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Slightly OT but I emailed and begged for homeschooler's class during the week. Being in PST, there is pretty much no way my 9 year old is going to agree to do a math class online on a Friday night. Plus, he's sound asleep by 8:30pm most nights- he'll be total rubbish trying to do math at 8pm.

Richard answered right away and said that they had homeschool friendly times before but the classes were underused. I asked (begged) him to reconsider!

That stinks that they don't have it available anymore. It probably would be hard to get a time during the day to fit into his schools schedule perfectly anyhow. I guess the night time would work but we are ET time which is the latest one and goes until 9pm. DS7 usually goes to bed at 9pm and while his brain is always going...not sure if taking a math class minutes before bed will help him go right to sleep. He would probably be in bed doing calculations all night long.

I'll call too.

Yes, he stays in the room. He doesn't generally need help; when he does, he typically needs help with a specific problem rather than a concept. I help him at home.

AoPS offered homeschool friendly classes and couldn't fill them.

AoPS could be easily used in school as long as there is a computer connection available. There are tons of questions in the books, alcumus, and at least some courses are doing weekly homework rather than the challenge sets that are due every few weeks. Alcumus and homework are online and the book problems are accessible without a computer. While courses do not follow an academic calendar, it would be easy to string a few courses together or to work on problem solving during off times or fun math topics.

I'd think a kid would need to be able to focus well and work hard independently, but a very mathy kid at 7 may be able to do that well. AoPS has multiple levels and doesn't just start at algebra anymore so it wouldn't be hard to get the right level, even for a younger child. And finally, the whole point of AoPS is to spend a *lot* of time thinking very hard about too difficult problems. Even without access to help, the time spent thinking hard can be beneficial and help can be given at home if needed.

Do you think the amount of work for a class would be able to completed in about 6 hours a week? (not including the weekly class of course). And would he need the computer every day for homework to do during school...or are there days he could just do bookwork? I have to say that since he will probably go through a few courses per year the fact that it will be close to $1,000 makes me lean more towards EPGY open enrollment. But I feel like the AoPS classes sound a lot better.

This makes me want to cry. A teacher who can't handle high school math?

Well--she's a third grade teacher! I don't think that's so terrible. I'd hope she still has HS math proficiency at a basic level (I'm not sure what that is, TBH), but teaching is pretty different from doing.

(And I seriously doubt I could still DO trigonometry, for example, myself. I'd have to undertake some serious review. Yeah, I know. I'm going to have to brush up. Math is not my strength. Fortunately, DH is very good at it.)

I still think it is terrible because the way that you teach math in early years directly impacts how children will develop their mathematical thinking, and, in my opinion, someone whose mathematical thinking is weak enough that they don't understand pre-algebra, algebra, and basic geometry ( 7th grade or 8th grade math) well enough to teach it when they have a textbook available to refer to, has no business professionally directing the mathematical development of children, period. How well you teach children first- through third-grade math directly affects how well they will do in 7th and 8th grade math, and if you don't know where you are going and how to get there from where you are, you can't possibly build a decent path to travel. Early childhood education is critical, and it is scandalous that we allow people who aren't equipped to do it in the classroom as the primary instructor. The people who teach your children to add, subtract, multiply, and divide teach them how to understand and conceptualize those basic operations, which are fundamental to everything that follows. For example, children who understand that you can only add and subtract things that are of the same type typically have no problem grasping operations with fractions, decimals, adding and subtracting polynomials, and other procedures that are great sources of confusion for children who didn't get that understanding early on. Weaknesses in early teaching don't necessarily impact performance right away - it is only later, when the concepts that should build on the early foundation have nothing to stand on that the problem becomes evident, so teachers who are doing grave damage to the children in their charge continue on and on with no accountability.

[/rant]

I am getting the same from my ds9 3rd grade school.
They say the teacher can't teach the math my son needs well enough.

I read something recently and believe it was on the AoPS web site.
(To get a better idea of how well you know something, try teaching it to someone else.) Not an exact quote.