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.

The teacher is right. If you want your son to be challenged then by all means get him harder textbooks but I am not sure why you expect him to cater to your son personally, he obviously lesson plans which involves doing this work to get to the harder work, if your son wants to go further in depth there is a whole world of Internet out there and if he's so bored- he or you should find work that keeps him interested.

Teachers are under alot of pressure and teach alot of kids, maybe as a parent you should be pushing the ambition.

😂 I thought exactly this. Apologise to the teacher!!

this thread is depressing - I know teachers are stressed and underpaid - aren’t we all!

butnif a teacher can’t manage a quick conversation with a parent without becoming defensive and unhelpful then there is a training need there for the teacher and the parent should not have to apologise to the teacher for asking some questions.

I work in the NHS and have had my fair share of challenging interactions with patients and relatives. I bite my tongue and stay pleasant and respectful and never take it out on vulnerable people. Because you know, professionalism.

Why on earth would you pursue this further with the teacher?

invest in a tutor for your child.

Just ignore, bit of dumb idea. Good look on getting you DS engaging with revision though OP.

I know you said your son isn’t gifted but losing interest and switching off when they’re not challenged is a classic sign of a gifted child. My DD is gifted and it was identified very young so when we chose a school we asked specifically if they could meet her needs. They said yes but it soon became apparent they couldn’t and she switched off and started doing poorly in subjects she excelled in. She was so bored. We ended up homeschooling to her level and she was taking GCSEs by 12. She did brilliantly once she was properly challenged.

As a parent to a very smart child i think you’re asking the right questions and the teacher responded badly. Of course your son needs to be challenged. My DD’s homeschool tutor gave her increasingly complex maths problems and she took the gcse at 12 and aced it. Increasing the difficulty and giving her different problems didn’t stop her doing well. So I don’t get his logic at all.

At my school, kids were allowed to take the next level math, for example, third graders took fourth grade math class.

My son loved maths until he came upon something he couldn’t do. Up until that point, he’d just been gifted- no real need for study.

It took us a lot of work to overcome that block.

He doesnt work in any subject and doesnt feel the need to because he does well in the exams. He doesnt study, rushes his homework

Every teacher told you the same thing, why is the maths teacher getting the blame?

Your son is making mistakes like 21÷3=3. All the teachers have told you the same thing - he needs to apply himself properly and take his time. He needs to demonstrate he can get the basics right. Why would the teacher want to push him to do harder maths when he's getting questions wrong that my 8 year old can do? What if you email the head and the head said the same thing? Who will you complain to then?

Maybe you're just wrong about more and harder maths being the answer to the problem. The problem is your son not taking sufficient time over his work. All his teachers can see it, but you can't.

The teacher needed to swallow their pride and put the pupil first and look at the child’s needs.

He has looked at the childs needs. He needs to slow down, take his time and practice the basic concepts in the teachers opinion. If he's getting his 3 times table wrong because he's rushing then that's probably a fair suggestion. Perhaps if he demonstrates to the maths teacher he understands the concept, the teacher will give him harder work.

Arguably, as the qualified maths teacher who has worked with the child, he is the best placed (more so than any of us and his mum) to know whether harder maths is what the boy needs. He doesn't think it is. Op doesn't want to hear it and her question was whether she should complain to the head.

Pupils regularly say 'the teacher was looking at me when they said that'. A good teacher looks around the room at all their pupils.
As my Irish Mammy would say inaccurately 'Third World problems!'

Maybe. Maybe not. His responses don’t sound entirely professional and objective.

I disagree. ds1 had a teacher when he was much younger who kept moving him down the maths tables in class which surprised us a bit as we thought he had good aptitude for maths. When we moved him to a different school (for unrelated reasons) the next teacher assessed him differently as being very good at maths & switched him back up to the top set. Clearly, not all teachers assess a child's mathematical ability in the same way.

The discrepancy was I believe that ds1 was a child who made careless mistakes (and more of these when the work was not interesting to him). The first teacher assumed that the mistakes were because of lack understanding whilst the second teacher realised he understood the mathematical concepts even if he made mistakes sometimes. Given he is now studying theoretical physics I am guessing teacher two probably had the more correct opinion of his mathematical ability and how to get the best out of him.

In fairness I am taking about a much younger child and primary school teachers rather than GCSE level.

Completely agree bar teachers 100% do criticise parents who try to give feedback on what is needed for disabled children. It never ceases to astound me that people who allegedly believe in education can be so high-level ignorant about what helps children study.

Haha if you genuinely believe that teachers don’t address pointed, snarky remarks at particular kids, while retaining plausible deniability, you’re a Saint!

Try what the teacher suggested and give him some problems similar to the ones he aced in September and see if he does still ace them now or has forgotten.

Honestly op. What do you think emailing the teacher will achieve really? You weren't happy with his response.
Ultimately it's the teachers job to teach the curriculum and he is doing that. He doesn't 'owe' you anything extra even though some teachers might be happy to make some suggestions as to websites etc
On the wider note in Irish schools teachers talk and you do not want to him telling his colleagues his version of your conversation and follow up. It won't paint you in a good light .

Source some extra stuff online yourself. You could also look at th applied maths Leavjng cert course if he wants something extra.

It sounds like he's already in the highest level class though otherwise the teacher wouldn't have commented about moving pupils down. If he's not in the highest level class getting scores of 98% I can't imagine who is!
Not sure where you live but schools in the UK/Ireland don't tend to teach children out of their year groups - it's almost unheard of for someone to skip or repeat a year. So if he's already in top set there's nowhere 'higher' for him to go.

Hi @Diorama1 , I know I'm a bit late to the thread but wanted to say:

I would definitely not complain about the teacher - it sounds like this was just a rushed conversation at parents evening.

I would make sure your DC is answering the questions fully WITH WRITTEN WORKING and not calulating it in their head. They can get answers correct without working written out but then when they move onto harder things they can't do it in their head and get stuck.

I would ask head of maths department (or teacher), perhaps via email or school office, what maths clubs/extension clubs exist. If there isn't one, perhaps head of maths can set it up. This is something best done at a level higher than just that one teacher, which is why I would contact them.

UKMT has been mentioned but in Ireland I would also suggest looking at Bebras which is computational thinking but might be of interest. https://bebras.techweek.ie/