The ER? Yeah, not the place to pick up girls, you sleaze.

[Aethian]

I still feel gypped. I have a tested high iq. And yet almost every math class I was told I was dumb through actions or words cause I was always wrong. So you may think its easier to mark those students wrong but how about instead teach them how to write things out, cause I never had one teacher help me in that and those damn examples never ever worked.

[mathnerd]

I still feel gypped. I have a tested high iq. And yet almost every math class I was told I was dumb through actions or words cause I was always wrong. So you may think its easier to mark those students wrong but how about instead teach them how to write things out, cause I never had one teacher help me in that and those damn examples never ever worked.

You never had me then. That's part of what I teach. If I expect students to do something, then it's my job to teach them how to do it. I must say that I'm a bit offended at the assumption that I a) automatically mark things wrong and b) that I never taught my students what I expected. Neither of those things are true.

[Aethian]

General use of the word you.

[Ree]

The funny thing for me is that, the teacher I mentioned was my grade 9 and 10 teacher. In grade 9, I had OK grades, but in grade 10, I ended up failing math.

I was in the highest level math.
I dropped down to a lower level of math, and did both grade 10 and 11 math in the same year with a different teacher, and I was actually getting really decent grades.

I was actually learning the same things I did in the previous year, so I'm not sure what the difference was in the two levels.
With the first teacher, there were things that made me scratch my head, and I was totally lost at points, but with the second teacher, all of a sudden, it all made sense.

Sometimes, it really is the teacher that makes the difference.
I am thinking, mathnerd, that you are probably more like my second teacher.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Yeah, my Grade 10 math teacher accused me of looking the answer up in the back because I didn't show all my work. I had this weird thing going on where I would do some in my head and just forget to write the steps, but I would get the right answer.

I ran into that in a math or problem-solving class I took at one point. The teacher docked points on one problem (out of 20 or 30) once because I used the wrong method to get the answer. Never mind that I'd shown my work, and my method was still correct and faster (i.e., fewer steps) than the one he expected, and never mind that I showed I understood the method in question just fine with numerous other problems in that same assignment.

I wasn't the only one he dinged like that.

But he allowed us to re-do some assignments to get a higher score, and when I worked out that problem again, I made sure to painstakingly detail all the steps in my preferred method, then drew a big arrow and pointed at it, labeling it PROOF!!

He gave me the higher score I was looking for.

[mathnerd]

General use of the word you.

Then I apologize for misunderstanding. I'm sometimes a little bit testy about such things. I try really hard to teach in a way that makes math approachable and non-scary, and that my students feel like they are respected as people, and not treated like lesser human life forms.