At what point do we pull the plug?

[Anonymous]

OP, it's really quite early for your son to feel so overwhelmed by math. The beginning stuff should be review. Have you sat down with him and gone over the material they have covered, to see what exactly is bothering him?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is utterly exhausting.

So, the expectation now is I need to privately enroll my child in a class BEFORE they take the class to be successful in the class?

I was pretty against Alg. 1 in 7th grade with my 6th grader, but this whole approach is so frustrating. It all mimics my kid's experience in AAP -- the teachers expect these kids to have learned whatever concepts that were being taught for the first time "before" so class is actually just a quick review and assessment. and if they haven't, it's up to the student (i.e. their parents) to fill in the gaps.

Your frustration is understandable. What you described isn't education.

Frankly (PP here), this is why I find AAP, as a whole, to be utter trash. It's been incredibly disappointing to see how much the "extension" is really just blowing through topics and running assessments quickly. Even the whole "mascot time" has been a joke. My child last year struggled in class and was buried in work and her teacher was not just useless, he went out of his way to make her feel like an idiot with those "this isn't hard" and "you're in AAP, you should be smart."

I spent thousands on private tutoring where she learned 5th and 6th grade math, she got a "perfect" SOL score and on paper is doing fine. But this isn't how it's supposed to work. She was literally failing absent my own intervention as a parent. And it just keeps going?

Because in AAP in FCPS, math instruction is basically a quick demo, a worksheet, and then assessment. Rinse, repeat.

Compared to my other general education child (who oddly has a stronger math grasp due to actually being taught math), there is zero tier 1 interventions, zero small group instruction, and zero support if your child doesn't automatically "get" the topic. It's just assess and move on.

And then the kids stuggle. Either in Alg. 1 honors or higher math or in their freshman classes where they are (again) retaking classes they already took.

It's all just so, so frustrating.

Honestly, maybe AAP wasn’t the right fit for your child.

What's incredible is that this is the take away. It's that my child (who by the way had incredibly 150 quant cogat and a 140 verbal) shouldn't be in AAP. I didn't refer my kid.

There is never, ever a question of maybe this AAP program, particularly the math -- which frankly is the only meaningful difference I can see -- is problematic and needs to be changed.

What exactly is the problem?

Is DC struggling with homework? Confused in lecture? Low score on a test?
Or one of a dozen other issues related to starting middle school?

It's been 8 days. Barely anything has happened. Even if there are huge gaps in preparation, it's unlikely to have any effect yet.

This is OP. I did not write the post you’re responding to; that is someone else.

[Anonymous]

[img]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is utterly exhausting.

So, the expectation now is I need to privately enroll my child in a class BEFORE they take the class to be successful in the class?

I was pretty against Alg. 1 in 7th grade with my 6th grader, but this whole approach is so frustrating. It all mimics my kid's experience in AAP -- the teachers expect these kids to have learned whatever concepts that were being taught for the first time "before" so class is actually just a quick review and assessment. and if they haven't, it's up to the student (i.e. their parents) to fill in the gaps.

Your frustration is understandable. What you described isn't education.

Frankly (PP here), this is why I find AAP, as a whole, to be utter trash. It's been incredibly disappointing to see how much the "extension" is really just blowing through topics and running assessments quickly. Even the whole "mascot time" has been a joke. My child last year struggled in class and was buried in work and her teacher was not just useless, he went out of his way to make her feel like an idiot with those "this isn't hard" and "you're in AAP, you should be smart."

I spent thousands on private tutoring where she learned 5th and 6th grade math, she got a "perfect" SOL score and on paper is doing fine. But this isn't how it's supposed to work. She was literally failing absent my own intervention as a parent. And it just keeps going?

Because in AAP in FCPS, math instruction is basically a quick demo, a worksheet, and then assessment. Rinse, repeat.

Compared to my other general education child (who oddly has a stronger math grasp due to actually being taught math), there is zero tier 1 interventions, zero small group instruction, and zero support if your child doesn't automatically "get" the topic. It's just assess and move on.

And then the kids stuggle. Either in Alg. 1 honors or higher math or in their freshman classes where they are (again) retaking classes they already took.

It's all just so, so frustrating.

Honestly, maybe AAP wasn’t the right fit for your child.

What's incredible is that this is the take away. It's that my child (who by the way had incredibly 150 quant cogat and a 140 verbal) shouldn't be in AAP. I didn't refer my kid.

There is never, ever a question of maybe this AAP program, particularly the math -- which frankly is the only meaningful difference I can see -- is problematic and needs to be changed.

Hi there. I'm the poster who first replied to you suggesting that you stick it out.

You're absolutely right. The MO of the child being expected to learn the material before it is presented to them in the classroom in middle school is pedagogically unsound and exacerbates differences in resources.

It's problematic and I hear you.

OP here. Just FYI - I didn’t write the post you’re responding to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, it's really quite early for your son to feel so overwhelmed by math. The beginning stuff should be review. Have you sat down with him and gone over the material they have covered, to see what exactly is bothering him?

OP here - DC got very frustrated with homework and got most of the problems wrong. This has not been the case in the past. MS itself has been a bit of a transition, so this has just compounded it. Unfortunately, I can’t really help as this level of math is many years behind me in memory. The teacher is being supportive and believes they are in the right place and urged patience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, it's really quite early for your son to feel so overwhelmed by math. The beginning stuff should be review. Have you sat down with him and gone over the material they have covered, to see what exactly is bothering him?

OP here - DC got very frustrated with homework and got most of the problems wrong. This has not been the case in the past. MS itself has been a bit of a transition, so this has just compounded it. Unfortunately, I can’t really help as this level of math is many years behind me in memory. The teacher is being supportive and believes they are in the right place and urged patience.

Have him go to the office hours during mascot time. Although I think it's bizarre to have office hours in middle school, it's a good resource. He should use it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, it's really quite early for your son to feel so overwhelmed by math. The beginning stuff should be review. Have you sat down with him and gone over the material they have covered, to see what exactly is bothering him?

OP here - DC got very frustrated with homework and got most of the problems wrong. This has not been the case in the past. MS itself has been a bit of a transition, so this has just compounded it. Unfortunately, I can’t really help as this level of math is many years behind me in memory. The teacher is being supportive and believes they are in the right place and urged patience.

What's the module/section name?

If it's the Set Theory stuff someone else mentioned, don't worry, that just for "fun" and not in sequence.

If it's linear equations, that's something that might have been skipped in the jump from AAP 6 to Algebra, and might need external backfill from Khan Academy. I recommend doing Khan Academy Course Challenges for Grade 7 and 8 / Prealgebra, to check for gaps in Prealgebra knowledge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is utterly exhausting.

So, the expectation now is I need to privately enroll my child in a class BEFORE they take the class to be successful in the class?

I was pretty against Alg. 1 in 7th grade with my 6th grader, but this whole approach is so frustrating. It all mimics my kid's experience in AAP -- the teachers expect these kids to have learned whatever concepts that were being taught for the first time "before" so class is actually just a quick review and assessment. and if they haven't, it's up to the student (i.e. their parents) to fill in the gaps.

Yes, you're frustrated and so are many of us. But that is the reality of our current educational system. Teachers are barely allowed to teach. When textbooks disappear from the classroom you know there's a problem. Luckily, there is an easy solution, which is to take matters into your own hands and be the primary teacher of your child. This might mean enrolling them in an AoPS class so that they can learn the material logically, or if unaffordable, at a minimum buy the book and go through it with your kid. Do this for a little while and they will be fine with the math in the classroom.

Until your child learns how to learn efficiently and logically with a book by themselves (hopefully by high school), you have to take their education into your own hands. School teaches them almost nothing these days.

[Anonymous]

What it sounds like, is that he’s not used to getting things wrong, or working for his grades. In your shoes, I would acknowledge his frustration, and get him started on the relevant portions of Khan Academy right away. And look for a tutor. There is a long weekend coming up, and that should be more than sufficient time for a tutor to sort out what’s going on, and get started on remediation, so he can work on grade level content later.

IIRC, DD didn’t have to work on her Algebra until third quarter, so I agree with those that say that he must have gaps in learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is utterly exhausting.

So, the expectation now is I need to privately enroll my child in a class BEFORE they take the class to be successful in the class?

I was pretty against Alg. 1 in 7th grade with my 6th grader, but this whole approach is so frustrating. It all mimics my kid's experience in AAP -- the teachers expect these kids to have learned whatever concepts that were being taught for the first time "before" so class is actually just a quick review and assessment. and if they haven't, it's up to the student (i.e. their parents) to fill in the gaps.

Your frustration is understandable. What you described isn't education.

Frankly (PP here), this is why I find AAP, as a whole, to be utter trash. It's been incredibly disappointing to see how much the "extension" is really just blowing through topics and running assessments quickly. Even the whole "mascot time" has been a joke. My child last year struggled in class and was buried in work and her teacher was not just useless, he went out of his way to make her feel like an idiot with those "this isn't hard" and "you're in AAP, you should be smart."

I spent thousands on private tutoring where she learned 5th and 6th grade math, she got a "perfect" SOL score and on paper is doing fine. But this isn't how it's supposed to work. She was literally failing absent my own intervention as a parent. And it just keeps going?

Because in AAP in FCPS, math instruction is basically a quick demo, a worksheet, and then assessment. Rinse, repeat.

Compared to my other general education child (who oddly has a stronger math grasp due to actually being taught math), there is zero tier 1 interventions, zero small group instruction, and zero support if your child doesn't automatically "get" the topic. It's just assess and move on.

And then the kids stuggle. Either in Alg. 1 honors or higher math or in their freshman classes where they are (again) retaking classes they already took.

It's all just so, so frustrating.

Honestly, maybe AAP wasn’t the right fit for your child.

What's incredible is that this is the take away. It's that my child (who by the way had incredibly 150 quant cogat and a 140 verbal) shouldn't be in AAP. I didn't refer my kid.

There is never, ever a question of maybe this AAP program, particularly the math -- which frankly is the only meaningful difference I can see -- is problematic and needs to be changed.

From what I have seen on this forum, center schools vary. The more competitive center schools seem to have more of the kids-already-know-the-stuff style of teaching while centers that are less competitive/prestigious/high SES do more "actual teaching" to students who are learning things for the first time in class. (Caveat: the teaching-through-quizzes/exit tickets/tests style of teaching seems to come from teaching colleges and is something that new teachers do more than older teachers do.) Changing the admissions for TJ may help with this - but it might take a few years to change at the elementary school level.

I agree with this. OP, if for example, you're at a place such as Longfellow where a very accelerated TJ hopeful peer group is very typical, algebra will likely be much less watered down than at other places. The teacher will move faster and challenge more when they see that many or most of the kids already know some algebra via outside enrichment. In contrast, the same alg1 honors class for 7th graders at another school could be orders of magnitude more watered down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, it's really quite early for your son to feel so overwhelmed by math. The beginning stuff should be review. Have you sat down with him and gone over the material they have covered, to see what exactly is bothering him?

OP here - DC got very frustrated with homework and got most of the problems wrong. This has not been the case in the past. MS itself has been a bit of a transition, so this has just compounded it. Unfortunately, I can’t really help as this level of math is many years behind me in memory. The teacher is being supportive and believes they are in the right place and urged patience.

Sorry if this is awkward.. but I have to wonder how is it possible that an adult cannot really help due to the math being "many years beyond"? They haven't started doing any remotely complicated algebra, and are likely doing basic word problems with variables, which should be... solvable for adults with common sense. Genuinely curious as to what topics and problems are assigned that it is beyond you and your child, because something doesn't make sense here. If you can give specific examples, we can help point you in the right direction in terms of what you or your child should study and/or how they should think about the problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because mine has been asking me if I think other schools taught different/more math than what they had b/c “everyone” in class seems to already know what is being taught. If that is indeed the case, I’d rather mine drop as that is just asking for heartache. What happened to learning math in math class?

I taught MS math in FCPS at an AAP center that had multiple feeder elementary AAP centers. Almost without exception, my strugglers in Hon Math 7 came from one particular small ES center. Every year, even before Covid, AAP kids from this school were just missing basic math knowledge. (When I talked to the kids from this school who were successful students---they all went to Russian school of math, AOPS, Kumon, etc.). For whatever reason, this one FCPS ES did not teach math well. The strugglers always had had good grades in ES math and didn't understand why my class was so hard! Well, they were shaky on their basic multiplication facts and couldn't do anything with fractions!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because mine has been asking me if I think other schools taught different/more math than what they had b/c “everyone” in class seems to already know what is being taught. If that is indeed the case, I’d rather mine drop as that is just asking for heartache. What happened to learning math in math class?

I taught MS math in FCPS at an AAP center that had multiple feeder elementary AAP centers. Almost without exception, my strugglers in Hon Math 7 came from one particular small ES center. Every year, even before Covid, AAP kids from this school were just missing basic math knowledge. (When I talked to the kids from this school who were successful students---they all went to Russian school of math, AOPS, Kumon, etc.). For whatever reason, this one FCPS ES did not teach math well. The strugglers always had had good grades in ES math and didn't understand why my class was so hard! Well, they were shaky on their basic multiplication facts and couldn't do anything with fractions!

My 8th grader has been helping friends with math for a couple of years. Like you said, it's foundational stuff, like multiplication, division, and fractions. Once they understand these, the MS classes become so much easier. She does say though that some kids have no math sense, and there doesn't seem to be anything she can do to get through to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is utterly exhausting.

So, the expectation now is I need to privately enroll my child in a class BEFORE they take the class to be successful in the class?

I was pretty against Alg. 1 in 7th grade with my 6th grader, but this whole approach is so frustrating. It all mimics my kid's experience in AAP -- the teachers expect these kids to have learned whatever concepts that were being taught for the first time "before" so class is actually just a quick review and assessment. and if they haven't, it's up to the student (i.e. their parents) to fill in the gaps.

Your frustration is understandable. What you described isn't education.

Frankly (PP here), this is why I find AAP, as a whole, to be utter trash. It's been incredibly disappointing to see how much the "extension" is really just blowing through topics and running assessments quickly. Even the whole "mascot time" has been a joke. My child last year struggled in class and was buried in work and her teacher was not just useless, he went out of his way to make her feel like an idiot with those "this isn't hard" and "you're in AAP, you should be smart."

I spent thousands on private tutoring where she learned 5th and 6th grade math, she got a "perfect" SOL score and on paper is doing fine. But this isn't how it's supposed to work. She was literally failing absent my own intervention as a parent. And it just keeps going?

Because in AAP in FCPS, math instruction is basically a quick demo, a worksheet, and then assessment. Rinse, repeat.

Compared to my other general education child (who oddly has a stronger math grasp due to actually being taught math), there is zero tier 1 interventions, zero small group instruction, and zero support if your child doesn't automatically "get" the topic. It's just assess and move on.

And then the kids stuggle. Either in Alg. 1 honors or higher math or in their freshman classes where they are (again) retaking classes they already took.

It's all just so, so frustrating.

Honestly, maybe AAP wasn’t the right fit for your child.

What's incredible is that this is the take away. It's that my child (who by the way had incredibly 150 quant cogat and a 140 verbal) shouldn't be in AAP. I didn't refer my kid.

There is never, ever a question of maybe this AAP program, particularly the math -- which frankly is the only meaningful difference I can see -- is problematic and needs to be changed.

What exactly is the problem?

Is DC struggling with homework? Confused in lecture? Low score on a test?
Or one of a dozen other issues related to starting middle school?

It's been 8 days. Barely anything has happened. Even if there are huge gaps in preparation, it's unlikely to have any effect yet.

I am a completely different parent than OP (which speaks to the issues with math instruction in AAP).

My child is in 6th grade. But in our experience, there is ZERO direct instruction. No google slides. Just a video and the teacher does a few examples with the students, has the students work on worksheets, and then they do an assessment. Then it's onto the next. Rinse and repeat. No real direct instruction is happening at our AAP center so far when it comes to math. My kid is in 6th and we will NOT push algebra. Considering how common these problems are, this is a systemic issue instead of an issue with a specific kid.

This is teacher dependent. My kid’s AAP teachers have never shown videos. They have been great math teachers.

Same! Both my kids had excellent math teachers from 3rd through 6th at our center. Neither ever did any outside enrichment. For one, math comes super easily and for other, a little less so. Both have had an excellent experience. My older one easily got As in Algebra and Geometry in MS. Younger just starting Algebra now but they've really only done pre-assessments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because mine has been asking me if I think other schools taught different/more math than what they had b/c “everyone” in class seems to already know what is being taught. If that is indeed the case, I’d rather mine drop as that is just asking for heartache. What happened to learning math in math class?

I taught MS math in FCPS at an AAP center that had multiple feeder elementary AAP centers. Almost without exception, my strugglers in Hon Math 7 came from one particular small ES center. Every year, even before Covid, AAP kids from this school were just missing basic math knowledge. (When I talked to the kids from this school who were successful students---they all went to Russian school of math, AOPS, Kumon, etc.). For whatever reason, this one FCPS ES did not teach math well. The strugglers always had had good grades in ES math and didn't understand why my class was so hard! Well, they were shaky on their basic multiplication facts and couldn't do anything with fractions!

My 8th grader has been helping friends with math for a couple of years. Like you said, it's foundational stuff, like multiplication, division, and fractions. Once they understand these, the MS classes become so much easier. She does say though that some kids have no math sense, and there doesn't seem to be anything she can do to get through to them.

Are you saying fluency when you say foundational? That some kids have it down more and can do problems faster?

[Anonymous]

I didn't read all the other comments, but here are my thoughts:

Is your 7th grader in a 7-8 MS? If so, it's easy to blame Alg I for the anxiety. But transitioning schools is anxiety inducing. I would absolutely reach out to the teacher and see what they are seeing and call the counselor and see when in the drop deadline.

If your kid is in a 6-8 MS, then it probably is Alg I specifically. I would feel more comfortable pulling the plug sooner in that case.

I had a 7th grader who was moved from 7HN to AlgI in the first week of school last year. She failed the first two tests. It was the best thing for her since it showed her that the pressure was coming from herself (not me and her dad) and it taught her study skills that she hadn't learned before since everything came easily before. She finished with an A-. She also had an amazing teacher who did an amazing job explaining concepts to her and showing her how to practice outside of class.