How hard will Blair's Functions class be for a kid who currently finds Algebra 2 "easy"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS breezed through Algebra II in 8th and signed up for Functions at Blair, but ended up dropping it early in the semester. He felt that he could follow the classroom material just fine, but the homework load (3 hours/night for him) was killing him. I was so glad when he decided to drop; that level of stress isn’t good for any 14 year old. It stressed ME just to think about what would happen if he missed a week of school because of Covid or a death in the family. How would he ever catch up?

Some people in this board have posted that the homework load is more like 1-1.5 hours per night. FWIW, my DS knew a lot of the kids in his Functions class from previous classes, and he thinks that many of them had already been exposed to the material via math teams or private math schools. I’m not surprised if those kids need less time for the homework.

Yes, there are definitely kids who were exposed to the content ahead of time in my kid's year. It was hard. But, there are plenty in the same boat new to the stuff. Mine found that the teacher was super helpful and kid would go in at lunch sometimes. Also developed some good friends working on problem sets together. Learned to tune out the pre-exposed kids who acted like hotshots.

Were any of the pre-exposed kids helpful peer tutors?

PP here. Study groups and teacher were best. One kid in group had done aops, and mine asked her to peer tutor later on for Discrete which is related to math team math. She was a better teacher than the actual teacher (who was both sexist and a bad teacher).

Was that this teacher?

https://silverchips.mbhs.edu/content/rose-is-my-favorite-teacher-26512/

PP here. Maybe things were different in 2009, but there have been widespread complaints about him all through my kid's time there. Of course, there are a few who liked him. He tried hard to buddy up with some kids. But, as a teacher, he was not effective. Did not teach much and often could not explain some concepts, gearing class to students already familiar with content from math team. He was biased against girls, favored math team kids, wouldn't answer questions "yeah, I'm not gonna answer that," or would just ignore students (mostly girls). Graded vary late. Literally told students he did not grade their work because he spent all his time on social media. Asked for feedback but then would blame the student if feedback was critical at all. Other teachers couldn't help with tutoring because content was so niche, and he was unhelpful one on one. Mine relied on internet and a peer who had taken class previous year and was a math team regular and did ok. Some students really struggled because they could not get decent teaching, and for some (especially females), it was a pretty hostile environment. Things with teacher were so bad in Fall 21, a large group of students made very specific complaints to admin (O), and O was meeting with him and sitting in on class. But, I guess he's still there.

Who is this and what math class does he or did he teach?

[Anonymous]

Can a current Magnet Gunctions/Precalculus family post an example of one homework problem, to give a sense of what it is? And how many problem there are like that per week?

Also, Blair/Magnet does 4x2 block scheduling, with each class every second day, right?
So when someone says "X hrs , Y pages, Z problems per night of homework", do they mean every night, or half the nights?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can a current Magnet Gunctions/Precalculus family post an example of one homework problem, to give a sense of what it is? And how many problem there are like that per week?

Also, Blair/Magnet does 4x2 block scheduling, with each class every second day, right?
So when someone says "X hrs , Y pages, Z problems per night of homework", do they mean every night, or half the nights?

I can’t speak to the number of pages or problems, but the time commitment (3 hours/night in my DC’s case), is per night, not per class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can a current Magnet Gunctions/Precalculus family post an example of one homework problem, to give a sense of what it is? And how many problem there are like that per week?

Also, Blair/Magnet does 4x2 block scheduling, with each class every second day, right?
So when someone says "X hrs , Y pages, Z problems per night of homework", do they mean every night, or half the nights?

My kid is in precalculus and didn’t have much to do during the week this week but probably spent six hours yesterday working on his precalculus homework. It was 35 problems, plus 40 minutes of watching a video and taking detailed notes (about six pages of notes which had to be submitted as a photo, so watching the video took much longer than 40 mins). He usually breezes through everything so I was surprised at how much time he had to spend on each of these problems but also thought that 35 tough problems was a lot.

[Anonymous]

+1
Does it get worse in the Analysis classes or is it about the same (3 hours a night)? I'm not sure if DC can take more.

[Anonymous]

Can one of you PPs share an example of what the problems are like?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can one of you PPs share an example of what the problems are like?

Just looked over kid’s precalculus homework and it seems to be algebra albeit way beyond my ability. Says it’s polynomials and factoring. Can’t share any problems as I can’t work out how to include squared or cubed or equal or greater than signs, or others, on my phone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can one of you PPs share an example of what the problems are like?

Why? Are you the parent of a current student?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can a current Magnet Gunctions/Precalculus family post an example of one homework problem, to give a sense of what it is? And how many problem there are like that per week?

Also, Blair/Magnet does 4x2 block scheduling, with each class every second day, right?
So when someone says "X hrs , Y pages, Z problems per night of homework", do they mean every night, or half the nights?

My kid is in precalculus and didn’t have much to do during the week this week but probably spent six hours yesterday working on his precalculus homework. It was 35 problems, plus 40 minutes of watching a video and taking detailed notes (about six pages of notes which had to be submitted as a photo, so watching the video took much longer than 40 mins). He usually breezes through everything so I was surprised at how much time he had to spend on each of these problems but also thought that 35 tough problems was a lot.

"35 tough problems" is oxymoronic; we can conclude that almost all the problems must be very easy. If a question takes 5 mins to work out, it's easy by definition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can a current Magnet Gunctions/Precalculus family post an example of one homework problem, to give a sense of what it is? And how many problem there are like that per week?

Also, Blair/Magnet does 4x2 block scheduling, with each class every second day, right?
So when someone says "X hrs , Y pages, Z problems per night of homework", do they mean every night, or half the nights?

My kid is in precalculus and didn’t have much to do during the week this week but probably spent six hours yesterday working on his precalculus homework. It was 35 problems, plus 40 minutes of watching a video and taking detailed notes (about six pages of notes which had to be submitted as a photo, so watching the video took much longer than 40 mins). He usually breezes through everything so I was surprised at how much time he had to spend on each of these problems but also thought that 35 tough problems was a lot.

"35 tough problems" is oxymoronic; we can conclude that almost all the problems must be very easy. If a question takes 5 mins to work out, it's easy by definition.

Most took much longer than 5 minutes. Where are you getting that from?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can a current Magnet Gunctions/Precalculus family post an example of one homework problem, to give a sense of what it is? And how many problem there are like that per week?

Also, Blair/Magnet does 4x2 block scheduling, with each class every second day, right?
So when someone says "X hrs , Y pages, Z problems per night of homework", do they mean every night, or half the nights?

My kid is in precalculus and didn’t have much to do during the week this week but probably spent six hours yesterday working on his precalculus homework. It was 35 problems, plus 40 minutes of watching a video and taking detailed notes (about six pages of notes which had to be submitted as a photo, so watching the video took much longer than 40 mins). He usually breezes through everything so I was surprised at how much time he had to spend on each of these problems but also thought that 35 tough problems was a lot.

"35 tough problems" is oxymoronic; we can conclude that almost all the problems must be very easy. If a question takes 5 mins to work out, it's easy by definition.

I don’t think you understand what an oxymoron is. Nor do you seem able to understand basic math if 35 problems in six hours means 5 mins per problem. As it was kid spent more time Sunday (couple of hours maybe) finishing the last five so it was more than six hours total anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can one of you PPs share an example of what the problems are like?

Why? Are you the parent of a current student?

If I were a parent of a current student, I would post a picture of homework.

I am a parent of prospective students, so I'd like to know what the class is about, o see whether it would be a fit for my students, and also to see what to target if they don't go to Blair but want to pursue a similar course of study on their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can a current Magnet Gunctions/Precalculus family post an example of one homework problem, to give a sense of what it is? And how many problem there are like that per week?

Also, Blair/Magnet does 4x2 block scheduling, with each class every second day, right?
So when someone says "X hrs , Y pages, Z problems per night of homework", do they mean every night, or half the nights?

My kid is in precalculus and didn’t have much to do during the week this week but probably spent six hours yesterday working on his precalculus homework. It was 35 problems, plus 40 minutes of watching a video and taking detailed notes (about six pages of notes which had to be submitted as a photo, so watching the video took much longer than 40 mins). He usually breezes through everything so I was surprised at how much time he had to spend on each of these problems but also thought that 35 tough problems was a lot.

"35 tough problems" is oxymoronic; we can conclude that almost all the problems must be very easy. If a question takes 5 mins to work out, it's easy by definition.

Most took much longer than 5 minutes. Where are you getting that from?

PP was just a jealous troll trying to ignorantly insult people involved in the magnet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can one of you PPs share an example of what the problems are like?

Why? Are you the parent of a current student?

If I were a parent of a current student, I would post a picture of homework.

I am a parent of prospective students, so I'd like to know what the class is about, o see whether it would be a fit for my students, and also to see what to target if they don't go to Blair but want to pursue a similar course of study on their own.

1) I’m not sharing my kid’s homework here (it’s completed)
2) you can’t post a photo without having it hosted somewhere which is usually not anonymous
3) I’m not sure how sharing a problem or two at the start of the year would give you an accurate overview of the breadth and depth of this program

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can one of you PPs share an example of what the problems are like?

Why? Are you the parent of a current student?

If I were a parent of a current student, I would post a picture of homework.

I am a parent of prospective students, so I'd like to know what the class is about, o see whether it would be a fit for my students, and also to see what to target if they don't go to Blair but want to pursue a similar course of study on their own.

1) I’m not sharing my kid’s homework here (it’s completed)
2) you can’t post a photo without having it hosted somewhere which is usually not anonymous
3) I’m not sure how sharing a problem or two at the start of the year would give you an accurate overview of the breadth and depth of this program

.

1. I presume that not all the homework always completed before you see it.
Also, often homework problems are losted digitally or are printed not on the same page as the student work, especially for hard problems that take several minutes of work.


2. https://imgbb.com/
Free hosting without login.

Example: (funny problem I saw in the Precalculus C summer math packet at https://mbhs.edu/departments/magnet/Summerpackets.php , the closest thing I could find to an example of what Precalculus/Functions covers.)



That's

https://i.ibb.co/hdYMfvw/Screenshot-20230911-092644.png , wrapped in the DCUM [ img ] tag
(Long press or right -click on uploaded image, to get the address of the image.)



3. Commenters said that it's already 3+hrs to do a packet this week, so it seems representative enough, certainly better than the nothing already public (except for the summer packet which is the same normal MCPS Honors math packet).

Look, you are a free human being. You don't have to post anything if you don't want to. But the coy excuses are just weird.

Have a great day.