can better present the information.</p>
<p>Be specific and clear, vagueness isn’t going to help anyone. </p>
<p>AP classes are meant to be taught like an actual college class with college material. It’s not going to be naturally easy, but it’s still manageable.</p>
<p>I’ve always thought…especially with honors classes, if the majority of kids are doing badly, it’s the teachers fault. You’re all probably motivated students so yeah, that’s on the teacher…as for fixing it, I would say go to the teacher first… if that doesn’t work go to guidance or administration</p>
<p>@tacoperson123 (S)He wasn’t talking about an AP class. (S)He was talking about an Honors Precalc class.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know because that is the exact thing at my school as well. However, my teacher is sorta good. The fault, for me anyways, is that I make stupid STUPID mistakes. Other students don’t have enough time during tests or just don’t study. It’s quite distressing…</p>
<p>In some classes, the teacher is just notoriously bad. But I don’t think they should be blamed either. I think that to a certain extent, it is their fault if the reason for a majority of the class to be failing is do to not learning the material. But if some of it comes from the students just not truly comprehending and being able to answer questions, then there needs to be some sort of compromise.</p>
<p>What I think, is that if there is a certain topic your class as a whole struggled with, maybe its graphing sine and cosine graphs, ask the teacher to spend another day going over the material</p>
<p>From what I have learned, you can’t change how a teacher teaches and complaining gets you no where.</p>
<p>All of our H. Precalc classes are failing too. Don’t worry (our class average for the past few tests and quizzes has been around 60%), it’s pretty common. To be honest, the material isn’t really that hard. Ask your teacher to explain it if you don’t understand a concept. Have students who do understand explain the concept.</p>
<p>As previous posters have stated, complaining will get you nowhere (trust me, we’ve tried with teachers who have even worse policies).</p>
<p>i am sorry but most teachers dont teach. The school system doesnt actually require them to do so. I do realize that is a terrible thing to say,lol, but the American school system is broken and kids arent being conditioned properly. I go to one of the top 100 school in the country. We still have some teachers that should not really be teaching here. Apparently it isnt their job to actually teach us anything. Quite a few of these teachers just have us learn by ourselves. We are , frankly, at their mercy.</p>
<p>I know which teacher your talking about though-- the one that actually isnt qualified to be teaching you guys. Some teachers just want you to to learn by yourself because it is actually not explicitly said that they must actually teach you their curriculum. But there is sometimes that one teacher that actually,however bizarre, has no idea what is happening. I would suggest you just learn by yourself. Most of the people i know agree that in the majority of classes, it is better to simply ignore your teacher and study in class, and teach yourself at home ( perhaps hire a tutor?). </p>
<p>This is math, so teachers cannot be too strict. This isnt english where teachers can pull all types of shenanigans through a well worded rubric( no seriously, i your teacher is halfway intelligent, read yours; its gonna leave obvious room for personal judgement). If a class is really hard, i guess if you study more than and hour and a half a day, you have a right to complain. If you are working 30 minutes, really? the only right u have to complain then is if you are in the eighth grade( no , seriously, i know ppl who took it then w/ juniors and seniors by going to the highschool) or are taking 4 AP courses or are taking AP f-bomb Chem.</p>
<p>By the way, you should realize that pre-calc is when math actually becomes difficult.<br>
I took alg 1 and geo in middle school- definatley more difficult than alg 2 in highschool. they make the classes in highschool easier because all they just want ppl to pass because they arent learning AP Calc soon. Nevertheless, some of us slack in these classes because of this. (aka me)This is just class returning to a normal difficulty. May i remind you— teachers dont actually teach. </p>
<p>Math is supposed to be hard. Dreams are going to be crushed. Nevertheless this roots out the people who try hard from the people who are scraping by. I guess what i am trying to say is, this is your chance to distingush yourself from the other students. To get a shining recommendation from your teacher or counselor ;)</p>
<p>Precalculus is difficult. You probably need to go about studying differently. I would recommend you watch videos on youtube to help you with concepts you are struggling with. Much of college is also having the ability to teach yourself. You might be surprised and find your teacher curves the final exam grade because I doubt in high school they are going to flunk half the class.</p>
<p>Idk, Pre-calc is kinda easy for me now. The first semester with the domain/range and all those zeros craps are jard but they get easier.</p>
<p>If you think pre-calc is tough, just wait until you take Calc BC 
</p>
<p>Same situation happened at my school, but in Pre-AP (similar to Honors) French a couple years ago and Pre-AP Algebra 1 in junior high. I might have a bias because I was the kid who performed the best, but the other kids just didn’t get the instructors’ way of teaching. Different teachers have different styles- and in your description of your PreCal teacher she seems like she’s not a terrible instructor, but just has a different kind of style that the students aren’t used to. This means that the students not only have to adapt to her methods but also have to take the individual initiative to study what she doesn’t teach well on their own time. On the other side, she should at least consider slightly changing the way she teaches so that her students can perform better.</p>
<p>It’s both of your faults. But I would put most of the blame on the students because 1) it’s up to them to learn it if the teacher can’t teach and 2) a lot of the time we as students all have this mindset that our grades stink just because of the teacher- maybe it’s the subject</p>
<p>@17Angel, eh, wait until algebraic geometry or topology or Lie theory.</p>
<p>Usually the best solution is to get around it by finding additional resources to understand the material. If the teacher simply doesn’t teach well, then it’s his fault. If the majority of the class is averaging ~40% or something on exams when they could easily be doing much better, then it’s probably their fault instead.</p>
<p>People have gone and talked to guidance councilors and everything, but nothing. I myself have talked to the teacher and she just said theres tutoring on Tuesdays after school, but she doesn’t even tutor it I believe. Then she has the tendency to put things on the tests and quizzes that we never learned about. Now, I understand we as honor students are suppose to apply the math behind the other problems and solve that never-before-seen question, but how are we suppose to if we never learned the fundamentals of the original problems?
and I have been studying my butt off for this final that I literally just took, and it was ruff! But its true, I’ve been teaching myself and and retook notes in a way that I understand a bit better, and that helps, but many otherpeople don’t know. </p>