So. DD has two math classes this year. Both are dual-enrollment courses.
She is a senior in high school, she is 14, and she is (mostly) doing VERY well in her classes, even though she added Precalc 3 weeks late (she caught up in a bit over a week). DD, like many EG/PG kiddos, prefers drinking from the firehose. Why chase a tortoise if you're a cheetah, right?
So she tends to work in big BLOCKS of material-- she'll complete a unit of something in an afternoon. She may barely touch her other work, of course, which leaves it for another day, but it roughly all goes as planned (plus-or-minus about a week in any one class at any one time).
This is ALLOWED in her virtual school, by the way-- the only "hard" deadline is the end of the semester, or in some instances anything that is MORE than a month past the scheduled date of completion.
The problem:
a single teacher who is a bit... er... "overeager" let's just say, with the "temporary zero" on assessments/assignments. For example, my DD had four "overdue" AP Stats lessons this morning-- less than a week's worth of lessons, in other words, and she's worked AHEAD about that much in some other things. He ZEROED THEM OUT in her online gradebook, and now she has an F in the class because one of them was a unit exam.
Naturally, this is the math teacher. He also has some communication difficulties-- and doesn't really hold class anyway-- he directs students to YouTube and Khan for answers to questions.
My concern is threefold:
a) this is REALLY harmful to DD because of her perfectionism and the anxiety surrounding it. It is NOT NOT NOT motivating to her. It's punitive and results in out and out panic.
b) out-and-out panic shaves about 10% off of her usual and probably legitimate performance. In other words, if she's trying to scrabble through lessons in order to get rid of zeroes, she is earning 75-85% rather than the 95% that we KNOW that she is capable of. She's just feeling too RUSHED to do anything else at that point. I'd really like it if she didn't wind up with her first college transcript having grades that reflect PANIC induced by class procedures rather than her ability and mastery.
c) most seriously, she is in the part of the college chase that is best termed "Big Game Hunting." She has worked
incredibly hard for a 14yo in order to be competitive in this race, and she's applying for a LOT of merit based scholarships and some pretty selective programs right now. Have I mentioned stress? Yes? Well, some of those programs want to see
current progress reports. Guess it's just bad luck for her if it happens that Mr. Math, there, got a wild hair in the middle of the night and zeroed out a midterm, huh?
The question is WHAT to do about this. The teacher is known for this practice, but he's also the only one teaching either math class. Can she get ahead of things a week and STAY that way? Probably-- but maybe not without getting behind in AP English, which we'd prefer she not do. Also, I have concerns that if she does do that, she may sacrifice points that she will need at the end of the term in order to maintain A's. Neither class is "hard" exactly-- but the grading is mostly multiple choice and VERY much 'right/wrong' and she's lost probably 2-3% just on rounding errors and stuff that isn't technically really in the realm of "error" if a live person were grading the work. KWIM? Computational accuracy is DD's weakness in math, and the faster she must work, the worse it gets.
I doubt that the teacher will 'hear' my reasons for wanting him to NOT do this anymore. Should I even bother asking to stop?
If I don't, how do I buffer DD from the way that this is POKING at her perfectionism? I don't want her just taking a panic-driven approach, either, though-- and that is what she HAS been doing.
Her grades in both classes definitely show it, too-- she's about 1/3 complete with both, and has A- grades to show for it, so her accuracy MUST improve. It's not her understanding that is the problem. It's the computation on assessments that she is feeling highly pressured about.
