<p>It might be worth exploring getting changed to a different teacher at the semester mark. But in a school that’s not gigantic, that might entail other schedule changes that your daughter doesn’t like.</p>
<p>At my daughter’s (gigantic) high school, students could go for tutoring with any teacher, not just their own. Also, the Naitonal Honor Society arranged for peer tutoring.</p>
<p>@wis75 I think you meant “Destress” not “Distress”. :-)</p>
<p>I would suggest going to the teacher for whatever tutoring sessions are available whether or not they are particularly helpful, because teachers, bad ones especially, tend to give you the benefit of the doubt if they think you are really trying hard. If help from the teacher doesn’t help, and it might, many teachers are much better one on one, then you can follow some of the other suggestions too.</p>
<p>I don’t think getting a 60 in class and a 90 on the Regents would be a very good outcome given that colleges are more likely to look at your GPA than your Regent’s score.</p>
<p>Although I’ve heard it is of often done… it seems silly to hire a tutor for a B student. OP’s daughter sounds bright. Maybe she could start a study group with friends. I am told the Khan resources are excellent - <a href=“Precalculus | Math | Khan Academy”>https://www.khanacademy.org/math/precalculus</a></p>
<p>Texbooks are also learning materials, not only teachers lectures. Self-reliance will work at college, it is great to have a teacher in HS who would lead to more self-reliance. </p>
<p>OP,</p>
<p>Sounds like your DD got the same teacher my DD had last year. She’s getting a B - end of story. Teacher has already decided it. Don’t sweat it. Get a tutor if it looks like she’s starting to slide towards a C. Make sure the teacher knows the tutor or is at least part of the teacher’s network. Continue to suck up to the teacher by meeting with them for extra help. A B is not the end of the world.</p>
<p>When my daughter had a bad math teacher (he really was terrible) we hired a tutor - while complaining to school administrators. Two years later he was gotten rid of, but in the meantime plenty of kids who had him got bad grades, unless they had outside help to teach them the material in a way that made sense. </p>
<p>@mathmom The regents test score REPLACED the class average so the 93 is what shows on the transcript and is used for GPA.</p>
<p>If she had spent her time doing what the teacher told her to do, rather than actually mastering the content, she would have had a C in the class at best. There simply want time to do both. </p>
<p>Thank you for the replies, all very wise and “mind widening,” especially from xiggi, thank you. Very perceptive analysis. In fact, I see I was way off course to use the word “mortify” because I was playing right into my daughter’s anxiety about keeping her grades very high (she is first in her class and inhibits her own experimentation and daring by her commitment to keeping her place as first). She is only 16 and I know she will mature and come to appreciate that value comes in many forms, that it is good to take risks, that you can’t always have things “perfect” and can’t always be in control.</p>
<p>What bums me out is really quite simple: DD1 had this PreCalc teacher for a whole year and says she is a bad teacher. BUT next year’s teacher is excellent, and DD1 got a 5 on AP Calc.</p>
<p>I will refer to your posts to help me when DD2 complains, etc.</p>
<p>^the fact is that there are soo may tests and very important standardized exams at the highest levels that will include a lot of material that never ever was expalained by anybody. Just got to be proactive and here is a teacher that pushes kids to be proactive in HS, great opportunity to learn how to be a self-learner.</p>
<p>neatboburrito, I wish our school had done that! They just averaged it in as a fifth quarter, so it helped your grade if you did better on the Regents, but if you didn’t get along with the teacher, or were bad about handing in homework you couldn’t completely make up for it with the test score.</p>
<p>There’s so much nonsense that goes into grades that I wonder that colleges even look at them. For instance, my daughter’s last quarter of AP US was in the 80s because she didn’t turn in review packets that were due on the 3 days when she was taking other AP exams. If you didn’t turn them in during the day it was due, you got no credit. It didn’t matter that she got a 5 on the exam. </p>
<p>The good thing about the school policy on regents is that grades are supposed to reflect level of mastery and the regents exams reflect that for regents classes. But I think it should go both ways. If you brown nosed your way to an A and get an 85 on the regents, your grade should be an 85. That happens way more often. </p>
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How do you think that happened?</p>
<p>My DD got stuck with the bad math teacher. There was a good one teaching the same subject during my DD’s lunch hour. My daughter skipped lunch everyday and sat in the other teachers class. This helped her understand the material and do better on the tests. She even wrote one of her admission essays on her “two a days” !!</p>
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I just want to point out this same thing will happen in college and at a job. Sorry I didn’t get that project to the client on time but I was working on another one just doesn’t go over well.</p>
<p>Um…this is one quiz, and she got an 87. Sorry, but that is not the end of the world. </p>
<p>Even if her average is 87 at the end of the course, it will not be the end of the world.</p>
<p>@ErinsDad<br>
It’s more like, “Sorry I wasn’t at your project meeting, but headquarters had me at another location closing a deal in Beijing.” </p>
<p>But you’re right. There will be unreasonable people everywhere. I see your point. </p>
<p>In business, what matters most is that you close the deal and sometimes you have to work around unreasonable coworkers and bosses. OP’s daughter and mine both have to learn that. </p>
<p>“But you’re right. There will be unreasonable people everywhere. I see your point.”
<p>Not sure if your comment was directed at me or the OP. Mine was the one who took it upon herself to learn an entire year of chemistry in 10 weeks on her own. No tutor. Indeed, 90% of new skills acquired while she was at that school were learned on her own.</p>
<p>What was unreasonable was essentially asking her to miss 3 AP exams to turn in review packets. </p>
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<p>Sylvan 8798, are you a student? How do YOU think it happened? Can this kind of recovery happen between Jr and SR year? Perhaps, JR yr pre-calc teacher was NOT such a bad teacher as DD 1 claimed. (However, DD1 was #2 in her class, and #1 and #3 and DD1 used to congregate at our house often and commiserate about thisJR yr pre-calc teacher. All it seemed she was good for was coaching volleyball. Forgive me for defining the individual students that way - it is a poor way of defining individuals). I don’t know how DD1 hit her stride and got a 5 in AP Calc. She did, but no idea how she did so well. Her college invited her to skip Intro.</p>
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<p>Very wise words. DD1 was a "questing for knowledge " HS student who fell with no pain from #1 to #2, no pain at all. Her salutatorian speech stole the show from #1 because it was so full of empathy, compassion and wisdom. I am so proud of her. She is an Engineering major at a NE LAC.</p>
<p>In contrast, DD2 and her small circle of friends are very uptight about grades and I have to refer back to your words when I counsel her. But as I think I said earlier, I think she will mature, and she and her older sister are close, and older sister will help with exploring what it means to be a student and a mature learner.</p>