Re this math teacher's response

[Diorama1]

I am contemplating emailing the teacher to discuss his response to an issue with my son.
My DS is 14 and is in 2nd year (in Ireland and its the year before your GSCE year). He is very bright and very good at maths. He is doing higher level maths.

He is not a math genius or gifted but he does find it all very easy, he grasps the concepts quickly and has an excellent understanding.
His average in his maths tests this year is 98% and the things he got wrong were only simple errors from rushing eg saying 21 divided by 3 was 3 instead of 7.

We had his parent teacher meetings this week. I dont think what they are like in the UK but here we go around the PE hall and sit for 5 mins with some 10/11 teachers while parents stand behind in a queue waiting their turn. There is little time to discuss and almost no privacy.

I went to his math teacher and he said he was working very well, excellent scores and advised he should keep up studying as things will get harder. I told him that he loves maths but is finding the pace too slow, that he never opens a book at home and wont study for any tests as he knows how to do it. I asked for ways to bring back his interest and to encourage him back into maths. I said I try to get him to study and practice the questions at home but he hates going over what he already knows.

The teacher got very defensive and said the exams were all about rewarding those who study and not those who were good at maths, he said he has to practice the sample questions. He said he has taught many children 10 times better at maths than my son and that if he kept up refusing to revise he would do badly in his exams. He said if he gave my son the same test now as he sat in Sept he was sure my son would do badly in it as he would have forgotten the concepts.

I was a bit taken a back and didnt really respond at the time.

On reflection thought I am very disappointed with his attitude. I was seeking ways to encourage my son back into a love of maths and all he did was advise he repeat work he already knows which I told him is what is killing his enjoyment in the first place. He acted like I was saying my son was a math prodigy and he wanted to put me in my place by saying he has taught much brighter children than him.

DS was doing this level of maths work 3 years ago on his own.

AIBU to expect a better response from an educator and to email him about it?

DS came home yesterday and asked did I say anything to the teacher about him as in class the teacher said that some kids are not putting the work in at home and if that continues they will be moved from the higher level class. DS said the teacher was glaring at him while he said this!

Also if there are any maths teacher on here that have any advice on what DS can do, I would be very grateful.

It was the teacher who told me about his excellent results and said that he should keep up the revision. I told the teacher he wasnt doing any which I was worried about and asked for help. I do wish people would read the posts properly.

@Mumof118 I didnt ask for extra work just advice

@Aprilx I said in my OP that he wasnt a genius, he most definitely isnt a math prodigy just very good at it. He was 3 years ahead because during covid he asked me to do the work with him. He was covering a chapter of the secondary school book an hour and getting all the questions rights as 11 years, he is still doing the same work now.
I stopped him with the textbooks as I didnt want him bored by having covered the work in the book.

It is that progress through the curriculum that I was seeking advice on from the teacher who I thought would know and tell me but his advice was for my child to do more of the same.

In my opinion children that are quite bright, if not stimulated during classes and given stimulating homework to do, will lose interest and get or cause distraction and disruption during lessons. It happened to me sadly, only no one recognised why I was playing up at the time, other than Mum who none of the teachers would listen to.

Thanks for all the suggestions :)

I think you rubbed the teacher up the wrong way unfortunately. Just do a bit with him out of school. This would be good - further Maths certificate work

https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/mathematics/aqa-certificate/further-mathematics-8365

Does he like maths challenges and problem solving?

I was similar Hiphop63, I wasnt disruptive but totally switched off as I found it all too easy and the teachers just focused on the textbook work only. It took many years for me to get an interest in learning back and achieve my potential. I am just trying to avoid that for DS if possible.

Oh and I agree don’t accelerate him through the course- it will lead to more boredom. Extend through problem solving and challenge and the Further Maths stuff I’ve linked to which isn’t in GCSE

There are lots of children who don't really need to revise beyond what the school does for lower level exams.

They will all hit the point eventually where they have to work to understand it - for some it is uni, for some it is postgrad and a very few never really get there.

For this reason I encouraged my kids to learn a musical instrument as it helps with the idea to need to practice to get better!

Don't tell the teacher he doesn't revise - you will annoy the teacher. If he needs to revise it's your job to make sure he does, not the teachers. If he needs to and won't most people get tutors, but honestly it doesn't sound like he needs to.

My DS was like yours at 14. Very good at maths but bored.
He coasted through his GCSEs and got top grades. When it came to A levels he had to put a bit of work in.
We knew the school had other priorities and so we did a lot of the things suggested on here to keep his interest - looking at areas of maths not covered by the curriculum.
He read lots of books about mathematicians and physicists and that really inspired him. He ended up self teaching several extra A level modules and doing maths at university. He is now a maths teacher.

I was a child who coasted through school. When maths (and other subjects) were taught, I understood concepts immediately and could remember everything quite clearly if I looked at it again 6 months later. So it was enough to revise for a week or two. Things were different at University. For the first time I had to put effort- I went to an Ivy League university in the USA. I'm by no means a genius- I just understood school level maths, science, English etc very easily. But I did a mighty lot of other things at school that had little to do with the curriculum. Games, community work, debating, public speaking, building websites, clubs and societies. A lot of volunteering at care homes. And I read. Voraciously. Most of Tolstoy done and dusted by age 10. Not sure how much of it I actually understood though, but I read. My advise would be to do other things- co and extra curricular stuff rather than more of maths.

Other resources:

3blue1brown YouTube channel

www.3blue1brown.com

Number phile YouTube channel

www.numberphile.com

From there they reference a lot of other stuff,

If he is interested in being a doctor then there are other things he could be doing -

St john ambulance Ireland run cadet units for kids aged 10-17 where he can learn first aid and go out in duties with adults

www.stjohn.ie/volunteer-type/becoming-a-cadet/

He could also volunteer at a care home or similar which would get him experience with elderly/ill people.

@Octavia64 absolutely true. I would go further to suggest that if the child's grades are ok at school, don't go to discuss other issues about your child with the teacher. And don't say anything negative or bad about your child to the teacher (or anyone else) for that matter. Saying stuff like 'he doesn't revise', or 'he doesn't put enough effort' etc is just unnecessary. In my experience with my own kids, less is more with teachers.

YABU. Schools are a production line. Expecting your kid to be treated as an individual is deeply naieve tbh.

I mean he is certainly capable, but i keep thinking of the Korean and Chinese parents i used to tutor for - they would not have been happy with 98%, particularly for silly mistakes! He'd have been told off and probably put in a maths club after school and at weekends and holidays.
Sadly most education systems anyway are geared towards exam success. In an ideal world, OP, your son would be supported to learn led by his interests and at his own pace. It's not even the teacher's fault, really, the system is just not set up that way.

You are so unbelievably in the wrong. Your child’s work ethic WILL backfire.

Hi, I'm in Ireland too.

The Maths teacher told you your son was doing fine but you wouldn't accept that.
You told the teacher your son 'never opens a book at home'.

Basically you aren't happy with the level of study your son is doing (he's only in 2nd year mind!!) so you went in and blamed the teacher for bad teaching.

You'll need to accept that your son may have been a high achiever in one area but that may not stay that way. That things change as the child gets older.

As a teenager your son will absolutely not tolerate you 'teaching' him or nagging him or constantly getting on his case about studying extra maths, or sending him useful links, just because you want some sort of standards from him.

All he has to do is get through 3rd year in Honours Maths.

Simple solution for you - Get your son into a small group weekly class of Math's Grinds for 5th year and 6th year. That's what will make the huge difference. Start looking around when he's in Transition year.

He only needs to know the Leaving Cert curriculum - no more and no less.

There's no point trying to teach him 'in advance'.

OP, I would put the teacher's comments out of your mind and just take this on yourself - if your son is doing well in terms of results then that's all that matters in relation to the teacher. Maybe he'd had a bad day, who knows? It's lucky your son does well in Maths.

As you know the secondary school system in Ireland is overly curriculum/exam focussed, and teaching is generally geared towards passing the state exams. Your son may learn a bit of a lesson if he never revises, so while I understand you wanting him to have good study habits, maybe he's too immature to see the point of them now - but maybe he will learn by the time his state exams come around. As you probably also know, exam results are not a good gauge of overall intelligence/maturity so I would focus on developing his attitude and maturity rather than academics. If he's achieving well in school without a lot of extra effort, that frees up time to develop other interests and activities outside school, so I'd say encourage whatever helps him develop more personal responsibility as it will stand to him whenever he does have to study. You can't force it.

If you can, you might get your son involved in some maths-adjacent activities that might help him more generally in that he'll be using mathematical concepts but in a more applied way. Would you think of encouraging your son to do his own maths project, maybe to enter the Young Scientist next year? That will help more generally with organisation, maybe teamwork, presentation and so on and stretch him more than school-based tests do.

I was also just coming back to post this. My son and the top few in his class are doing this on top of their normal GCSE maths. I expect you will be able to study this on line if you wanted - or ask if his school does anything similar. But out of a year of 300 kids, it's literally only the top 6 who are doing further maths.

I have purposefully chosen to hold my son back, to keep him in line with the curriculum so he doesn't get bored. His father was put up 2 years in school, went off to University at 16, and ended up getting a crap degree because he really wasn't emotionally mature enough for it. So while he does fun maths (working out the probability of random things, or square root of something or other - it's all way over my head - or things on a couple of websites like Simon Singhs), we make sure he doesn't skip far ahead curriculum wise.

PS I said the above as you mentioned your son is quite immature. But what is he? 13/14? There's so much he could be learning in terms of life skills, contributing to his community, self-initiated projects. I'd drop the focus on developing the maths and work with him on other skills - can he cook? does he help around the house? etc.

Get in touch with https://mesme.org/.

Ah no - you aren't in England. Is there anything similar?

This is the British school system all over (which is the only one I know, so maybe it's a problem in lots of school systems).

Some brighter kids leave primary school smart and full of knowledge. Maybe it's luck, maybe it's a combination of the teaching, genetics and home environment, who knows.

But then they go to secondary school and languish in years of wasted time "learning things" they find very easy and could have learned in the first term of the year instead of taking a whole year to do it.

Potential wasted as teacher has to teach to the middle. Lots of children who would have been able to work 1,2 or 3 years above their level languish in classes that challenge them very little and everyone leaves at 16 with GCSEs when several could easily have gotten excellent GCSE grades at 13, 14 or 15, had they been taught the material in a way that allowed for that and didn't let them coast.

It's such a waste of talent but that's the limitation of the system and the funds.

Get him some A level text books and a tutor who will start teaching him the A level course material - especially the stuff that is a direct follow on from the GCSE stuff. Mastery of the next level, if you get a tutor and ask them to pick and choose the right parts of the A level syllabus (because he doesn't have all the time in the world before his GCSE) it will improve his ability at GCSE and give him something to work for.

OP's talking about the Irish system, not the British system @wowsers6, so maybe it is a general problem.

I am sorry you had that experience with the teacher - perhaps he took what you were saying the wrong way - teachers are only human just like the rest of us - but I can see why you didn't feel great about the encounter.

Regarding your son, I honestly believe you will help him if you point out that being bored is not the worst thing that can happen to somebody. I would imagine that the majority of adults are sometimes bored by things they have to do in their job, and by things that they have to do in their family or personal life.

I overall love my job, but there are parts of it I find boring. I find housework boring. I even found elements of child rearing boring, when my daughter was very young. I find my caring responsibilities boring sometimes. I doubt I am unusual in this.

It's an important life skill to be able to find stuff boring but still do it well. You will help your child if you encourage him in this. Yes some bright children get bored in lessons - but that does not actually make it ok for them to stop trying, behave badly, etc etc. Just like it's not ok for kids to behave badly if they find the work difficult.

A teacher's role is to safeguard and to teach certain skills, knowledge and encourage certain traits. It's NOT to be an entertainer. Hopefully elements of school will be fun, but it's not its main purpose.

My daughter's lucky enough to be really bright. Sometimes she finds her lessons easy and boring. I tell her to suck it up - she still needs to be polite to the teacher and work hard. self discipline like that is hard to learn but also SO valuable for future happiness. If she wants to pursue a subject in more depth, I'll buy her books/help her find resources on the internet. Time in lessons is a tiny proportion of her life to be honest. Even if she doesn't enjoy it all that much, it won't do her any harm.

I hope you get what I am saying OP. I don't mean it judgementally at all - I can strongly see that you passionately want the best for your son and are desperate to advocate for him. But if you encourage him to think everything in life needs to be fun and stimulating, I do think you might ultimately set him up for disappointment.

What happens at 16 when they've done their GCSE's and A levels then? I know 3 people who went to University at 16, and all 3 are damaged by the experience

@tiggergoesbounce you said "He does rush through everything and makes simple mistakes because he finds it easy but he isn't the type of child to believe he is better than everyone he is very matter of fact that he knows it, understands it and struggles to see the benefit in going over it and over it again. I am tying to teach him that but it isnt easy."
You must teach him this. Making simple mistakes means that it's not too easy. This is true for doing exams in general. But for maths in particular, drilling to develop fluidity in different skills so that they can they be chained together and considered as parts of solving a more complex problem is skill building. Surely he can look up fun maths with you and learn not to make simple mistakes and double chec schoolwork. And be glad that with a bit of effort he can do brilliantly.

This should be shouted from the rooftops! Wonderful post.