This single "C" resulted in me being held back in math the following year, which put me so far behind my peers in math that I was unable to qualify for Calculus as a high school senior...again, even though demonstrating a capability.
This is my concern. Ms. T. made it clear on back-to-school night that this year's placement will determine placements for the subsequent three years.
I think that isn't necessarily a bad thing depending on where your child is at in terms of curriculum - we tend to want to give our kids the freedom to come up with how to calculate early math however they are comfortable doing it as a way to prevent children from becoming frustrated and discouraged with learning math - but once you hit a certain level of math, there are ways to do things that build into other types of ways to do things.
Yes, I completely understand this perspective and when I teach my kids, I ensure that they learn how to write something out in a stepwise way. I recently showed my DD a couple of many large spreadsheets I'm working on. I pointed out how tidy and organized they are, and told her that it's very important for tidiness and order to become second nature when working.
But I don't enforce this approach to an extreme degree. I make it age-appropriate.
As for the curricular level, it's definitely not a good match, especially because the pace is too slow. I think my DD suffers from what I call
curricular blandness: when stuff moves too slowly over an extended period (as it has been for years now), one loses focus and stops paying attention.
