Elysian Shadows

Or rather, my honors geometry teacher sucks. Let me start off by saying, I'm a freshman in high school. Geometry this semester and Algebra II next semester. My teacher for geometry sucks horribly. She doesn't even teach the material. We learn everything from notes with vocabulary we don't learn until English our junior year. And we can't look up the math terms in our textbooks, because the one we have is just for doing homework. That's right people, we learn from straight up poorly worded notes. And she doesn't even explain them. She expects us to understand, and if we ask a question, she just repeats exactly what the notes say. She gives us examples, but doesn't when explaining how she found the answer, she basically repeats the notes. It's quite annoying. After the notes(and examples we have to solve and no one gets right) she goes over them slightly so we can do our homework, but it's all basic stuff, on the EOC(final course exam) they have difficult word problems. And then she's surprised when we do our tests(which are indeed quite difficult) and get 50s and 60s('cept me, programming has really helped my math skills, so I'm gettin 85's). Its only the 3rd(or 4th) week of school, and someone's already asked "Erm... would you please go slower and explain the material?" to which she responded "This is how I learned, and I'm doing great. Just try a little harder and I'm sure you'll get it eventually". As you can tell she's one of the teachers that sounds nice but doesn't know what they're talking about. The homework isn't especially difficult per say, but there's craploads of it. Entire pages out of our workbooks. As long as I pass the class with an A or B, I really don't care about performing exceptionally well, but I'm worried about going into algebra 2(and next year probably calculus) without really understanding the material. My friend Emma said she emailed our last year algebra teacher about tutoring(he was by far my favorite teacher) and I plan on doing the same. He'll probably scream about the fact that she actually makes us use our workbooks. But at least I'll understand the material.

Er.... Welcome to Honors?

I have Honors and AP classes, and I have to say, none of my teachers can teach a damn thing... In Honors Spanish 3, she just gives us busy work that AP Spanish speaking 4 students don't even understand. In AP History, she treats us like we are 5 and we color title pages all day (No joke... Then we teach ourselves at home =/), Honors Chemistry the teacher sits around making PB&J Sandwiches and drinking soda (strange... he doesn't BRING the sandwich he just makes it right there... I think he's a mega stoner...) Then Honors Math Analysis, the teacher attempts to teach, but no one understands him (well I do, but I already know most of the material sadly =/) then I have AP Composition where she doesn't help our writing skills at all, we write, she gives us a grade, and end of story...

So, in my experience, Honors/AP seem to be an independent thing. The teacher is there so you can ask questions, and they can hopefully answer it.

Although I've only asked one question in my Chemistry class, and he doesn't know the answer 0.o ....

Well wish you the best of luck, just keep on, keeping on (Joe Dirt reference =D)

Ah... highschool.

XianForce wrote:Er.... Welcome to Honors?

If all my honors courses are like that, I'm glad I'm going to try and graduate a semester early.

JaxDragon wrote:

XianForce wrote:Er.... Welcome to Honors?

If all my honors courses are like that, I'm glad I'm going to try and graduate a semester early.

Heh, I would be graduating a year early, but my school just opened last year, and they didn't have summer school for anything relevant.... so I guess I'll have like 2-3 classes next year, and I'll take some Classes at a local college along with that =p

See, where I live, we have a high school and an early college. The early college technically gives you your high school diploma in 2 years, and the other two are college courses(and they are indeed accredited for college credits). Only reason I didn't go there is because the only programming class they have is visual basic(and they have that at the high school anyway). Plus they have way more homework.

Yeah, down where I live, the education entirely fails. There are maybe 5 people in the entire school who have any remote sense of intelligence. My school offers little to nothing since it's new, so my education has been largely screwed... I'm just hoping I can get the hell out of here after I get undergrad done at a local college...

JaxDragon wrote:

XianForce wrote:Er.... Welcome to Honors?

If all my honors courses are like that, I'm glad I'm going to try and graduate a semester early.

GED FTW

Personally I'm fairly sure I prefer it this way. I find it much easier to look up how to do a math problem in the book or online and teach myself in 20 seconds than to sit there for 2 hours listening to someone who sucks at teaching try to explain it to me their way.

At least your teacher isn't like mine. She gives you an A on your homework if you did it and gave it your best effort. Now this was awesome for the first 2 weeks, then we got to take a test... :(

I thought my high school math was hard... then soph year in college I signed up for linear algebra, discrete, and calc 2 in the same semester.

The math is easy. Then we got hit with proofs... in all three courses...

captjack wrote:The math is easy. Then we got hit with proofs... in all three courses...

My "Models of Computation" course homework was like, all proofs. Undergraduate "B" was 60-75%. I got a B thanks to the final, but I was in C range and getting half-credit on most of the homework assignments, with comments in red like "this is not a proof" and "what are you trying to do here", hahahaha...

I hate proofs. I have NO IDEA when anyone(other than a mathematician or scientist) would EVER need to use proofs. They are indeed my least favorite part of geometry.