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Reenee
Sep 11, 2003, 12:45 AM
Algebra 2.

I'm dealing with a Taiwaneese (sp?) teacher who actually got the job. Everybody in the class can half-understand him. People blatantly blurt out stuff that'd pretty much mock the guy for his bad English, but that's not my problem. It's his way of doing things.

Now, I'm all for doing things according to the teacher. I agree that one should show their work in the assignment.

This guy gives us 50 problems on our classwork/homework assignments (don't finish in school? take it home...), and they're basically easy. Come on, it's the second day.

On the first day of school, we get our work, and the first flaw from this guy comes from the fact that he didn't say wether or not to show our work at all (and this is with Algebra that can be done mentally). We waste paper. Thanks.

Now, yesterday, we were given our next assignment. We were going to turn it in today when he points out we didn't do the work...

Why is REWRITING the ORIGINAL PROBLEM considered work!?

No offense, but the last couple of teachers I had also knew that rewriting stuff that was there is considered pointless. If this man doesn't bother looking back and forth between an answer key and the original worksheet, then the answer key should be on a copy of the worksheet as well. Lazy.

Lemme give you an example of what I did (BTW, what I'm going to show is simplfying equations):

The problem: (x + 3y) - (-2x + 2y)
Here's what I did:
x + 2x + 3y - 2y = 3x + y

Okay, now, that was the work. I mean, I simplfied on the first line and gave the answer. Now to show what this man wants:

(x + 3y) - (-2x + 2y)
x + 3y + 2x - 2y
x + 2x +3y - 2y
(x + 2x) + (3y - 2y) = 3x + y

And he expects us to do all of that on 50 problems. Ironically, this guy also wrote a book, and my friend found it at the local Barnes & Noble.

Not only is this totally inefficient, but I'm in Algebra 2 for a reason: I know what to do on this crap. I'll simplify it instantly and give you the answer because I know why. What, want me to show everything? I'll do it on the frickin' chalkboard, thanks. I'm not going to cramp my wrist.

Oh, and not only that, but just trying explain this inefficiency to the teacher caused him to totally not touch the subject. This means the teacher is totally unwilling to hear out the FAIR suggestions of his students.

I told about this to my mom, and all she told me was that this was the teacher's way of doing things. Oh, see, I have other homework to do but I have to deal with doing my Algebra work in an inefficient and totally rediculous way so that I'm forced to not spend some quality time for myself for the rest of the day (seriously, I put off homework for about an hour or 90 minutes when I get home), and do the rest of my work from other classes in pain.

tiltnkirby26
Sep 11, 2003, 09:17 AM
I've had a math teacher like that. You could sometime make out what she was saying and sometime she sometimes got the problems wrong. She was one of those pre-teacher people; come in for half the year see what it really like as a teacher.

It gets better. My friend corrected a problem that the teacher got wrong.Also, that was the day someone came to take a look at hows shes doing. I didn't think she was very happy having a 9th grader correct a problem(in front of the class) that we are learning for the first time. It was also in front of that guy that came to check on her. She came up to my friend after class and told him "Next time that guy come don't say anything". It was really odd hearing that from a teacher of all things. We both passed the class and couldn't be more happy to get out http://www.pso-world.com/psoworld/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif .

Deathscythealpha
Sep 11, 2003, 12:19 PM
Showing your workings can help you pin point where your going wrong if you make a mistake. If you make a mistake in your calculations and youve got everything written out your teacher can point out where youve gone wrong and help you sor tit out. Also, if you cant get the answer for one of the questions, and you show your workings, a marker can see where you were going with it and if you were going along the right path you can still get marks for understanding. This is a life saver when it comes ot exams.

AngelofEnders
Sep 11, 2003, 01:51 PM
Yeah but it's pointless to have to rewrite the origial problem with the answer.

Serrio
Sep 11, 2003, 02:34 PM
That can be really annoying most of the maths teachers I have had have had have been like that andI go to one of the best(supposedly) schools in britain

Bit
Sep 11, 2003, 02:40 PM
You only have to deal with it for one year, so just do it, and get the grade. =

OniTatsujin
Sep 11, 2003, 07:19 PM
my Algebra 1 teacher is like...annoying..every 5 seconds..Is this fair? Is this Okay? See, see, see? Ok? I only have 45 minutes to teach you guys(every day she says that)
ITS ANNOYING!!!!!

LJ
Sep 11, 2003, 07:48 PM
Reenee although i can understand my teacher perfectly he is almost exactly like yours. I like to simplify in my head as well and here was the conversation that followed...

Him: LJ, Where's your work?
Me: It's right here. Isnt that the right answer?
Him: Yes it is but i want you to redo it and show your work.
Me: But i can show you on this problem. *I do so*
Him: Ok that's nice. Now woul;d you please redo the problem?
ME: but that's not fair, I just showed you the problem!
Him: Well ok. You can leave it like that. *He begins to walk off* You'll learn to show your work when i fail you.

Naturally i managed to restrain myself from saying something VERY BAD to him. Just barely. And i have the highest average in the class! He knows i can do it he just wont leave me the F*** alone.

alredy_taken
Sep 19, 2003, 10:20 PM
my algebra 1 teacher is similar. if you don't show your work or rewrite the origional problem on just 1 problem you get a 0% on the entire paper and have to redo that problem. and if you dont every thing done by the time he gives the test you get a 0 on that too. and the other day he gave us a lecture about how he teaches from a multi-cultural non-sexist book. what does that have to do with algebra?

NKOTB
Sep 19, 2003, 10:28 PM
The guy is probably a terrible teacher.

BUT

You probably have no idea how hard it is to find someone qualified to teach high school math. Anyone who is qualified takes differnt public and private sector jobs and makes 10's of thousands of dollars more a year.

So, I understand he is bad, but that's all they could probably find.

My local school district has been short one high school math teacher all year now, there just isn't any.

OniTatsujin
Sep 19, 2003, 10:32 PM
UGH!
my teacher friken said
Where is your work
when the problem didnt need work
i was like..ok..watever..
we have to rewrite every problem even if itsl iek friken 2 + 2..its like WTF!?
i hate math now..its turned from stupid to uber stupid

Firocket1690
Sep 19, 2003, 11:00 PM
I hate Advanced Algebra 7.

Shadow82
Sep 20, 2003, 12:38 AM
I got a really good teach for Alg.2/Trig.He lets you just bs the hw if you want,because he grades where test are 60% of the grade,hw 30%,and quizzes 10%.So you can cheat or do the laziest hw ever,because it is useless basically anyway to do it.The only thing is I decided nothing was important the first semester and I failed...

Soukosa
Sep 20, 2003, 02:26 AM
Kinda reminds me of the teacher I had for Algebra II. She was quite picky about things, you had to show your work, and she gave you tons of work to do. In the end, if you got all of them done and to the her satisifaction, you got a smiley stamped on your paper. If she wasn't happy, you got a frowny face stamped on your paper. Ugh, I hated her (along with many other people).