Reply to how to address a teacher who cannot teach?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My daughter's AP Calculus teacher is new to the profession and doesn't seem to do many of the basic things that a teacher should be doing. For example, she spends very little time teaching each new concept and generally teaches them once before testing. She doesn't give practice assignments/homework on the concepts, expecting students to learn them largely from her in-class instruction. When my daughter asks her to re-explain a concept because she didn't understand, the teacher tells her to look at her notes. My daughter feels that the teacher knows calculus as a subject but just cannot communicate it well. As a result, my daughter is not doing well in the class, despite having always earned A's in her math classes along the way and spending a LOT of time on her own trying to study. We've also got her a tutor and that seems to be helping.

I've reached out to the teacher to ask for ideas to help my daughter and she basically says, "have her come in during lunch and work with me." This is something that my daughter already does and it doesn't help. What else can I do at the school level to improve this? Do we just suck it up and accept the fact that she got crappy instruction and will probably end up with a C in the class? (Others are also struggling in th class - I've spoken personally with another parent and also seen many messages on the parent listserv about this class - there is only one teacher who teaches this particular class.)[/quote]
Could this reflect the current emphasis on limiting the amount of time teachers spend teaching in front of the class and reducing length of homework assignments? As a new teacher, she might be more inclined to listen to in-school advice, whereas more experienced teachers continue to do their own thing even as different pedagogical approaches come and go. [/quote]

Who came up with this? I'm a math teacher in the same boat.. "15-20 minutes max instruction..." when the already super faced paced version of the lesson is allotted for 30 minutes. The kids need direct instruction, not 70 minutes of small group rotations. They can barely function doing independent work as it is (when they arent meeting with the teacher during that rotation) MCPS is a disaster this year. It is just getting worse. [/quote]
So how do you teach the remaining 10-15 minutes of the lesson after you hit the the direct instruction limit?  Do you have to repeat the remaining part of the lesson to each small group as you rotate through or do you have to compress a 30 minute lesson into 15-20 minutes?[/quote]

I don’t. “I break the rules.” But it’s absurd this is a thing in the county right now. [/quote]
Agreed. Glad you keep teaching the lesson. They say they want to encourage "productive struggle". It's not productive if kids sit stumped and frustrated in groups waiting for the teacher to rotate through because insufficient direct instruction time was allotted to teach them the concept before asking them to apply it. This is one reason why there is such demand for outside tutors. Not all teachers do what you do. If a teacher follows the guidance and limits direct instruction, families have to find someone to teach the material to the student.[/quote]

This is AP Calc though; it's meant to be taught like a college course, for college credits. If your child isn't able to understand the material, perhaps they shouldn't earn the college credit. [/quote]
Colleges don't set fixed limits on the amount of time allowed for direct instruction. In any case, one of the arguments for having kids take Calculus in high school versus college is that the setting permits (in theory) more instructional time.[/quote]

I teach Calc in college....we spend almost the majority of the time doing direct instruction. That is how education works. I also teach part time in MCPS and yup, they somehow think student based learning is the way to go. These kinds of things every time someone new goes to a PD or some BS. Students need direct, explicit instruction, and I'm sorry but 15-20 minutes ain't it. Small groups aren't "where the learning happens." (More MCPS bs) [/quote]

15 minutes of a lesson[b] and then they want small groups to have nothing to do with the lesson[/b]...they want to address all of the learning loss of their own doing..meanwhile, last year (when times were sane), small groups would be helping kids with the problem set and focusing on what they didn't understand that day. Then they get mad when kids don't do well on assessments because instead of having them focus on what they are learning, they waste 20 minutes doing group counting. It really is a mess and this is all on the math department. [/quote]
Unsure what you meant above. Aren't the small groups focused on the same topic as the lesson? Are they working on learning loss topics instead?[/quote]

Nope. That’s the time to get them ready for MAP! They just do random concepts students struggle with. [/quote]

They don't prep them for MAP either.[/quote]

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