new TJ principal streamlines math courses
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Anonymous
I have been reading about a new teaching method where the students are supposed to work on material solo or with each other and only ask for help. The amount of lecture and actual teaching seems to have dropped in a lot of schools. This is especially popular with bright kids who are supposed to be able teach themselves except that the method doesn't work for a good number of students. I expect a student at TJ to be able to learn a concept quickly when it is presented to them. I don't expect them to be able to read a book and learn it solo. Heck, even in my graduate classes we read the material and then came to class prepared to discuss the material. We started every class with questions about concepts or problems in the reading that were problematic, addressed those, and then moved into active discussion which reinforced the reading. I expect that HS teachers are lecturing and presenting the material to students because these kids are still learning basic material. TJ should be able to move more quickly but the teachers still need to, well, teach. |
Anonymous
OK. All these anonymous complaints about teachers not teaching are hard to accept. Plenty of students are failing for various reasons that have nothing to do with teachers. At least half of my students don’t complete hw because it is not graded, don’t do corrections properly for assessments, don’t listen to lectures. Then they complain. But that aside, how replacing sequence of classes would change my teaching style? That is what I found so ridiculous about the post snide. |
Anonymous
Lots of trolls on this forum. |
Anonymous
I can believe that as well. The nice thing is you can have parent teacher conferences or answer a parent's email telling them what their child has not turned in or completed or reviewed the corrections on and how that is contributing to their grade. I taught at the University level and could not share that information. Parents were not happy that I would not tell them why their child flunked, normally poor attendance, not completing work, and not making allowed corrections and were willing to believe their adult student that I just didn't like them. I have heard from students who are doing well in classes that they are expected to learn the material on their own or working in groups at school to teach the material and that their teachers are not lecturing. I have family members who completed college with education degrees who were taught that this style of learning is the best way to teach, less lecture and just answering questions. I know that it is being used in many classrooms. I know kids getting A's who hate this method because they feel like they are tutoring their classmates because their teachers won't lecture. As someone who needed the lecture to really absorb the material, I would struggle with this style of teaching. It would be discouraging. I know that there is a group of students who will fail to do their work and then complain no matter how you approach classes. I suspect that TJ jas enough smart kids who are used to not having to work in class to do well that TJ is a shock tot heir system. I also think that teachers using the above teaching paradigm are doing their students a huge disservice. |
Anonymous
You're right, it probably wouldn't change the teaching style. If the department has a rotten culture gotta clean house. In all seriousness, failing students is a reflection of the teacher's inability to teach or arrogance that they want to see kids fail. So what if the kids get the material, but you're putting questions they've never seen before on the tests? Or a question that even a college graduate in math can't solve because there isn't enough information? Or they are expected to solve problems with long show-work in less than 2 minutes? Which, BTW, they don't have access to the answers so never actually learn something from the tests. |
Anonymous
If this is a problem for you, you definitely do not belong as a student at TJ. TJ is for the future leaders and inventors, not for memorizer regurgitators. Especially with ChatGPT now, we have no reason to pay to train mindless regurgitators. |
Anonymous
Exactly this. There are some excellent teachers at TJ. And then there's the math department. Instead of getting frustrated at the students for doing badly, they could reevaluate their teaching. But they don't. I had excellent math teachers in high school, Calc BC was one of my favorite classes. It's too bad that no one at TJ will ever say the same. |
Anonymous
So, again, what is the point of teaching if you put material on a test that wasn't actually taught? At that point you're just a test administrator. |
Anonymous
Agreed 100%. It takes a real lack of talent to take a group of 2000 kids that love math and make it a subject they dred. |
Anonymous
I don't have a kid at TJ, hopefully I will in a few years, but I think I understand what is happening. Teachers write questions that require students to identify how they are supposed to solve the problem and then the students have to solve the problem. Think word problems. Kids are not given an equation to solve or a simple chart to read. They have to read a problem and figure out how they should solve it and then solve it. There is nothing wrong with that. It is what any kid who does math competitions is doing. I mean, it is what most of us did when we had word problems. I suck at word problems, I hate them, but they are something that tests not only your knowledge of arithmetic but how to apply the material. |
Anonymous
Failing reflects more then the teachers ability to teach. It reflects a students willingness to do the work and seek help. I doubt that kids who are completing homework, asking for help when they get questions wrong on their homwork, and meeting with teachers to better understand material are failing. They might earn a C or a B because the material is hard for them, although they might earn an A as they figure it out, but I doubt that they would fail. Kids who are failing are either out of their depth in the class and need to be in a lower level class or, in TJs case, at a different school, or they are not making an effort. I taught. I don't like the method of teaching I am hearing about, with less lecture and more kids working together to figure out how to do the work, but I don't think kids are failing simply because of that method, at least, not in large numbers. |
Anonymous
And yet, the method does impact how/whether kids learn. Teachers actually are very important for a student, they aren't just decorations or "guides". A good teacher is invaluable and a poor teacher is detrimental. |
Anonymous
Yes and no. They have word problems on every test. That's not the issue. The issue is when there is a problem that has never appeared in homework, on study guides, in class and it's not able to be solved using the methods they've been taught. It's a new concept suddenly appearing on the final exam. Or, in another example, the written question doesn't give enough information to solve it. So the teacher wrote a terrible question. Whether they intended to or not. Who knows. |
Anonymous
I wish you could read what the teacher told me. Which is total comprehension of the material but failure for 1) right answer, not enough work 2) wrong answer, right work to the solution and sees the simple error that caused it 3) not having enough time to complete the questions (typically 2-3min allotted for each). Which, shockingly, if you have to move super fast you're going to have a problem with all 3. So basically there are many ways to fail in TJ math that have nothing to do with comprehension. |
Anonymous
Stop generalizing experience of a handful of students. I hear all the time from TJ students how much they enjoy their math class. Parents badmouth the whole department because of what they hear from their kid at the dinner table and from few unhappy parents in this website. |