Honors Geometry at Whitman - RANT

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The biggest issue is that every parent at Whitman believes their child is gifted so honors math ends up being average math.

... and it's "bad teaching" if their child has any problem grasping math concepts!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our second DC is at a different HS and that school has help at lunch where they specifically don't go to their assigned teacher to see things another way.

You might want to look into if Whitman has a similar process.

This is an interesting program. Do many HSs have this?

Whitman has this too. I think it's called Vike to Vike peer tutors. It's other students doing the tutoring, organized by a teacher.

My DC was in the AP Calc flipped classroom a couple of years ago. DC didn't love it, but it's become pretty popular at a lot of schools, including private schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The biggest issue is that every parent at Whitman believes their child is gifted so honors math ends up being average math.

... and it's "bad teaching" if their child has any problem grasping math concepts!

No. This is not the case at all. Not sure who posts this BS, but neither of these posts is true. I think you must be jealous of Whitman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I observed my DC’s Honors Geometry class at Open House. This was a MS. It was not how I was taught math. There was no large group instruction. The teacher assigned a few things to do and then walked around the room answering questions. I thought it was really effective, and I loved how she answered the questions. She had a variety of strategies, depending on the question. If it was something she thought would be confusing to others, or multiple kids had the same question, she stopped and explained to the whole class. If a kid had an issue that another kid had just worked through, she’d have them work together so the one who’d just figured it out could help the one who was still struggling. I was impressed.

That works for some kids but not all. I would’ve hated that. I need someone to do a lot of examples before I try them on my own. I would’ve been highly frustrated in a class like this.

Me too. Works for some, not others. +1000

My kids seem to be able to get to the correct answers in honors geometry, ,but inevitably miss points in the 'explain why.' Their explanations seem logical to me, but aren't in the format or the specific content that the teacher wants. (One was a long, verbal explanation when apparently what the teacher wanted to see was "side-angle-side." I get having the kids teach themselves-- not a teacher, but it seems like a decent way to learn. But then don't teachers need to be more flexible on these kids of questions?

Another frustrating example from the first quiz of the year, my dd missed a question that literally said, "Name three things that you see in this diagram." She said 3 geometrically-related things (point, line, ray or something like that) and got it wrong. Never did figure out what the teacher wanted, but with a vague question like this IMHO the teacher needs to accept literally anything you write ("page number, ink, white space" would not be an INCORRECT response to that question).

So I think there's a disconnect between teaching style and expectations.

This is what I remember from Geometry. There are certain rules that count as reasons why something is true. The rules have names like side-angle-side, angle-side-angle, vertical angles, complementary angles, etc. You need to make a list of these rules and your child needs to practice picking from them in order to do a proof. Unfortunately, MCPS does not provide a list of acceptable rules. They are spread out on various worksheets!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I observed my DC’s Honors Geometry class at Open House. This was a MS. It was not how I was taught math. There was no large group instruction. The teacher assigned a few things to do and then walked around the room answering questions. I thought it was really effective, and I loved how she answered the questions. She had a variety of strategies, depending on the question. If it was something she thought would be confusing to others, or multiple kids had the same question, she stopped and explained to the whole class. If a kid had an issue that another kid had just worked through, she’d have them work together so the one who’d just figured it out could help the one who was still struggling. I was impressed.

That works for some kids but not all. I would’ve hated that. I need someone to do a lot of examples before I try them on my own. I would’ve been highly frustrated in a class like this.

Me too. Works for some, not others. +1000

My kids seem to be able to get to the correct answers in honors geometry, ,but inevitably miss points in the 'explain why.' Their explanations seem logical to me, but aren't in the format or the specific content that the teacher wants. (One was a long, verbal explanation when apparently what the teacher wanted to see was "side-angle-side." I get having the kids teach themselves-- not a teacher, but it seems like a decent way to learn. But then don't teachers need to be more flexible on these kids of questions?

Another frustrating example from the first quiz of the year, my dd missed a question that literally said, "Name three things that you see in this diagram." She said 3 geometrically-related things (point, line, ray or something like that) and got it wrong. Never did figure out what the teacher wanted, but with a vague question like this IMHO the teacher needs to accept literally anything you write ("page number, ink, white space" would not be an INCORRECT response to that question).

So I think there's a disconnect between teaching style and expectations.

This is what I remember from Geometry. There are certain rules that count as reasons why something is true. The rules have names like side-angle-side, angle-side-angle, vertical angles, complementary angles, etc. You need to make a list of these rules and your child needs to practice picking from them in order to do a proof. Unfortunately, MCPS does not provide a list of acceptable rules. They are spread out on various worksheets!

I agree that is what is needed. Problem is that she seems (and we) seem to figure these things out once things are incorrect on the test--only after. It could well be that teacher is saying them verbally in class (kid says not, but who knows). She's also gone in at lunch and the teacher has said, "I'm not going to reteach this." My husband spent a couple of hours trying to review material with her for the test and could figure out appropriate explanations based on the worksheets and homework in the binder. And when test came home, he couldn't figure out why things were marked incorrect. He's very good at math (often teaches calculus as an adjunct) but has never had US-based geometry so doesn't know the conventions (side-angle-side, etc). Point is that there's not enough explanation in the worksheets (and obviously no textbook since this is MCPS) to figure it out before it is actually marked incorrect on the test and she goes and asks the teacher the right answer. Very frustrating... and back to the old MCPS saw that students are disadvantaged without textbooks that provide written explanations that they can study prior to the tests. And I think MCPS doesn't realize the severity of the problem since so many people hire private tutors to supplement, so enough students are getting A's that they think it is all fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The biggest issue is that every parent at Whitman believes their child is gifted so honors math ends up being average math.

... and it's "bad teaching" if their child has any problem grasping math concepts!

That was our experience when our kids were at Whitman. We ended up going private. The honors classes were poorly taught and very watered down since every class was an honors class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The biggest issue is that every parent at Whitman believes their child is gifted so honors math ends up being average math.

... and it's "bad teaching" if their child has any problem grasping math concepts!

That was our experience when our kids were at Whitman. We ended up going private. The honors classes were poorly taught and very watered down since every class was an honors class.

We had the opposite experience - DC came to Whitman from a private school and the math classes were much better and the students farther ahead in math at Whitman. In fact that's why DC was in honors geo in 9th grade when most of the other kids had taken it in 8th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The biggest issue is that every parent at Whitman believes their child is gifted so honors math ends up being average math.

... and it's "bad teaching" if their child has any problem grasping math concepts!

That was our experience when our kids were at Whitman. We ended up going private. The honors classes were poorly taught and very watered down since every class was an honors class.

We had the opposite experience - DC came to Whitman from a private school and the math classes were much better and the students farther ahead in math at Whitman. In fact that's why DC was in honors geo in 9th grade when most of the other kids had taken it in 8th grade.

We found honors to be pretty lame. Since everyone was in it, the pace was kind of slow. We ended up pulling our kids and going private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The biggest issue is that every parent at Whitman believes their child is gifted so honors math ends up being average math.

... and it's "bad teaching" if their child has any problem grasping math concepts!

That was our experience when our kids were at Whitman. We ended up going private. The honors classes were poorly taught and very watered down since every class was an honors class.

We had the opposite experience - DC came to Whitman from a private school and the math classes were much better and the students farther ahead in math at Whitman. In fact that's why DC was in honors geo in 9th grade when most of the other kids had taken it in 8th grade.

We found honors to be pretty lame. Since everyone was in it, the pace was kind of slow. We ended up pulling our kids and going private.

I agree that honors geo was lame because it was basically the kids on the slow math track. But there was also a regular geo so not everyone was in honors geo. Once DC got to honors Alg2 and honors pre calc it was fine because it was fast track kids, albeit mostly those a grade younger. DC considered trying to do a summer class to catch up with the fast track kids in DCs grade but decided that getting to AP Calc by 12th grade was good enough, and from a college admissions perspective it was indeed fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The biggest issue is that every parent at Whitman believes their child is gifted so honors math ends up being average math.

... and it's "bad teaching" if their child has any problem grasping math concepts!

That was our experience when our kids were at Whitman. We ended up going private. The honors classes were poorly taught and very watered down since every class was an honors class.

We had the opposite experience - DC came to Whitman from a private school and the math classes were much better and the students farther ahead in math at Whitman. In fact that's why DC was in honors geo in 9th grade when most of the other kids had taken it in 8th grade.

We found honors to be pretty lame. Since everyone was in it, the pace was kind of slow. We ended up pulling our kids and going private.

I agree that honors geo was lame because it was basically the kids on the slow math track. But there was also a regular geo so not everyone was in honors geo. Once DC got to honors Alg2 and honors pre calc it was fine because it was fast track kids, albeit mostly those a grade younger. DC considered trying to do a summer class to catch up with the fast track kids in DCs grade but decided that getting to AP Calc by 12th grade was good enough, and from a college admissions perspective it was indeed fine.

There was a regular geo track but all it took was a parent to compalin that their gifted child should be and honors and presto they're in honors. This was a meaningless distinction.