Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Small vent about geometry class

My eldest attends a charter school. The advertisements present the school as being big into math and science.

They offer geometry in 8th grade. During the first half of the year, the teacher only finished a third of the textbook. She has to finish the course by the end of the academic year, and so on the first day back after the break, she announced that they'd be skipping most of the right triangle chapter and that they wouldn't be doing any more proofs. The proofs were already watered down as it was (the book provided the steps and the kids just had to fill in the theorems or postulates), but now they're completely gone.

I thought the proofs were a huge part of geometry. I thought that they were a critical step in teaching students how mathematics works.

I suppose I shouldn't care too much about this, because they decided to let my son study independently (this is why it's only a small vent). He uses an excellent old textbook, not the poor-quality one his school uses. So things are about as good as they can get for him in this school.

Yet I'm watching this situation unfold and thinking that it's emblematic of our entire public education system. The other kids in his class are being cheated. It is so painful to watch. We water down the textbooks to make the material "accessible" and when it's still too much, we just skip stuff and pretend that the kids are still learning geometry. Then these kids get to college and wonder why they get stuck in remedial classes or wonder why college-level material is too hard for them.

And no one cares about the gifted kids, because as DS's teacher says, "there's no such thing as a mathy mind."

This is a horrible development. The principles of right triangles are the basis for Trig, which is one of the most incredibly useful mathematics in the world (engineering, astronomy, etc.). Geometric proofs are one of the first exposures to logical thinking. She's basically throwing out the most beneficial parts of the subject because she didn't manage her time well.

-

I'm sorry to hear about that Val. I agree that some of the most important concepts are being ignored. At least your son wont be too affected.


I'd probably go ballistic if a teacher said that to me. My dad went off on my brother's teacher once... made her cry... we were in Catholic school at the time, so she was a nun. That didn't save her. I don't condone his actions... but understand the frustration.

Yeah, that.

Update: they started the chapter on right triangles on Monday and are having the chapter test tomorrow. They skipped the intro to trig and everything that went with it. All they covered was Pythagoras and 30-60-90 and 45-45-90 triangle side relationships. No proofs.

I'm sorry to hear this, and it's giving me some push to look into the geometry that my child will take next year.
FWIW -- I think AOPS has a very challenging geometry course, one I would take even after taking the "basics" at school.

Sounds like she's budgeting her time to get through the material that will allow the kids to get the material they'll need for mandated school testing - which at our schools is directly related to teacher performance. Pity.

My husband made a math teacher cry over a similar issue - he asked enough questions that it became apparent the teacher was in over her head and was just following the teacher manual, didn't understand the building blocks or foundations involved in what she was teaching.

yeah, seriously. but then again, she could skip circles too.

Actually, what we've done in response to this is water down college too. Which makes it a self-fulfilling prophesy that "anyone can do college level work."

Is the teacher a math or STEM grad? Or has a MAT teaching degree?
Sounds like she does not know the material.

Geometry is the first real class with proofs and to get an "A" the student should show good ability with proofs. The skipping of the right triangle stuff is scandalous.

What does the teacher's boss say about this?

AMEN.

My DH and I were both bemused last year when DD's geometry course included so few proofs. This was an honors class, and it was certainly rigorous in other ways (after all, one dis/advantage to a virtual school is that you simply work your way through the syllabus and anything that you don't complete on time becomes a zero... sooooooo... in that respect, the grades DO mean more, I suppose)...

on the other hand, when even the textbooks begin skipping this stuff because most kids find it "too hard" then where does that leave gifted students who'd be better served by learning the inductive reasoning process, hmm?

I was so sad this year when, in World Civ, DD learned about Sir Francis Bacon and 'inductive reasoning' and had no really concrete examples from which to draw herself. Public school hasn't provided any.

The Socratic method, on the other hand... now THAT she's got some direct experience with, since I pretty much don't have another mode as a teacher. LOL.

There is no better teaching method for math than the Socratic method. In fact, any STEM class.

The older I get, the more I appreciate my math education via the Socratic method.

This is a wonderful intro to Socrates and the ideas set within the context of his time in Greece.

http://www.amazon.com/Socrates-Man-Times-Paul-Johnson/dp/0670023035

I'm reminded, however, of the line that Sally Field delivers in Murphy's Romance, when explaining the process of cleaning a horse's teeth:


"Some horses resist this procedure..."

ROFL.

Indeed. What an understatement. A great many students 'resist' Socratic methods in the same manner. It feels uncomfortable and frightening to older students that have always been told WHAT to think to suddenly be asked questions by a teacher, rather than "told" answers.

I learned to gently stop and look students in the eye and say; "You have to trust me. I'm leading you in the right direction, but you have to go with it for a bit to get there, okay? It takes a little longer this way, but it's worth it because it teaches YOU how to be the expert at tackling problems-- not just this problem."

First questions, I don't know.

The teacher's boss did not reply to my email.

Update: she also skipped the chapter about polygons.

That doesn't even apply to just children. I frequently employed the Socratic method to train new techs when I was in the Navy. They teach you the basics in school, and then you get to learn about the individual components, but the task of understanding the entire system as a unified whole, and how it ties into so many other components that aren't under our direct control, is left as an OJT experience.

So I was in the process of throwing questions at a new guy when another I had trained previously walked in the room. He turned to the new guy and said, "You probably think he's just being an a-hole, but he's really just trying to make you think." Later on I caught up with the older guy, and asked him if that's what he thought when I was training him. The answer was an unequivocal affirmative.

So said the smartest guy I ever trained.

I'm still stuck on the "mathy" mind crack. She's clearly never a met a kid like dd16, who thinks in equations. We've met too many teacher's like this one to pretend she's an anamoly.

Sounds as if you may have to augment your child's education with some geometry lessons.

Update:

DS's math teacher is on leave for a couple of months. The sub discovered that she'd skipped three chapters in the textbook --- 25% of the course. So the new teacher decided that everyone was going back to chapter 5, which was the right triangles chapter that I mentioned in my first message. That's good. They're only going to finish 3/4 of the course this year, though, so I wonder what's going to happen.

The saddest thing of all is that DS told me that someone in his class (a bright kid, apparently) said that his parents send him to this school because "the math program is so good."

Did I mention that they have a math competition club after school for the higher achievers? During the first semester, the kids spent four weeks painting the parking lot.

I'll note again that DS is allowed to study math independently, and we're grateful for that. But that doesn't mean I can't be somewhat appalled that the geometry teacher has been allowed to get away with this and that a school can cheat kids out of math instruction by using them as free labor.

Updating this again, primarily because it's good to get it out to a group that understands.

The regular math teacher is back. The subs had gone over most of the stuff she had skipped, but this left the kids only ~70% of the way through geometry with 3 weeks left in the school year.

So she skipped 1.5 chapters, and now they're doing one section of each remaining chapter per day. She hands out photocopied summaries of the section, which everyone memorizes overnight in preparation for a daily quiz. Needless to say, each quiz is very basic. So that's 20 minutes per quiz and 30 minutes to go over the stuff on tomorrow's quiz.

I'm not sure how long the class will be able to keep this pace. Even if they do, by my count, they'll still come up a section or two short. But at least the teacher will "finish" the course.

I personally feel bad about this geometry experience for the kids. And the experience all the kids are being exposed to with such an attitude toward math in general.

When I was in high school there was one particularly bad year with budget cuts and other things (which I won't get into but it was fall-out from a broader socio-educational experiement).

In January a whole bunch of teachers got their "pink slips" and some carried on regardless with fantastic integrity no matter what was going on, and some called in sick as much as possible. My geometry teacher came in each day, sat at her desk with her arms folded, stared out the window and wouldn't write on the board, open the book, or talk about geometry. There was some physical choas/disruption in the classroom, which the teacher completely ignored, but I tried to keep away from it and used to look at my texbook and try to teach myself.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with geometry. It is so cool and interesting but I'm sort of "afraid" of it. I sometimes think of taking an online class or something so that when my DD starts learning it for real I can be more comfortable.

And that painting the parking lot thing is beyond appalling.