Re: FW: High-school curriculum changes

["Daniel S. Price" <dprice@JEFFCO.K12.CO.US>]

Matt Harding wrote:

> I totally agree with that whole living up or down to expectations
> comment.  If they're allowed to perceive it as hard, they won't even
> bother trying.

I do maintain high expectations, but rather than compelling students to
try harder, said demands cause them to quit, and their parents and
counselors accede to their wishes.  Because my position has been literally
threatened if enrollment in physics does not increase, I must find a way
to maintain a high standard without scaring the clientele.

> "make sense").  A lot of "if this thing on the bottom over here gets
> bigger, what happens to that thing on the other side of the equal sig=
> n."

About half of my questions on practices and exams are of that nature,
because I feel that fostering "mathematical sense" is essential for this
course and beyond.  The students who are facile with computation often
don't want to think about the meaning of their answers...

> My biggest problem is with the counselors who tend to forget about my
> Alg II pre-req.  Its hard teaching vector resolution to a kid who
> doesn't know is SOH from his TOA...

Algebra II is a co-requisite for this class, and that's why I was
considering "flopping" the semesters, so that they will have seen the
trigonometry before we introduce vectors.  [To require Algebra II *before*
physics would gut the physics program.]