The thing that's got less attention than many other things in this thread, but which bothers me far more, is the teacher's professed unwillingness to accept maths problems solved in a way she wasn't expecting. All the rest is small, if annoying, stuff, but that's important.
Yes, I agree.
People here may have speculated, as I have, that something internal is driving her pettiness (e.g. papers stapled the right way). I have a strong suspicion about this.
I agree that she may not know the subject well, though it's hard to say. She's been teaching it for many, many years. So I want to give her credit. But...she's only taught 6-8th grade math the whole time (yes, I asked) and she's been teaching the same way the whole time (she basically told me). So it's possible that she knows the algorithms that she uses and not much else. I honestly don't know. Her degree is in a non-technical subject and she told me she took "these classes" as an adult.
Another thing is that Ms. T. goes at less than a snail's pace. She says she goes faster when they get to algebra. We'll see. At this point, we're a month into school and we're still repeating the problems on the very first worksheet (negative numbers). DD has literally been made to repeat
5-8=? four times: the first time with a number line, then two times for corrections over petty things like the wrong arrowheads, then again last night without the number line.
But you should check that all of the material that should have been covered in grade 4 was actually covered. It could be that the grade 4 teacher had inadequately prepared them.
She covered everything. DD usually sat next to me while she did her homework, and I could see what she was doing. Ditto for DS, who was in fifth grade. So I have a very good basis for judging Ms. T.'s assessment as having missed target by a wide margin.
I think it's pretty clear that a substantial portion of American teachers don't understand math (at least, teachers at the K-8 level). Liping Ma learned this in her survey. I've heard it at education conferences that focus on the subject and I've seen it in grant application review. And of course, this idea is supported by the experiences of many people here.
