Reply to How hard will Blair's Functions class be for a kid who currently finds Algebra 2 "easy"?

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Reply to "How hard will Blair's Functions class be for a kid who currently finds Algebra 2 "easy"?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DS breezed through Algebra II in 8th and signed up for Functions at Blair, but ended up dropping it early in the semester. He felt that he could follow the classroom material just fine, but the homework load (3 hours/night for him) was killing him. I was so glad when he decided to drop; that level of stress isn’t good for any 14 year old. It stressed ME just to think about what would happen if he missed a week of school because of Covid or a death in the family. How would he ever catch up?

Some people in this board have posted that the homework load is more like 1-1.5 hours per night. FWIW, my DS knew a lot of the kids in his Functions class from previous classes, and he thinks that many of them had already been exposed to the material via math teams or private math schools. I’m not surprised if those kids need less time for the homework. [/quote]

Yes, there are definitely kids who were exposed to the content ahead of time in my kid's year. It was hard. But, there are plenty in the same boat new to the stuff. Mine found that the teacher was super helpful and kid would go in at lunch sometimes.  Also developed some good friends working on problem sets together. Learned to tune out the pre-exposed kids who acted like hotshots. [/quote]

Were any of the pre-exposed kids helpful peer tutors? [/quote]

PP here. Study groups and teacher were best. One kid in group had done aops, and mine asked her to peer tutor later on for Discrete which is related to math team math. She was a better teacher than the actual teacher (who was both sexist and a bad teacher).[/quote]

Was that this teacher?

https://silverchips.mbhs.edu/content/rose-is-my-favorite-teacher-26512/[/quote]

PP here. Maybe things were different in 2009, but there have been widespread complaints about him all through my kid's time there. Of course,  there are a few who liked him. He tried hard to buddy up with some kids. But, as a teacher, he was not effective. Did not teach much and often could not explain some concepts, gearing class to students already familiar with content from math team. He was biased against girls, favored math team kids, wouldn't  answer questions  "yeah, I'm not gonna answer that," or would just ignore students (mostly girls).  Graded vary late. Literally told students he did not grade their work because he spent all his time on social media.  Asked for feedback but then would blame the student if feedback was critical at all.  Other teachers couldn't help with tutoring because content was so niche, and he was unhelpful one on one. Mine relied on internet and a peer who had taken class previous year and was a math team regular and did ok. Some students really struggled because they could not get decent teaching,  and for some (especially females),  it was a pretty hostile environment. Things with teacher were so bad in Fall 21, a large group of students made very specific complaints to admin (O), and O was meeting with him and sitting in on class.  But, I guess he's still there. [/quote]

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