How obnoxious is this? (Math teachers in particular chime in!)
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Anonymous
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My kid has an injury that means he can't practice his sport, which means he suddenly has a lot of free time.
He told me he is going to spend that time working ahead in math, so that when he goes back to practice he has less homework. Of course, he doesn't know exactly what the HW is going to be. His teacher often assigns "even problems" or "odd problems" or "1 - 10 and 20 - 25". So, he plans to just do all the problems, keep them in a binder and then turn in the pages that contain the problems that get assigned, which means he'll be turning in extra problems. Yes, this means he does twice as much work. Yes, I think it's odd. He is often odd but in ways that seem harmless, and I have learned to just let him do his odd thing most of the time. But I'm wondering if this is fair to the teacher. Is making the teacher look through pages of work to find the problems to grade reasonable? I also worry the teacher is going to get the idea that my kid doesn't respect his instruction if he's doing the work before the teacher teaches the concept. My kid really likes this teacher, and says their instruction is good, so he doesn't intend to be disrespectful. If you're a teacher, would this bother you? |
Anonymous
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I am a middle school math teacher. It wouldn't really matter to me. He can go through and circle or highlight the actual homework problems. As long as they are on individual pages, so I don't have to sift through pages and pages of work to find the problems.
What would be bothersome is if he sat in class and didn't do any work and said 'I already did this, what can I do now?' Math is all about practicing and mastering skills, so the extra practice is always good. |
Anonymous
Oh, the bolded is a great idea! I don't think he'd do the latter. I imagine that he'd probably redo any problems assigned in class, but would probably finish faster than usual since they'd be familiar, and then would go back to working ahead. |
Anonymous
| Why not just ask the teacher what the few homework assignments will be? |
Anonymous
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This wouldn't bother me at all, as long as he wasn't distracting in class!
--HS math teacher |
Anonymous
| Have him explain the situation to the teacher and ask what he can do to fill his time. Unless he is a math genius who doesn’t need actual instruction, I wouldn’t let him work ahead. |
Anonymous
Because in my experience, teachers often make changes to assignments based on how things go in class. They might realize a class is struggling, and give them the easier first half of the problem set and plan to reteach tomorrow, or they might realize the class really gets it and just assign odds or evens. I feel like taking away that ability by locking them into a decision isn't fair. If he wants to work ahead, he can, but he can't ask anything special of the teachers to accommodate his oddness. He's lucky that he's in a school that uses textbooks, so it's a pretty good assumption that if today's homework was Chapter 6 part 1, Chapter 6 part 2 will come up soon. -- OP |
Anonymous
He's not a math genius although his skills are solid. He's good at finding resources when he wants to learn things, and my guess is that he will be able to figure this out by reading the book, maybe finding related lessons on Khan, etc . . . If he runs into a problem, he can just pause and wait till they catch up. |