Tutoring rant, part II
1. I have lunch with a coworker once or twice a month, and this time his wife came along. His wife was a member of the school board for many years, so I grilled talked to her about the science sequence I mentioned here. She tells me that this whole terrible physics-in-ninth-grade thing is a statewide thing, possibly galvanized by federal testing requirements. ARRRRRRGH. Her guess was that it was instituted because someone somewhere believed that kids were intimidated by physics and not taking it and not learning it… so… their solution was to have everyone take it earlier in the curriculum. WELL, GUESS WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS SYSTEM.
(For the record, she was also very much against this science sequence. I haven't talked to anyone who is FOR it.)
2. Our local high school has a block schedule; they take three or four classes each semester for an hour and a half each instead of six-seven classes for 45 minutes each. I have been told by coworker's wife that most people really like this system, and I believe it. I think in particular that for strong students who can easily handle that kind of information density, it's probably a great thing.
For C. it is a disaster, especially for physics, because we are barely keeping up with the flow of information. I'm struggling to keep us up with the stuff they do in class, so that I have been completely unable, except in small bits around the side which she then promptly forgets, to teach C. the things she actually needs to know to do physics (that is, math: fractions, decimals, the concept of a base ten system in general, manipulation of abstract variables *throws up hands in despair*).
2a. What can you do when you ask what two divided by four is and the pupil wildly guesses 1.3? I JUST. I think had I known what an uphill job this was going to be, I would not have taken it on. Except that this is apparently the kind of thing I can't help but want to try to help with.
3. Things I would really prefer not ever to have to do again: attempt to explain the concept of the universal gravitational law being directly proportional to mass and inversely square proportional to distance to someone who does not understand/remember fractions or the concept of abstract variables or that multiplication is the opposite of division. aaaaaarrrrgh.
(For the record, she was also very much against this science sequence. I haven't talked to anyone who is FOR it.)
2. Our local high school has a block schedule; they take three or four classes each semester for an hour and a half each instead of six-seven classes for 45 minutes each. I have been told by coworker's wife that most people really like this system, and I believe it. I think in particular that for strong students who can easily handle that kind of information density, it's probably a great thing.
For C. it is a disaster, especially for physics, because we are barely keeping up with the flow of information. I'm struggling to keep us up with the stuff they do in class, so that I have been completely unable, except in small bits around the side which she then promptly forgets, to teach C. the things she actually needs to know to do physics (that is, math: fractions, decimals, the concept of a base ten system in general, manipulation of abstract variables *throws up hands in despair*).
2a. What can you do when you ask what two divided by four is and the pupil wildly guesses 1.3? I JUST. I think had I known what an uphill job this was going to be, I would not have taken it on. Except that this is apparently the kind of thing I can't help but want to try to help with.
3. Things I would really prefer not ever to have to do again: attempt to explain the concept of the universal gravitational law being directly proportional to mass and inversely square proportional to distance to someone who does not understand/remember fractions or the concept of abstract variables or that multiplication is the opposite of division. aaaaaarrrrgh.