One of my big “beefs” at my school is the fact that we have three levels of tracking – count ’em, three. \u00a0There’s the honors track, that of course at a college prep school, most kids think they belong in. \u00a0There’s the regular track, that which is still pretty quick and difficult, and there’s the track that the kids who are sometimes, I would say, just not very motivated to learn math, or have less interest in math, or maybe come from a school with a less rigorous math program, are placed in. \u00a0These are the kids who probably all their lives have been told they are not “math people” and have been pigeon-holed as an “artist” or “writer” so they won’t actually need math when they get older. \u00a0This really, really irks me. \u00a0But I do it – I go along with a system that has been in place way before I got here. \u00a0I’m only one person – even though I cite Jo Boaler’s list of research showing why “tracking” in general is just a bad idea and hurtful – I know I can’t win.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I really shouldn’t complain because the department has let me do my thing with the geometry curriculum and I have written a PBL curriculum for the three levels. \u00a0In my 201 book, I have created scaffolded problems that I think work really well with these “low-abiity” kids and often challenge them enough to make them realize how much ability they actually have. \u00a0We just started talking about dimension and we watch these clips from Flatland: The Movie,<\/em> where Arthur T. Square meets the King of Pointland and then meets the King of Lineland.
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