Have I Failed as a Teacher?

[@PapaFlammy69]

*_Let me know your thoughts! Love ya'll

[@runningn2life818]

You could be drowning them in work. I know you want to provide every resource possible to them and that is entirely great and I thrive with that level of teaching, but maybe try giving very streamlined homework that is 5-8 questions that covers as much as it can and grade harshly on it and make your students redo it until they fully understand that very small sample of work that way you can test fundamentals. This might help more than you think. It also may not they could just be lazy little shits, but I bet probably 40% of the class is capable of passing with help and 60% is hopeless. That has worked for me in the past though and I'd honestly like to know if it was a fluke but I haven't had the chance to test it.

[@a7xmegadeth26]

Based on what you've said it seems unlikely that any of this is your fault. It sounds like a mix of student + policy issues. Some things that might help - Do the students have any avenue to speak with you privately about any issues they are having with the course work (there's a chance they might feel embarrassed to ask in front of other classmates)? An exercise you could maybe try (if you haven't already) is having the students work through the problem as a class, with minimal input from yourself - let them make mistakes, and discuss. This might help them get their abstract thinking working a bit. Another thing that might help is if there's any way you can verify their understanding of the content throughout the course so that way you can see what students are struggling with - If they're not understanding some of the basic concepts of the course near the start, they're unlikely to catch up by the end. Are you able to discuss with teachers from other classes how these students are doing academically? Is this a universal issue with this group, or are they only struggling in your class? If they're only struggling in your class, maybe the other teachers have some insight with how to best connect with the students. Honestly most of this stuff should be done by the students themselves (asking for help, working through problems as a group, speaking up if something doesn't make sense). But sometimes there's factors holding them back from doing so. Not sure if any of this would be helpful as I am not a teacher (Bio student), and there might be some differences in teaching/student culture.

[@PapaFlammy69]

The assignments are planned for about 4 weeks

[@quezzert]

Hi Flammy! I'm a grade 12 student in Australia, doing the highest level of math available in school. I'll be honest, my class is full of lazy shits too, but I'd never pin that on my teacher. If the others in the class cared, they'd take the initiative and ask questions, do the exercises you put out, or God forbid actually try in class. Sometimes, there's just nothing you can do. My only suggestion would be to put less work out, or to reassure them that it's okay if they don't attempt all of it. It sounds like with the current situation of the class, it can only go up from here, and even if they just made an attempt at one piece of homework you assigned it would be a step in the right direction. I know that when I see a piece of homework that looks really challenging, I don't even try it and just go do something else, so maybe you can try to make it seem less intimidating. I'm talking out of my ass here but comments help the algorithm so why not 🤷‍♂

[@alexdilena2520]

Have you considered an exam bank? Offer some 40 or so problems and present a subset on an exam. They may be more motivated to study if they know that the questions from the review will appear, almost exactly, on the exam. If presented in this way maybe they will be more encouraged to solve all the problems. You can manage the difficulty by increasing the pool of problems you provide. Even a lazy student will attempt to look at all the solutions.

[@franciscoreyes7370]

I've been teaching lower division college math for the last 5 years. About half the students come to class (other instructors have the same or worse attendance), students don't do the homework, don't study, don't know the most basic material from the prerequisite course, and yet we are expected to have high passing rates. Instructors and high school teachers pass these students undeservingly and they keep falling further behind with each course. Then by the time they get to my calculus class, they can't add fractions, factor, or compute sin(0).

[@farhant.3214]

can't comprehend sin(0) in calculus class is blasphemy 😭

[@wernerviehhauser94]

​@@farhant.3214nope, since we don't do trig functions anymore in minor courses here. I still predict that before 2040, either India or China will tell us how to do things because what's in the workforce or academics by then will in large parts be unable to wipe their backs without help - either because they are too old or too incompetent....

[@Issacnewton_]

maybe they should make it a little bit harder to pass the exams so that students have a fear of failing and that would make them study

[@wernerviehhauser94]

@@Issacnewton_ no use. IF you want to teach them how to work for a goal, starting in college is 15 years too late. If they don't learn it in high school, most never will.

[@Erik_The_Viking]

I've had similar experiences where the prerequisites didn't prepare them for my class, and I end up having to teach that material again. Ugh... Some clearly don't study or do homework but expect A's for some reason.

[@jbkim515]

About a week ago, I came across your channel with the video of 'solving a general solution for a pendulum'. I immediately subscribed to your channel even before the first minute of the video. What I saw in that video was a vibrant, enthusiastic, passionate, and humorous dude with an awesome pedagogy. I had some professors that had similar problems like you. They were very passionate with what they were teaching at first, but years passed and they became indifferent to their students. WE DON'T WANT THAT THING TO HAPPEN TO YOU. We just want you to be happy. That's all we want.

[@PapaFlammy69]

[@Issacnewton_]

yep we want you to be happy

[@udveetpatil8002]

​@@PapaFlammy69Yes, please don't become like that. I truly do understand your postion. I suggest you try having a genuine talk with you class if that's possible, and lay your heart out respectfully, and also ask them if they think you can do something more. Also remember that you can't always help everyone, what you can do is your best, beyond that, don't let it stress you. I know that stress is comming from care but realise how much you have power over. Do your best, push them to do their best. Please don't let your flame die papa flammy 🔥. We love you.

[@MyOneFiftiethOfADollar]

You forgot to ask for the dude's phone number.

[@rhosymedra6628]

When in my third year of teaching, I had about the same thing happen - average on a test was MUCH lower than my previous years' classes, in spite of me doing the exact same things that had helped my previous years students be successful, the dean told me "look. occasionally you will get a class where the average is far below the usual average. it doesn't happen often but it will happen and you can't beat yourself up about it".

[@realdragon]

Why is that? Is it the students, the teaching style changed, what happened?

[@Otterlier]

@@realdragonmaybe some events occurred that impacted all students in the course, if an event occurs it’s going to impact students in a way which doesn’t apply to other cohorts

[@JanB1605]

@@realdragon I feel sometimes it also comes down to class dynamics. If the classmates support each other, the class does better. But sometimes there's also a class where maybe for example a few of the more popular kids in that class don't like the teacher particularly well, and the whole class starts doing bad.

[@romanedenhofer1714]

I can tell from the last part that you really want the best for your students and I think you are authentically self-reflective. I have the feeling that you might have unrealistic expectations of your students. There is simply a different learning culture at school than at university. At university, students largely take care of understanding themselves, but at school knowledge usually needs to be served up on a silver plate - impossible not to get. As a private tutor, I have found that you can really only take one step at a time. As soon as you introduce two new phenomena at the same time in one task, it can overwhelm the student. You have to proceed very carefully and in a foolproof manner. Only when you explain a new thing and then immediately practice it many times will it be internalized. You should never want too much. Even formulating the same task slightly differently can be overwhelming. In the long term, you will progress faster than expected. You are even more efficient than if you explain several steps at once. Because that often takes its toll. At some point, you will realize that they haven't really understood something, and then you have to go back to the beginning and go over things again. Being a good teacher is a work of art. Good luck for the future!

[@o_s-24]

Doing the same test twice is a GREAT experiment. I will try to do it. I have given before questions on tests that are the EXACT same as in a homework, and just like your case, most people did them wrong

[@Viki13]

lol

[@highviewbarbell]

@@Viki13 for me anxiety is the one thing holding me back. I can be totally active in class and understand the problems, do all the homework and understand it, work through practice problems and understand them, teach other students to help them understand them, and on test day i shake constantly, am near collapse, can't think of basic solutions and end up scoring 50s, 60s, 70s, etc. Then when I get the test back I just facepalm with how I should have got 100.

[@Viki13]

@@highviewbarbell I have had slight issues with pressure during exams but on my last maths exam that I recently took I got everything right just because I told myself to calm down a bit since I was very well prepared and had great marks on the previous exams anyway so that's my tip just calm down and understand that an exam isn't that scary

[@noahprussia7622]

Students are not engaged is what it sounds like. And it isn't like the old days, where you could take a class off and talk to them as a student body where people would actually speak up and voice their opinions. It isn't that students are not engaged with you; they aren't engaged in life. Try it, sitting them all down and asking "What do you need to succeed?" and see how little they care about their grades, their families, their careers, their own lives and their futures. So many of them just see bleakness and have given up, they coast like leaves on a river. It doesn't matter if the wind or the water takes them. They think any success in life will be external and random; arbitrary.

[@goldentortoisebeetle9741]

Best comment in my opinion

[@iantaakalla8180]

The sad problem is that when they are expected to get jobs, jobs are effectively randomly given. Accidents and disasters are pretty certain to happen. You can only really avoid by concerted effort in a well-off city or by being given a chance and protection. This is just in regard to jobs. Other stuff, too, are basically doled out at random. So while studying can at least be taught to be done purposefully, it’s just another tool that will rarely be applied.

[@MihaiNicaMath]

The story you told near the end of giving the same questions on a test multiple times, but the students not improving from the first to the second writing really shows that there is something weird/unique going on with the students and there are factors clearly outside of your control. It is a really hard situation! My only advice is to make sure you take care of yourself too: its easy to get really discouraged by the results even when its not your fault and you are doing your best (and in fact are a very effective teacher!!!). Sending love from Canada

[@danieljohnsonthejetpackman1456]

*Flammy:* 85% of my students failed the test *Comments:* You suck as a teacher, utter disgrace... *Flammy:* My students failed the same test just as bad a week later *Comments:* Your students are the reason, why we need instructions on shampoo bottles.

[@sepro5135]

I think the Gesamtschule is a significant issue. I am not a teacher but I do a lot of math tutoring for students and I know exactly what you mean. For most of my students who are in 11th+ grade, we have to go through adding fractions and other super basic stuff, like manipulating equations again and again. With students on a Gesamtschule, I think it is more severe, but I think it’s definitely noticeable even in Gymnasien. Nowadays parents choose (in Baden Württemberg) if their kid goes to a Gymnasium or to a Realschule. The reality is, some people are just not built for the Gymnasium, but parents still try to force it. And a lot just check out after the 7th grade and at that point it becomes a Sisyphus-like task to try and get the ready for Abitur.

[@romainblondel8320]

There is a similar problem in Switzerland, even if professional schools/trainees is fairly promoted.

[@benhur2806]

Can relate from the other side, was utterly convinced i should go to Gymnasium in 6th grade (parente, grandparents, teachers & co.), I made it, but with the things you mentioned plus a 3 hour commute every day, yeah by the start of year 9 it was just a sisyphean slog I didn't care about... The irony is, I know someone in class who did just as well and the other class nerd, but his parents explicitly wanted him to the regular Sekundarschule instead. Back then, I thought they weee being ridiculous! Now? After having to repeat year 9, then failing out and effectively having my education F-ed over with little chance of ever recovering, he's doing just fine! Turns out his parents made the right call...

[@peterfireflylund]

@@benhur2806that commute would kill anyone! Did you have to climb up and down Matterhorn twice every day!?

[@benhur2806]

@@peterfireflylund This is both ways, so more around 1.5 hours every direction, for 3 hours total... 3 hours per direction I would've just categorically refused even as a 6th grader. 😅 Still, it was rather harsh given the relatively long school day, plus having to do (quite a substantial amount of) homework on top of being in school 9-10 hours per day. (OK, sure, we had a lunch break, but there was hardly any time to do anything beyond eating lunch given how monstrous the queues in the cafeteria were...)

[@-_addy_-]

I think the problem with thinking outside of the box is that in order to be able to do it you need a foundation of not only knowledge but internalised knowledge, which imo comes after learning something and applying it for some time. The shame is that most students are feeling like they’re being dragged between subjects, and when you add the fact that math needs application and practice to that you end up with students who are not able to answer “basic” questions. Most other subjects you can passively learn in some way - perhaps by just watching a lecture on KZbin or reading up on the definition. However math needs application and regularity in how you work with it. If you don’t dedicate time to it you’re going to have a much harder time down the line, and that’s where many people fall off. It’s also not about doing *any* application, you have to practice the right problems, the ones that are not too easy but not too hard so that you build an understanding and get used to seeing a theorem applied in different ways for instance. Knowing what to work on combined with having the self control and dedication to work on it is what is needed, and you can’t influence this directly as a teacher. I think some classes are flukes and will do worse, but this is not necessarily your fault. The only thing you can do is teach them what is required along with telling them what it takes and be there for them if they don’t understand something or is struggling with the course. But they have to put in the work.

[@Viki13]

If the students have chosen maths as a main subject (Mathe LK) that means they should expect to do some more stuff outside of school to get good or very good grades. I myself have chosen maths as a main subject and a lot of teachers told us maths would be very difficult and I read lots of scary stuff about it so I was ready to invest quite a bit of time into maths and so did a lot of my classmates and our course does well because of that

[@Ksizzle11c]

This has been mostly my issue with a lot of math; sometimes it doesn't really click until later when it's being applied in a separate subject. Sometimes I'm just brute forcing through concepts that are baffling in the moment.

[@nikolasgkikas6173]

I have been a math tutor for about 3 years. I face the same hurdles you point out in your video. Unfortunately, the level of the students is declining at an exponential rate. I really enjoy teaching math and do my absolute best to not leave my students in the dark. You cannot make them learn how to think, it is something that they themselves should do. As much as I would love to give some advice, there isn't anything you can do better. Such negative exam results should not be a ringing bell only to the teacher, but to the students as well. I wish you and your students all the best and I hope that both sides understand that it requires a lot of effort to succeed, especially in math. (Love your content btw)

[@suuujuuus]

I was almost always in trouble classes. It was a social death sentence to do good in school, you would be bullied, really maliciously bullied and teachers didnt have enough backbone for that, which I guess is understandable. I want to bring this up, to suggest that its not simply that "they are lazy". Actually, I would never use that word, since it is usually used to demean and not to observe and describe. It has no contentual value when it comes to figuring out what is acutally going on. In my time teaching at Uni I have never met a lazy student. Frustated ones, decouraged ones or overwhelmed ones? Yes. Lazy? I dont know what this even means in a non-emotional context. But I can understand the frustration and helplessness, like what else are you supposed to tell them to make things change? I experienced it as a class mindset/morale thing. In my 13th year on the FOS I got into a class that actually had a learning mindset (since it was a mix from the 12 year classes) and trouble makers in the previous years would make a 180 after some weeks. Then on the individual level, there are kids that have really horrible homes. The "lower" the school (Gymansium -> Real -> Hauptschule) the more of these kids you will have in your class. They are biologically on a lower level of a need hierachy, where emotional security and safe parental role models are more on their focus than exploration and learning. The trouble classes I was in until grade 11 were filled with them, and teachers were overwhelmed. I remember one case of a German teacher who would stop coming to class at the half-year mark. The teachers that would do the best with those classes were teachers, that would make jokes often on the behalf of one student, bite back, are able to communicate on their level, make them feel seen. It needs a good pedagogical understanding to deal with them, but most teachers I met were, from my superficial observation, just good at their subject while they lacked the much more important "ability to teach". This ability starts for me by understanding how humans learn - most of the teachers I had "intelligence" idologies, were the good kids were obviously high IQ, higher worth, and worth talking to, while the bad kids were low IQ, lower worth, and time on them was wasted anyway; Not the way you might want to do things. And ends with knowledge of communciation theories like Non-Violent-Communication (NVC) offer. The way I see it right now is that the school system generally is fucked. It seems disconnected fromt he actual job world and having the potential to harm a kids want to learn at least as much as to further it. We seem to absolutely neglect the fact that it is not normal for a human child, especially boys and troubled children, to sit still and attentive for several hours, our whole educational ideals disjointed from basic biology. Instead we prop up the good students, giving them lables like "gifted" and rewarding them, while punishing the bad ones. Reverse Robin Hood-ing like a boss😎. And much more bs. If you are interested how else we could go about, you can have a look at the Finnland or Estonia. There is also a ton of literature on the topic. Of course, nothings gonna happen from the Germans state's side in the foreseeable future.

[@peterfireflylund]

Finland has more migrants now - and curiously isn’t doing nearly as well as it used to. In fact, it does about as badly as other countries with a similar student population.

[@wernerviehhauser94]

In out textbooks, there are self-study section where the solutions are given at the end of the book. I sometimes copy questions from the textbook for my tests. I told my students. About a dozen times. What do I get to hear? "Unfair! We never did questions like that!" Well, hope only dies last, but right there she's already six foot deep.....

[@trevornoble337]

Newer math teacher from Canada here and have been watching your channel for a while. What you described is very similar to what I do with my classes. I think as you pointed out, it boils down to the structure that you have to work with and also that the students are not taking accountability of their own learning. I set the bar with my students on the first day that I want them to fail in-class because if they are not doing that, they are not giving their best effort in learning. Furthermore, I can help them during the in-class exercises if I know where they are struggling, which I would prefer to see as opposed to seeing the first place they struggle is on the actual quiz or test. This can later be a talking piece when I see students who are not trying and are claiming that they are “doing their best”. Keep your head up, Jens, you are doing great as a teacher. These reflective videos are further evidence that you care for your students and want them to succeed :)

[@MrTimAway]

It is very clear that you are passionate about it and that it's very frustrating to you when students aren't putting in the required effort. A piece of personal advice: Don't call your students "lazy f*cks" in a publically available youtube clip. I understand your passion, I also understand that you like them and I understand that they are lazy. You can get yourself into a lot of trouble, because 20 Karen moms will call the principal and complain that you referred to their little angels as "lazy f*cks".

[@douglasstrother6584]

"MY NAME IS GUNNERY SARGEANT HARTMANN, YOUR SENIOR DRILL INSTRUCTOR! IF YOU SURVIVE MY ISLAND ..."

[@V2II-r1f]

Sir, you are great. Also, keep the videos going and thank you so much for all the valuable help you have been for all of us!

[@IsmailOM23]

You're not alone brother flammy. I'm from London, UK and I've taught A Level Maths Physics and Chemistry for 6 years. A Levels are the exams we take to satisfy university entry requirements. Most courses require at least one of these STEM subjects. My first two years (2018-2020), I had no issues getting them to understand the syllabus. Many of them would study independently and ace tests. Since the Pandemic and increase in distractions like TikTok, teaching from Sept 2020 onwards has been a mission, they can't focus or engage in class discussions. I pride myself in getting them to discuss ideas as much as possible so I can understand how they process information. But these new crops of kids just suck, I have got better as a teacher and tried adapting as much as possible, even making Tiktoks working through problems but my students attainment has tanked since before the pandemic. They have a nasty sense of entitlement, expecting teachers to do all the leg work. They can't focus for more than a couple of minutes and can't seem to apply their knowledge, which is what A-levels assess in at least 70% of questions.

[@andreivulpe6148]

It's my third year of me teaching math in my country and I feel you so relatable! I "grew up" in math alongside your channel and it's interesting for me that I share similar fate with my favorite youtuber.

[@Santi._.403]

I appreciate your work, you’re part of my inspiration while I worked through my master’s. Take care of yourself, sometimes we are defeated. Take some time to recover and build your confidence back. Also if pedagogy is your passion, consider androgogy. This is to say, give a context to the maths we use. I start my classes with a brief history of mathematics and the problems that were attended throughout different stages of humanity and at the end ask them “what problems exist today?”, and they like that. The idea is to get them to be curious about the world outside of their school. Best of luck.

[@beatoriche7301]

I gotta say, I really like your videos on math education specifically, as I enjoy your reflections on teaching quite a bit. And in a way, I understand the perspective of the commenters you highlighted in that you don't wanna start by blaming the students, who are, in a way, currently being churned through an educational regimen that they don't have the kind of deeper knowledge to reflect on (and while they're often going through personally difficult times in life to boot). Student failures do reflect on stuff like their personal work ethic, they do reflect on the teacher themselves, but most of all, they reflect on broader institutional conditions in my view. If the teacher is forced to go through the curriculum at lightning speed and isn't even able to allot more time to, say, introducing logarithms for students who've never heard of the concept, to use your example, then the bulk of the blame lies with educational authorities in my view, and it maddens me that they are so rarely actually scrutinized. I guess in a way, it's easier for a student to start blaming their teacher or even themselves than it is for them to blame some people in suits that they'll probably never even meet. The problem starts with how we introduce math to children in my book - as a bunch of algorithms and computations to carry out (it still baffles me that elementary schools insist on teaching these weird algorithms for the arithmetic operations, for example - aside from maybe division, which I also only understood at a much later point, I have never used these algorithms after finishing elementary school. And for good reason: these algorithms are only marginally more efficient than just, say, multiplying by brute force once you have an understanding of decimal representations and distributivity (and I mean, hot take: humans aren't computers, so I don't feel like computational efficiency should be a priority; the longer method where students actually understand every step of what they're doing will always be superior in my book. It's also why I consistently favor completing the square over the quadratic formula, for instance; the time spent hammering in a formula with problem after problem could just be spent slowly going through a couple of questions so students actually understand what they're doing.), no child at that level actually _understands_ what they're doing (nor are they expected to), and it wastes a lot of valuable time.). And as grading pressure in this area ramps up and kids are made (through the educational system and often also friends and family) to view math as this test of their academic ability, they will understandably get math anxiety, which, on yet another side note, I certainly think is a legitimate concept, albeit not really one individual educators can address very well. So, here's my hot take: Just get rid of all standardized tests (which only add pressure to cover topics in a potentially haphazard way and practice question types over developing actual understanding) and curricula, leaving it up to individual math teachers and their students to decide what to learn and how. Hell, abolish grading while you're at it - granted, there will probably always be students who just aren't interested in math and don't want to learn the material, but I don't think they benefit from having to work their asses off to demonstrate their aptitude in something they hate learning about either, and if anything, that's only gonna make them hate the subject even more. I think it's critical to realize that mathematical experiences are highly individualized in their very nature and that students need to learn stuff individually and at their own pace.

[@pirueta444]

Man, it would be great if you offered a math curse onlne

[@НиколайКошмар-ь7б]

Math curse? 💀 What I am more for math blessing

[@o_s-24]

Here's a math curse: fuctor you, you son of a vector, you derivative of a constant

[@greyATK]

I too think a Flammy math curse would be awesome.

[@jobda1211]

tho i don't know if it's still available during pandemic he did a math course(?) on youtube (but in german)

[@tusharsr2709]

why would you want a curse lmao

[@Alonefern]

I don’t know if you’re still reading the comments, but I just wanna share an experience with a class that I took. The teacher the class before every test would go through the entirety of it. Not similar problems, the exact same problems and give step by step the solutions. Not only that but we were allowed to take notes on him doing it and bring those notes into class (he didn’t even check them so you couldve just written the answers and nothing else). So there is literally no reason for students to not only get an A, but everyone should get a 100. But when we got our tests back I heard students either glad that they got a C, or frustrated that they had to retake the test because they failed (which again would be the exact test which they would now have a physical copy of). This was a few years ago in a high school electronics class and there were (almost predictably) fires that were started. This was just an elective, an entirely optional class, but even though students had to go out of their way to pick it they still didn’t care enough to be safe or even just pay attention for the hour and a half to write down test answers. Personally I loved that class and the teacher and I was glad I could make cool circuits, and it’s the reason im majoring in electrical engineering. So even though most students nowadays don’t give the bare minimum, know that you are making the difference in the lives of those who are trying

[@ovadof5029]

When you give your students the same exam twice and they fail just as bad as the first time, to me that’s an indication that they are just not studying well enough. A dedicated student would repeat the first test to get used to their teacher’s style of exams, and that goes for every subject not just maths.

[@johnny3475]

When I first taught, I was assigned geometry. I remember slowly lowering my expectations and standards over the weeks. I gave a group quiz on logic, but they all somehow did poorly. I even put the same question on their exam and told them 🤦‍♂️. I also told them I’m too lazy to write original problems and that I’ll be pulling them from the review section in their book. This was a whole year of geometry condensed into a 7-week summer course. Our community colleges in California don’t offer remedial courses anymore, so if they’re weak then that’s pretty much it. They’re doomed in courses they’re not prepared for. It was my first time teaching and I wasn’t trained to teach high school students (technically they enrolled in a community college). Next time will definitely be different.

[@DarinBrownSJDCMath]

Yup, AB 1705 is going to be a cluster****.

[@greyemrednus]

As a former student, I feel sorry for my teachers - often times I just couldn't get the importance of taught concepts. Not even my best teachers could convey that as far as they could see. The positive impact good teachers (the ones that didn't turn numb in an often numbing environment) had on me was often realized only many years later. So please keep faith and being a great teacher I am convinced you are. Also keep venting. Cheers

[@krabkrabkrab]

I get it too. I teach a graduate course, and most content I teach is at the second year physics level. The reason is that it is accelerator physics, and so has an inter-disciplinary aspect; they are meant to apply physics concepts learned as undergraduates to unfamiliar problems... real world problems that impact design of particle accelerator and transport systems. In spite of providing them with homework that they cannot fail (I keep returning their attempts to them until they get it perfect), and a sheet containing all the important formulas they could need, in spite of all that, many of them could not do a "newish" problem on the exam. They could do problems that were identical to a homework problem, but not new ones that used the same concepts. If we fail such people, we get hell from the university. So we just find a way to pass them. This continued farce is bad for the field. Honestly, we actually pass people that I would never ever take on as grad students. In summary, I conclude that many students get degrees without actually knowing the material. They've just memorized standard problems and can reproduce them. They don't think physics; they just memorize.

[@YassFuentes]

I do empathize with you. PhD on physics here. Two years ago I started as applied business maths teacher for 1st degree on BBA, also in a private university. It was so hard for me to transfer my knowledge due to the lack of very basic principles, and probably to my inexperience. But, trust me, I was so compromised with teaching. All my fellow teachers, experienced ones, are telling that students are coming with quite low fundamentals and commitment. They say that it's due to the pandemic. I have no clue. Anyways, this current academic year I rejected to teach. Maybe next year I'll try again. Great video, btw. Stay strong.

[@syq1729]

When I did my Matheabitur, we had a really old-school teacher from east berlin (best teacher I ever had), and he always came to class with hard problems from obscure soviet text books. his exams were also quite hard, and I remember the first exam we took also had a terrible average. on the other hand he was very kind with oral grades (tbh it was all frontalunterricht or we were calculating in silence, so he just used oral grades to make sure no one would fail the semester) in the end we all destroyed the zentralabitur. so from my experience i can agree with what you said- better to give bad grades during the school year than to give them false sense of security for the abitur. from my experience tutoring, people cannot do basic arithmetic operations (aus der summe kürzen usw, die üblichen verdächtigen) i guess because of lack of practice. I don't know how to get them to do the exercises. my approach was always to try and make them like maths, but that only worked like 20% of the time... and i am not good at giving "standpauken". I do think there needs to be some "emotional" basis, but I guess that can vary. sometimes I feel like all it takes is for them to solve one problem on their own to see that they can do it, and then they're hooked. what my old math teacher did was I think really good: once or twice per semester he gave out an exercise sheet (for example just with a bunch (like 50) of degree 2,3, and4 equations, also from some russian book). if you put in the effort you could really boost your oral grade, and also was of course excellent practice. anyway those were my two cents, probably a load of rubbish. good luck with everything! ich glaub an dich haha, du hältst da die stellung im klassenzimmer!

[@danielmesserschmidt1591]

In my opinion, it's all a question of pressure. I myself took my Abitur in Baden Würtenberg in 2018 after going through all the other school institutions and now have a degree in chemistry. basically, i have experienced over all these different types of schools that the teachers who had the most respect/distance to the students also had the most pressure and thus also achieved the best results in terms of average, of course you should also remain human and not attach a job advertisement for mc donalds to a 1-point exam (all already experienced). i have also noticed that in some federal states it is not necessary to take a final exam in math for your abitur. you can simply replace math with another subject, or you can also pass your abitur with just one point in the final math exam. which in the end takes away the importance of mathematics for the students, especially if they do not choose a course of study that requires mathematical understanding in any way. if there are no consequences for not passing the exam, many uninterested students will not make any effort to pass the exam either

[@CopyDopey]

Back in high school my math class was taught by one of the toughest teachers in the school. This teacher used to prepare students for the national maths olympiad. Nobody in my class has aced more than one test per semester. I was in the top 3 and my marks gravitated around 80-90%, while about 80% of my classmates scored around 40-60%. Our scores did not fit a Gaussian distribution haha, it was a pretty skewed curve. Everytime this teacher introduced a topic, I kept wondering to myself if the teacher was going to finally tell us how the topic will fit into the overall ”picture” of math i.e. how it will connect to previously taught topics and how it will connect to future topics, how the certain math formalism was discovered and what should be the intuition encapsulated by the said formalisms. Unfortunately, my I was left dissappointed every time. The first class consisted of just writing down axioms, definitions and formulas. The following classes consisted of solving convoluted questions and proving uninspiring results. I will admit that the teacher was really neat and he actually proved things in more than one way, so like he didnt just leave us with proof by LEM for example. However, the results still appeared arbitrary and contrived and 80% of the class consisted of employing tricks and tactics. I always wondered to myself why the teacher doesnt just give us the algebraic tricks he wants us to employ. A lot of the time it didnt even feel like we were applying actual new concepts. His tests were draconic from a time pressure point of view and nobody really had the time to sit and think about the final problem on the test. You basically had to have really fast handwriting speed and to basically memorize the solutions presented in class in order to have time to think about the novel final problem. When studying, my first instinct was always that of asking the following : why is this useful ? what is the intuition behind this ? how is this supposed to be used in order to construct other mathematical concepts ? how did the author of this discover this ? Of course, I knew that the teacher could not provide answers for this, so I was kind of numb towards math because I felt like I had to censor my inner monologue as it made me ask useless questions for the class. I didnt really like meaningless symbol pushing and I wasnt particularly good at it neither. I remember back in the 12th grade when the teacher introduced Groups and especially Isomorphisms. I was like ”holy shit, this is ANALOGY in math !”. It felt like we were finally doing something constructive in a sense. Of course, the teacher didnt even feel the need to tell us a few things about analogy in math, at least to point out stuff like ”hey, remember the geometry you did in 6th grade with the whole triangle similarity thing ?”. Anyway, when I was studying for the tests (usually 3-4 before the test) I would try to reproduce the proofs on my own, as if I were to come up with them on my own. I would try to sketch a high level idea of the proof and I would only take glimpses at the proof when I was stuck. This approach of mine rendered me inefficient during tests because I couldnt just write the proofs directly from memory, I had to reconstruct them. Sometimes it even happened for me to finally understand a proof during the test itself ! My point is, my high school math experience was like this : heavy emphasis on memorization + emphasis on esoteric problems which seemed rather contrived with their sole purpose being that of discouraging the students + lack of meaningful examples and connections. I always felt like studying wasnt worth it because I knew I was not to come up with those contrived symbol pushing exercises given my lack of talent for that stuff + my interest in actual conceptual learning. I took a look at the exam that you gave your students and I must say that I WISH that my high school exams were like that ! Your exam problems encouraged the students to view math as a collection of concepts which can be chained together in order to construct something, they werent trick questions for the sake of trick questions. Based on the videos that you post on this channel, I think that your way of teaching is engaging and encouraging. I wish that I had a teacher like you back in high school. Yes, 80% of the students failing is not a good sign, but we have to keep in mind that we are talking about teenagers who might just not be interested in this stuff, some might even view it cringe. In the end, you are just one specific person who cant hope to ignite interest in math in all your students, thats just not possible. As long as you provide your students with lots of meaningful examples or you at least provide them with ways they can procure such examples for themselves, I think that 80% of your job is done. You can guide a horse to water but you cant make it drink it. I sense that you are doing a good job of guiding the proverbial horse to water.

[@gittinggud1507]

Just curious in what country did you go to high school? Have never heard of Groups or Isomorphisms being introduced in highschool.

[@CopyDopey]

@@gittinggud1507 Romania. Our curriculum is a tad weird because we are introduced to vectors in the 9th grade (the first year of high school, it is mostly a geometric interpretation of vectors, we are not introduced to functions as vectors for instance) while we are introduced to matrices only in the 11th grade. In the 11th grade we are also introduced to calculus and a bit of analysis using the epsilon-delta formalism. In the 12th grade we are introduced to groups, rings, a bit of field stuff and polynomial rings if I remember correctly.

[@d077Z]

@@gittinggud1507Groups use to be in the syllabus in Australia. I now go through a crash course in rings and groups as part of setting up the field properties of Q (and R) in junior(7-9) highschool extension classes. Unironically how do you even teach (HS) algebra without invoking the field properties? I guess you can not mention the world field?

[@prithvidhyani2002]

@@CopyDopey abstract algebra in high school is crazy!

[@goldentortoisebeetle9741]

I think they told your teacher “teach them algebra” and he was like “ok then” lmao

[@sking3014]

You are amazing. You are helping people around the world!

[@louiswhaley258]

From years of experience at Kindergarten to 12th grade (vicariously through my daughter) and undergraduate education (as a college professor), if the administration backs you up, it doesn't matter how many students you flunk, but if the administration gives into tearful students and irate parents, you will receive the blame and be forced to change or to leave. I knew one Ph. D. with decades of experience in both, teaching and industry, who was saddled with a class of about 30 students. Half of them flunked. This happened despite the Ph. D. setting up study sessions etc. that were optional for both, the teacher and the students, and despite the general knowledge among faculty that nearly every student in his section had had trouble with the course in the past. He was put on probation etc. and the grades were taken out of his control. He was not a hard teacher. He was very friendly and loved his students. He had great ways of explaining problems. But the administration had to satisfy the parents and students who "weren't getting their money's worth." Eventually he was given fewer and fewer sections and he finally stopped teaching. Sad. So it's not you. It's the luck of the draw. Keep improving. Best wishes.

[@Fru1tyy]

i definitely know some peeps studying pre-uni with me that have trouble doing indices or algebra in general which is crazy, jokes aside I am still student and I aspire to teach maths as well, watching your videos in the past was always a joy especially on topics regarding analysis and complex analysis. You're one of my inspirations for my passion in mathematics :D I'll always appreciate the work you've done on youtube and I believe other people do as well. So even though I can't speak in terms of teacher to teacher I just wanna say, Keep your head up king !

[@AIexPlayGames]

I'm a student and last year in computer science we had like the exact same scenario as you descibed here. I love computers and I study a lot, so for me the class went very well, but besides me and two other students almost everyone failed the tests. During breaks they were shit talking the teacher, but like, there was nothing wrong with how he taught, they just did not study at all. Eventually everyone got a passing grade but the reason was because they started cheating and our teacher became more and more lenient with their grades over the course of the schoolyear.

[@Guylovesleep6802]

22:45 i am at this and i want to say have you considerate the students not knowing what they have to learn? Students already as you can see struggle with regular curriculum and while logarithm is needed and they need to learn it on their own but do they know they need learn it and not just treat it as something that can solved using calculator or other ways. Students feel they do not have the time. While it is true students are extremely lazy right now and it plays a role but it is also true they never have time. They act lazy because it feels like there is a lot of things to do while balancing other stuff(family, social life etc which is not possible to balance everything) so they avoid doing it. "Students have a lot of things in there plate and they try to avoid adding more" is my main point here. (English isnt my first language, so sorry for all of the grammar and not so good wording. But keep up what you are doing)

[@korakatk318]

From a students perspective, I was definitely lazier when I was at that age too. I think most people don’t realize they don’t need a teacher to crack open a textbook and learn for themselves (I didn’t when I was younger.) Those who will pursue math or something math adjacent will learn this either in your class or soon, or they won’t be able to succeed because I think most higher level classes expect you to self-learn a lot of content outside of the classroom. If anything the classroom just tells you what you need to learn and tests if you learned it, all the actual learning is done at home.

[@douglasstrother6584]

You come in here with a skull full of mush, and if you survive, you'll leave thinking like a lawyer." ~ "Professor Kingsfield" John Houseman's character in "The Paper Chase". (from way back when)

[@t.b.4923]

Maybe I can give my mustard to this from a students perspective. I did my Abitur in 2023 in NRW (don't know if you are also from NRW, because the curricula vary significantly, to my knowledge). Currently, Im studying physics and am not in the group of people to struggle with basics, but I can maybe comment from observation of friends and classmates who struggled greatly. We had a great teacher, but he didn't give a fuck if the students did the homework or not. I always did mine because the task where pretty easy. The students who got 2-4 Points in every exam were the same people that never did their homework. One friend of mine was also in this group, but he busted his ass of in preparation for the abitur and got a 3 (9 points if I remember the conversion correctly). So my advice is, be hartnäckig (can't think of a english equivalent) with your pupils and ensure that their do their homework. Control each one of them individually, and try to make them care about your response (they should feel guilty if they didn't do their homework). This sound fairly harsh, but it is needed for lazy folks. (I myself am lazy as fuck, my higher maths exam is in two days and I barely studied till now💀)

[@PapaFlammy69]

thx for the comment, best of luck on your exam! =D

[@t.b.4923]

thank you ;)

[@camicus-3249]

I'd usually get detention for missed homework. Realistically, if there was no proper obligation to study at home I would have done much worse lol If someone fails to run a marathon after exactly 0 days of training, no one is surprised. But when someone fails a test after doing no practice, they are simply "not a maths person".

[@namemanguy]

This worked very well when I was in HS. In Senior years it was expected that when exam results arrived it would be accompanied by a passionate speech from our teachers on how only 10% of kids got decent scores despite us spending a month doing similar practice exams. Eventually, they would clamp down and give out detentions if you didn't do HW or meet assignment checkpoints, and if they didn't more than half the class would fail out of the class.

[@t.b.4923]

the exam was pretty easy :) (i will probably still get a 4.0 or fail 😂)

[@2wheels2]

as a student, i had a tough time understanding why i need to do the homework, i would cheat or just wing it. when teachers gave us a lot of work, it became too much and i simply wont even attempt 1 question. what could be happening is that you give them too much homework and they freeze due to the size of the task that is asked of them. try giving 1 homework page a week that would cover the majority of the subjects covered within the week. for example, if you have the derivative as the subject of the week, your homework sheet will have stuff they wont know till friday and stuff they will learn on monday. this way the kids will feel like what they learn can be applied and they need to learn it. mark these homework sheets with 8 questions. have a surplus of questions set aside for those that ask for it. sometimes less is more. and give the kids a reason to learn and keep what they learn. don't make the homework tedious, make it engaging and interesting: no easy task is remembered, it is only done; hard tasks will be remembered and ingrained once solved. hope this helps and good luck

[@pseudolullus]

21:50 I train graduate students and, well, they get really angry when asked to learn or review stuff by themselves even though the ability to do so is an explicit part of their training. And yes, they are required to know calculus when enrolled in a science program, biologists use differential equations and linear algebra for modeling like everyone else. They'll have to review or relearn math by themselves.

[@hennesjackobs9439]

As somebody who is pointed out in the section of mean comments, I did not write it with that intention. My attempt is an approach of section "Fehlerkultur" - mainly doing mistakes, analyze them and progress as a part of learning culture. What I find helpful is to speak openly with your students about the test results and ask them how they felt during the test. They will give you implicit hints what the major difficulty was for them. If the time control and concentration was fine for them, then the amount of problems in the exam (my major point) was not the driving factor. Sometimes they just confess that they did not prepare the way they should. You did not fail. It is a manner of offer and demands. For some psychological strangeness more offer can lead to less demand. If do more for the students, they become less active. The equilibrium of accountability drifts towards the teacher in the view of the students. In this cases, less can be more. The effectivesness to motivate students for abstract thinking and self-learning has ends. Students do not feel the responsibility that they have for themselves. It is a driving problem that students strive for different goals in a Gesamtschule and the school, teachers, students adjust towards the closest goal. These students are inherently less prepared for the Oberstufe. They are not used to problem solving or thinking out of the box since this would confuse students who strive for the Realschulabschluss. You can meet the heterogeneity with problems that are more open for different solutions and prepared help ("abgestufte Lernhilfen"). It does not solve the problem of dismissed topics.

[@gavinmoss1603]

i just graduated with a math degree and STEM education minor, I thought I wanted to teach but I realized that math teachers don't get to teach math. I will forever be a tutor reviewing how to add fractions no matter what age I choose to teach

[@starter497]

Watched the video. My suggestion is to construct problem solving questions during class and let them develop critical analysis skills. I found in my years of teaching its better to teach few topics with high depth problem for them to figure out in class without your assistance (they wont do it diligently at home). Yes the german exam may require all types of question but if you can highlight the important topics, some topics students can "reason" through the question without needing to be taught explicitly using their problem solving skills. Homework is resources for practice after they gained the foundation but many students are lazy early on so you need to instill good habits to them. This is also where you can add all types of questions that arent covered in class. Also letting the studentd know the expectation of the class early on goes a long way. Make them have graded homework assignments on definition. Let them know that the students are going to struggle on assignments and if they are not they are doing it wrong. Remind them everyday about homework by doing a warmup on homework to see who actually did it. Ofc incentivize those who did and keep requiring students who did NOT do homework to solve questions on warmup in front of the class.

[@shay4210]

As a PHD maths/physics student who is a teaching assistant, I 100% can see both sides, and I understand your frustration, after watching this video I went back and solved all the questions on the exam from the last video, and I agree with you, it was a really simple exam on properties of derivatives and functions. The exam was completely fair, the functions & values were nice to work with, and anyone who was prepared would’ve passed. I learned something from one of my professors when I was going for my bachelor’s degree and it stuck with me, and I now use it with the students I assist with, and I think it could help so I’ll share it with you, maybe you can try it. You definitely care about all your students and want to see them do well, I can see that from the video. When I make a homework assignment or exam for a math class, I make it so 70% of the questions are pure theory, and the remaining 30% are ‘real-world problems’ / application of the topic & relation to the last section. So if it was a paper on derivatives, the theory portion would have questions like “State the first/second derivative of the given function” and “A function has a stationary point at (a, f(a)) if f ’(a) equals ___”. The remaining 30% would be the application and relation part. For derivatives I typically will give a basic physics question with a position function being a polynomial and ask for the velocity and acceleration equations, and have the student explain in their own words, what the derivative means for the question they just solved. Then, in another question I’d ask for a ‘mini proof’ in relation to limits (Here, they learn limits and continuity before they learn differentiation). So I’ll give them a function and have them explain why this function is differentiable, then later on in the question I’ll give them the derivative, and ask them to verify it using the limit definition of the derivative. On homework assignments I try to do some of the thinking for them as I understand the topic is not fully understood yet, but for the exam I let them show me what they know, and only provide enough information for them to work with, with a couple easy questions that I call ‘freebies’ just so they can at least get some points. It's also a weighted in favour of the theory, so a student won't fail for not being able to think critically, but also won't be rewarded with the most points possible as they didn't go beyond and think outside the box with what a derivative represents. I think that helps as a teacher since when you grade the student’s work, you can see exactly what you need to focus on making sure they understand, whether it be theory and method of solving the problem, the application and critical thinking skills, or both. Like if mostly everyone got a derivative using the chain rule wrong, you know you need to review that again, but if they get everything wrong, even get the freebies wrong, then that’s on them for not putting in enough effort. If they won’t put the effort into learning, that is not a reflection on you as a teacher, just remember that. Good luck with the rest of the school year! (sorry this comment is so long lol)

[@PapaFlammy69]

all godd, thxfor the comment

[@Illusioner_]

From the perspective of a high school student, you are an absolutely amazing teacher. With the help of yt channels like you and 3b1b, I think that I am finally starting to understand calculus. The way you teach math is honestly very fun, you make everything seem easy. Have you asked professors who taught the same course before you about how they did it? Maybe looking at the tests they gave out, and seeing how well their class was doing might help. Also, maybe you shouldn't hand out the solution too early, that might cause them to just refer to it completely. You should probably give them a week or so to try and come up with their solution before sharing yours. I really think this is a problem with exams in general. I think they should be reasonably hard, not too hard, but if they don't make you think, whats the point. Any math exam that doesn't require you to come up with your own solution is bad. And people should really not worry about getting bad grades [ they are going to worry tho ] . The whole point of math in school is to learn problem solving, and if people would rather get good grades on an easy test than learn how to reason through solving problems on their own, thats just really sad .

[@Rachel.comedy]

I am a student teacher at a high school, and for me your test was easy. I also tutored college-level math courses and what I noticed is a lot of students follow procedure and want the answer. It is rare a student is willing to take time out of their day to try to digest and understand the material

[@romainblondel8320]

My classmates do the same : only doing all the homework the day juste before the test and asking the teacher at this time. I think this is a problem from our times (and I'm in maths option with this problem). For example in physics we were 5/20 with 5.5 or 6 out of 6 for grade and the rest was under the average so I think it's the laziness of my generation, sadly. I've another example: in maths, the technic test about derivatives has a class average of 3.8/6 wher my teacher was expecting 4.5/6 from his previous class (note: he is one of the most experienced of my school). So I wish you the best of luck with your students. Have a nice day to everyone who reads this comment.

[@levislevitas]

consider the entire dynamic, for kids who are raised on easy mode your class may be a big shock to their system vs the same material 20 years ago. it's much harder for kids now to do work if they are used to being lazy. as a parent this is my observation that the initial resistance to doing work is severe, but once they get past that hurdle more learning makes further learning easier. but as a teacher you don't have all the levers to control their activities in a way that would be able to force them to do the work.

[@RandomPerson-yq1qk]

I am currently tutoring somone in math who will be taking the Abitur this year (non germans: basically graduating high school) and then wants to become a teacher and one of the subjects she wants to teach is math. The person can't properly work with fractions consistently. a * b/c sometimes becomes a*b/a*c. They had no idea how to add fractions. I am kinda confused how math is done at their school. Simplifying fractions wasn't really understood properly. I think it has gotten better though. Power laws weren't any better really. But honestly I don't even mind that too much. Apparently they never heard of commutativity or associativity. All calculations were basically done by pure intuition or memorisation instead of a solid framework of reasoning. Even when the rules like distributivity were written out they couldn't really use them well enough. As an example they couldn't derive the binomial formulas like (a+b)² using these three rules, they could only draw some arrows basically showing HOW to compute the formula. Implications and equivalences were unheard of concepts. I think this is far far worse. Students learn to solve problems and calculate with intuition without ever really backing it up with a solid understanding and reasoning of the underlying concepts. Intuition is important and students don't need high level math rigour, but we don't need people that can regurgitate the quadratic formula. Even in school at a certain grade students should be taught to do math by using formal logic and get a solid understanding about some of the concepts. Some form of proper logic should be required.

[@FoolishGuru42]

It's an interesting conundrum. I can relate to the story as I've had a lot of classes go the same way. And yours is a very different situation to mine if you are teaching them multiple years. On one hand, it's entirely possible they are just lazy. I don't want to discount that. But I imagine there's a variety of issues. I would point 2 things out though. One is that you have a difficult job in overcoming a pervasive mentality that 'math is hard. I'm not a math person'. The second is that while any given test might feel like a measurable data point to you, it's a strand in a much larger tapestry that is their lived math experience. It's pretty easy to reach a point of hopelessness for them and feel like like no matter what you do, there's no point. So even though this feels like a clear "Here's one test repeated. It'd be so easy to improve". The volume of math can be very overwhelming when you consider potential gaping holes and years of life telling them they are bad at math. I don't want to say give up on them, because that's not quite right. But managing your expectations at this point is important. And it sounds like there's a lot of work that could be done towards going back to something they can be successful on and maybe modeling what successful studying/progress looks like.

[@manankumath]

This is heartbreaking to watch man, to know you're still trying new ways and doing your best even after seeing no improvement in the students is simply remarkable. I hope your efforts can bring change.

[@ralftoenjes6076]

I have been teaching physics and math teachers at university here in Germany for over 10 years. There is a race to the bottom in maths and physics education at the moment. One, there are not enough teachers so they take anybody. Two, to increase the number of university graduates the curriculum is cleansed. Not only your students have problems with logarithms, but actual physics education students have too. So that's the level we have to orient our courses at. Three, those half baked physics teachers prepare the ground for future generation of teachers and spread math anxiety. Four, math and physics didactics departments are weighing in, basically micro managing the highschool teachers in Germany, telling them how to teach. (have a peek at this guy : kzbin.info/www/bejne/fZnQdox4aLCkY9E but he is going down a dark path...) As for your class, no amount of material you put in front of them will help if they dont have the capacity for it. And to increase this capacity you need to kindle their passion for abstract puzzle solving somehow. If not you, who else could? I hope you're not seriously asking the question if you have failed as a teacher.

[@addcoding8150]

First of; I think you are doing a good job, but you need to differentiate your statement: "Have I Failed as a Teacher" -> definitely not. You care about your students and are trying your best. "Have I Failed Teaching" -> Yes, because your students failed your tests, that you intended for them to pass. And failing to teach is normal and to be expected. Nobody is perfect and you have no control over your students' lives. TL;DR: watch the "Systems Thinking Speech by Dr. Russell Ackoff" (I swear it is about education/educating). ______________________________ The next thing is that you seem to think that you can teach your students something. This is impossible. Learning happens when you have a mental model and then validate it. You can't insert your fingers into their brains to build a model for them. And you can't fail for them. Both tasks have to be done by the student, not the teacher. So, what can you do? The only answer I've come up with in my years of giving extra tutoring (Nachhilfe) is to motivate the students: (The following advice is heavily biased and I know that it might be hard to implement in a classroom setting, but it is what worked for me) Try to give the student a real problem. Not a task, but a problem. This has to be something that interests the student. The first lesson I just spent listening to whatever the student tells me. It results in us doing no school work, but it's vital that I learn what moves the student in everyday life. Afterward, I can give the students problems until they think one of them is interesting. The most ridiculous example of that was a seventh grader (13y.o.) who made like 4 d*** jokes in the first 45m lesson and told me in the second that he started playing Fortnite. I then proposed to measure the sizes of the **** of the character(s) in Fortnite and after 3 sessions he could do calculations with percentages and such (Dreisatz) fluently since he needed to convert pixels to centimeters and back. That's obviously an extreme example, but I just wanted to illustrate that they often need something that interests them to become interested in the math required for it. Other examples were me looking into climate science with a student and evaluating local climate records (grade 11, graph analysis). Another student wanted to make games, so I just grabbed the basic unreal engine demo project and we made shaders for it in shadertoy (grade 10, functions). And for probabilities, I often was able to use video games, since they are like mini-casinos anyways, or friend group/community relationships. (grade 13, probability). One thing that seems to be most crucial is the severity of feedback and frequency of feedback. The motivation of students who spend an hour calculating something and then failing was gone afterward and took a long time to regenerate. Students who used interactive tools like Shadertoy or other graphic visualizations (Desmos, Wolfram, ...), had less of a problem, since the errors were reported instantly and the changes were always small. I know that I recommend it from the point of privilege that I teach/taught 5 people at once at max. I was able to just tell them to bring their laptops or tablets with them and keep an eye on the usage, which was... difficult in a classroom setting. But I can assure you they never wanted to spend time with me in the first 2 sessions, because it was a thing their parents wanted. This is also the reason why Brilliant is a bad place to send students IMO (I have not used them for 3 years, maybe things changed). They require the student to be interested in the topic before starting. If you have trouble with motivation, they will not solve it.

[@pauliunknown8118]

I studied maths in Uni, and so my aunt and uncle asked me to tutor my cousins in high-school on separate occasions, both were abysmal. All I can say is that there is a huge failure in the structuring of mathematics education in Public school, which, for the most part, puts teachers in an impossible situation, AND there is a huge cultural failure, a perversive anti-mathematical attitude which conditions people to fear mathematics from the very beginning, and to view it as some obscure and intractable subject which only geniuses can grasp. I don't want to say that it is the Fault of TikTok and internet children, but there is something about the youths nowadays which predispose them against reasoning for themselves, in the very tangible mathematical sense.

[@Guylovesleep6802]

As much as i would like to say more lectures or trying teach them more harder. It is not going to work. They need motivation or something to make them work but i have no idea what to say

[@tenns]

I feel i always did bad on tests during high school, i was always confused, it was nebulous, and I didn't "get it". I wasn't confident in what I could do or what could be done to solve a problem. I now study physics and it's much clearer when I've actually understood something. The problem is the lack of time we get as students in math class, where we can actually talk with a teacher and work through the confusion. This is the main reason I feel students fail. They often are quite close to understanding and being able to work on more difficult questions, but they are not quite there. I could see it in the few students that did "get it", and would do well. They saw the big picture and could focus on the technical steps that allowed them to solve most problems. The reason most of them did get it, was not the teacher, it was their parents. Almost without exception, all those kids that did well had parents that worked in engineering, physics and math jobs, that went to super difficult universities, passed incredible exams. Their parents tutored them, and the kids could always ask their parents for technical and big picture stuff. On the other hand, i had done the homework, prepared for the exam, and was still unsure of myself. Add on top of that that I am quite slow, and get easily stressed, and I would always get less than average grades. Teachers always labeled me as lazy and that I didn't try hard enough to work but that I was 'brilliant' and could do better if worked more. This is not at all what was happening. Yes, I struggled to get myself to do homework, by lack of motivation (adhd) but I always did do the homework and assignements, but they never helped solve the confusion, and I could never get on top of it, and see the big picture, as well as solve the technical minutia. I was like a mouse trapped in a maze never knowing where to go, or how to even get somewhere. It's the same problem i faced in writing essays in literature or history class, I could never figure out what I should say, or how to formulate it, in a coherent manner. Yet because i forced myself to do the minimum, and do the homework, i could get good enough grades in my private school, because most of the other student hadn't spent enough time getting to know some of the technical steps. Without exceptions, the kids that did well, were either geniuses, or normal kids, whose parents could teach the class better than the teacher, and would have killed them if the kids hadn't done the homework. The problem is the teacher doesnt have office hours, or has the time to expand on questions and confusion that prevent students from getting it. You can almost always teach anyone anything, some people are efficient learning engines and get it faster, some struggle and cost more of the teacher's time to understand, and get rid of any confusion. In most cases, the kids that do well just have another teacher (parent, siblings, classmates, tutor, themselves) that supplements the teachers job. The problem is the system, and we can see it, because it's normal thing for people to say they are bad at math, or that they are not a math person, etc... I was lucky because I liked math, so i could force myself to do the homework, and even I had math anxiety because i was always so confused, but in the end i thought the shapes and symbols were neat. But for the people that don't particularly like it, either because they haven't had an enthusiastic teacher or a bad previous experience, are constantly failed by the system. Kids need more time out of school and with adults that can answer their question when doing the work. And work that confusion. Math (and physics, and other stuff) is about working that confusion, getting rid of it, and seeing the things as a whole. There is not enough time in a day, both on the teacher side and the kids side, to get kids to do well in every subject and especially math, while relying exclusively on school time. Plus kids need to learn when to switch off and stop working. I haven't watched the previous video, or this one entirely, sorry if i missed something. But if you always did well in school, I hope this gives you an idea of what might be happening for some students.

[@PapaFlammy69]

I always did extremely bad ^^

[@goldentortoisebeetle9741]

I felt just like you in my school years.

[@dalitas]

I remember helping my fellow 2nd year masters students (5th year uni) with logarithms and numeric solutions to sets of equations. This was because they didnt want to remember or learn maths, they just wanted to scrape by and finish and get a job. Its sad to see it on so many levels.

[@Rin04_GD]

I'd like to add that I have been watching your videos for the greater part of the last 3 years, and I have found your mathematics to be highly enjoyable! Though I am not a student of yours I have found myself learning through watching you solve different problems on this channel :) You have also given me a particular interest in integration styled problems that I enjoy very much! So thank you papaflammy

[@Oreo_od50]

My tests always have at least 50% the exact same questions from homework’s or examples in class. It never matters…

[@utcuwan7366]

I'm beginning to think we are at a point where we need to implement something like, "noone goes home unless every single one can answer 1 simple question on todays topic"

[@ankursardar4707]

hey Flammy i hope so you dont feel bad from this nick name but i want you to know that you are one of the math youtuber whom i watch to always review my math knowledge. i am currently studying in college and am a physics student so we also have to study some side maths from the math teachers but the students of my class are so shit that they dont bother with the class they just sit there for attendence they dont brink notebooks to class like everyone is Ramanujan but none can solve simple problems when called on board. its not teacher's fault its the class's fault. please note that a class comprises both teacher and students. today's generation is shit i agree with this fact everyone wants just ease and nothing else no one understands the elegance of these knowledge. all i can say to you is either you can let them be shit and decrease the level to the absolute dumb level or can raise the level. just teach the theory and solve only ONE single question. rest is homework which if not done, student shall not be seated in the classroom and hence neither in exam hall. be strict who solves everything for their student. if they do wrong, give them hints. thats all i can say to you. and please note that i dont care who comes to you and says that we have other subjects to study besides maths well to be noted, only 1 hour maths studies is enough to learn a lot. so be strict with them. if you are angry on them let them know that they are dumb peice of shit. unless they feel bad for themselves, who's gonna help them?? i have been watching your videos and Andrew's videos so i know for a fact that you are not a bad teacher just hang in there it will be alright.

[@PapaFlammy69]

[@matthiasschoene]

It's obvious that as a teacher, you can't influence your students' grades to 100%. And as you rightly said, you provide sufficient material, so it is important to increase the activity of the students. I have had good experience with using homework very similarly to the test, so that you get a direct benefit from doing this homework. Another option would be to have the homework presented by a randomly picked student for marking, or to check it in a short test at the beginning of the lesson. This will be associated with a lot of cat and mouse at the beginning, but will gradually increase the rate of completed homework.

[@anonymousOrangutan]

ive attended both EPFL and the university of geneva and 85% failure for introductory courses is not uncommon. ive had two professors tell us outright that they aim for 80% failure on the first day of class. this may seem strange but the pedagogical context in switzerland is that students are almost expected to repeat their first year. exams do not get easier in subsequent years, but students are prepared. i also studied in canada and ive noticed that swiss students are far more prepared than canadians in upper years of bachelors. i guess what im saying is 85% failure has different meanings in different contexts. any student who loves maths who failed your exam will come out stronger, i have no doubt about this.

[@anonymousOrangutan]

i just realized that you gave the exam to 12th graders. not gonna lie, if this happened at my high school you would have been fired. (i went to high school in america)

[@jackinzbox.]

Who knows if you’ll read this (especially with how long it ended up :/) but I’ll say it anyways. You should try what’s called a flipped classroom or some modified version of it that works for you. A flipped classroom is where students watch lectures at home as homework and then do homework problems inside class. It may sound absolutely crazy and your school may not allow it but I think it works amazingly with math. I don’t know the amount of German resources out in the world but as you know at least for English there are videos on basically every foundational math topic online that you can assign students to watch as homework. You can even create some of your own videos to fill in gaps or expand further on a topic. With the assigned videos you can give an outline for notes maybe with some simple fill in the blank definitions so the notes aren’t hard and they know exactly what the key points they need to know are. Then in the classroom you give them homework style questions. Do some as a class if needed and then have them work on them together in small groups. I’ve found with math collaboration and talking problems out with other people really solidifies concepts as it gives you multiple perspectives on the same problem and hopefully one of them clicks and makes sense. Plus, unlike when they are at home doing problems, they can easily ask you clarifying questions or questions they would have never thought to ask you during a lecture. I know you said your class is lazy, so they may not even watch the videos. However, if you’re forcing them to do practice problems in class they’ll quickly have to face the reality that they have no idea what they’re doing and if they don’t watch the videos they have no chance in hell of passing the class. To ensure they are actually doing the problems in class you could tell them that the test will be made from a selection of the in-class problems. It’ll also further emphasize to the students that don’t watch the videos and therefore don’t understand what’s happening in class that they won’t just magically get lucky with an easier test. It’s also great for you as a teacher if you watch and help students do practice problems since you can start to see exactly which areas students are confused or weak in. Students tend to suck at knowing how to ask the right questions or communicating what they’re confused about, so if you’re able to identify where they’re struggling for them you can be so much more useful. If you were to try this it would definitely be a shit ton of work up front for you to gather/create a whole curriculums worth of videos and notes but assuming you teach the same class year to year you can easily reuse everything. Assuming you actually read this, thank you and I hope this helps in some way. You said you’re a newer teacher in the video, so just know that if students are allowed to make mistakes you are allowed to make some as well. Don’t forget you never stop being a student who needs to makes mistakes in order to learn. I love your videos and you seem to truly have a passion for teaching. Keep experimenting and learning and eventually you’ll find success. It’s only once you’ve given up that you lose all the passion and become a bad teacher. I don’t think the 85% failure means you’re a bad teacher or even that you’re doing anything wrong. However, the only variable you’re in control of is yourself so tweak the shit out of it in hopes of minimizing failure percentage. Wait… I think I just accidentally described an optimization problem. You can do those in your sleep you’ve got this!

[@poopslappa1661]

As they say, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me! If your students were given the SAME test, after having the answers are explained, there's simply no denying that they either didn't care or were so far behind that they couldn't begin to understand even the explanation.

[@galzajc1257]

it's deffinitely hard to teach that class. for a long time i thought that there's people who find math easyer and people who find it harder. and i thought they just need more carefull explaination and more concrete examples with numbers. i explained things to my schoolmates in primary school and that was always pretty much the case it took a bit more explaination but they got it. then one day i was asked to teach 2 students from a different highschool, who were failing math. we were 17 or 18 and i was trying every way to explain them f***ing similar triangles for almost 2 hours, seriously like 10 different explainations and they still didn't get it. i just gave up at that point. i don't know what to recommend, i wasn't able to teach those 2 students anything. it changed my mind, i now think that some people basically just can't do math except multiplying a few numbers, that they learn by hard. and in that class there's probably many people like this. but yeah the same test story means they're probably also lazy

[@Savahax]

Jens, Du bist definitiv kein Versager. Dein Kanal hat vielen geholfen und inspiriert. Eine Idee für den Kanal könnte sein, über erstaunliche Ereignisse in der Mathematik zu sprechen, wie zum Beispiel Newton, der das Brachistochronenproblem anonym gelöst hat (Gänsehaut!!!). Außerdem könntest du coole Videos über mathematische Anekdoten aus dem echten Leben machen, ähnlich wie es Matt Parker in seinem Buch getan hat. Das würde viel besser funktionieren als das Lösen sinnlos komplexer Integrale, die sowieso niemand versteht. Wir (du) versuchen nicht nur, Professoren zu begeistern, von denen sie wahrscheinlich bereits sind, sondern auch mit dem durchschnittlichen Interessenten zu sprechen, der jedoch keinen Abschluss in Analysis 3 hat. Das würde dir sehr helfen. Nochmals, Grüße aus Alsdorf

[@peterfireflylund]

An example of something complicated with practical uses are Bessel functions. Perhaps a video on those?

[@d1o2c3t4o5r]

When it comes to teaching math or physics, it's mostly the students responsibility to understand the material. Math is not like natural language; there is no way to describe these novel ideas in a way that immediately crafts the intended image in the listener's mind. The student has to work for it.

[@yugalkhanal6967]

I just learned what an infimum is and I see you wearing it haha

[@PapaFlammy69]

:D

[@marcschmidtpujol550]

My advice: teach at school for adults, a Berufhochschule or even better do whatever you have to do to teach at a university. I left secondary school teaching and for me it was the best decision.

[@kummer45]

Students needs good books where every proof is explained in detail, a considerable classical solved problems in detail and a set of problems with solutions to guide the students who sees hight end math for the first time. This is very important.

[@hemandy94]

Papa flammy, as a fellow teacher, as much as you want to, never say anything bad about your students more so publicly on the internet. If your students see it, it will ruin your relationship with your students who you love. Since you gave the exam again a week later, perhaps the issue is something else. Either something more fundamental or an external factor outside your subject. I went through that experience multiple times but I try to help out my students as much as I can. Sometimes after school hours, I offer my students extra classes before an exam.

[@TheoPhysicist]

I can well understand your thoughts on the biggest hurdle. My sister is at the Gesamtschule and is now doing her Abitur (now year 12). She chose math as her "Leistungskurs" and yes, it was really different from math before. Because as you described, it's much more abstract and you have to think and understand the concepts. I'm a physics student and I also work as a tutor. So when she didn't understand a certain topic, I would break it down and explain the basic objectives and concepts of new things. But that thought process is something you really have to do. You have to sit down and really think about it. And working with your brain is extremely draining and exhausting. And if you have to do it all by yourself, most students give up early, if they try at all. Because you can very quickly lose track and get lost in it. And I believe that if you don't recognize the beauty of mathematics or don't even know that it exists. Then the magnificent space of mathematics is simply black and you're just groping in the dark. And sometimes the darkness is so black that you can give them the exact same test and also put a massive light on - the students have a black hole in the left pocket that swallows up any light... because to get rid of the black hole it needs actual work and energy

[@walterht8083]

Have you uploaded material to a Google Classroom or something like that? Some of your students may simply be the kind of people that can only learn from textbooks and self-study. When I was in high school very often I didn't pay any attention in class, I would write down everything the teacher said and copied everything he/she would write on the blackboard, but I would do it like an automaton, my hand would do that while my mind would be in a completely different place. Later when exams became a close reality, I would prepare for them using textbooks and what I had copied from the classes, as a guide of what the teacher cared about. I did fine that way.

[@michaelmedeiroscharbonneau7955]

Hi. I have been teaching math for 3.5 years and tutored for about 7 years before that in what's the equivalent of end of high school/start of university (the province of Quebec in Canada has an intermediate level between high school and university called cegep and that where I teach). I admire your ability to question your approaches. Teaching is a complex task and rethinking how we do things is the way forward. As a focus, I will talk more about my impressions about the end of the video. I would have been very (badly) surprised too if I had prepared a lot of material for the students to study and got test results like we see in this situation. I relate because I also like to make some practice material myself when I can. Like that, students already know my style of writing before exams. My first idea would be to try and meet one on one with some students to figure out what makes it so the studying went so terribly (so I assume right now as the most likely cause from the two videos you made). When they do come to talk to you about why it went so bad, I would just listen and not judge them as that's the best way to get an honest answer out of students by experience (you're a cool person, so not worried about that :P). It's also a good opportunity for them to ask questions about the test they might not have asked in class. I'm aware of the little time we teachers have for initiatives like that, but it pays off to this very day when it comes to how students see the courses I teach. As for basics that are reused year after year, I have found it a great investment of my class time to give them even just a tiny exercise on past material that's going to be used during a given lecture. For example, if today we're going to learn how to find critical values for a polynomial function using the derivative, they'll need to factor at some point, so I make them start with very brief solving of polynomial equations using factoring. It's very true they did see the material before, but I came to accept that most people need a refresher even on extremely basic things. I find students follow a lot better my examples and start practice faster when the basics are already pulled out from the depths of their brains. It takes a big cognitive load off of their ability to focus on new topics when old ones are reviewed before. I think I'd also freak out if no students in my class would start to try an exercise I gave during class time. One thing I realized I was good at when I saw students struggling with starting practice is giving them a list of steps to the problem to be solved (I usually write it on my whiteboard). I want them to have understanding beyond learning recipes blindly, but we gotta start somewhere. It's insane how much people work better when you give them a list. Also, if people are stuck or I expect them to be stuck, I give them pages from the textbook with a similar example to mine so they can compare and get a start. It'll sometimes give them a reason to ask a question and from the answer, make progress on the necessary understanding for the problem. Thanks for making the video! I got to learn about another education system today. ^^

[@classic7033]

I'm sort of in the group of both sides. On one hand, my personal experience with lecturers is them teaching one thing and giving totally far fetched exam questions (which really disincentives students to study at all). On the other, many students just don't put in the necessary work when the teacher does give assignments that align with exam questions. I can't truly say what's the situation in your case since your exam seems fair but this could be because I study a stupid amount of math. If you could make a video on what practice questions you give students, then I could make a fair assessment.

[@bantix9902]

As a student, I was very demotivated by too much homework, there were some courses, like math, that I really enjoyed where I did my homework almost everytime. There were other classes where I didn't enjoy it at all and I never did the homework and never looked at the stuff we did in school again. I think some classes are just not for everyone and some people don't want learn how to analyze a poem, some people don't wanna learn geometry, linear algebra or analysis. Why do we force students who don't want to learn complex math and don't see themselves using complex math in their later life to study math anyways? It's demotivating for them.

[@arcanetwix]

in the end everything is connected. linguists use math to analyze language. if you really try to understand the epistemic basis of math you land in philosophy and science of sciences.... of course you can leave out some things, but not on the abitur - abstract thinking is about making connections and realizing that the divisions the school and universities are making are fake. when you really, and i mean r e a l l y, try to understand things you will cross every boundary. if you dont want to understand then leave the path of institutionalized learning. tldr: it's about growing as a person and realizing all knowledge is interconnected

[@Rudenbehr]

It’s very hard to be forced to learn linear algebra. You don’t just casually take that class lol.

[@luizalex.7424]

Dammit, the last part actually made me sad.

[@justkarl2922]

I can fully understand you. My parents ask me frequently if I couldn't become a maths teacher. And you are describing this situation which I am really fr*kin afraid of. You explained it so well and I can't resist to say that under those circumstances I never wanna become a teacher in school. You have just to aknowledge that the majority fails at matth and thats all. And I sadly don't know about a solution for this problem. Hell I don't even know if a solution does exist? But still I just wish you the best and I hope it gets better someday

[@PapaFlammy69]

[@danielsharp2402]

We are in a pretty similar situation here in Hungary. The problem is that most students are right. School and later university really does not matter much. What people fail to realize is that learning to think for yourself definitely does. I'm under the impression that most teachers want it done that way but even the systems don't let good teachers teach and don't encourage even good students to truly learn. It's a failure of education in general.

[@НиколайКошмар-ь7б]

In all seriousness: There are two models of teaching, both have applications. When I was getting my Bachelor’s, in most classes teachers oriented at top 10% and made others to either catch up or drop out. Now when I teach I am forced by administration to adjust the difficulty of the problems so that not a single student is left behind. Personally, I am satisfied if at least one student is satisfied.

[@carultch]

Triangles don't have circumferences. The word you're looking for is perimeter. Circumference is a circle-specific term.

[@PapaFlammy69]

thx for pointing it out!

[@peterfireflylund]

And of course one is Latin and the other is Greek. Why are triangles and quadrangles Latin when pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, … and polygons are Greek?

[@pseudoexpertise]

Here's a student's perspective on that take (Abi 2023): From 10th grade to 13th grade I transitioned from doing my homework irregularly to doing them very rarely. This is firstly because I'm a lazy ass and secondly because I knew I'll get my Abitur anyways. So my goal was set at a 4.0 Abitur. It's all you need to start a math major. In a similar sense, if the students know what they want and if they know they will somehow achieve it despite their bad marks in math, there is pretty much nothing that can be done. On the other hand it probably looks different if they are endangered to redo the 11th or 12th grade because of math. In such cases I doubt the result really satisfies them. Homework, homework, homework. Yes, it is an effective learning tool. But almost no one uses it in school. So there are two approaches here: Either you try to motivate them doing their hw or you try to find a way teaching as much as possible despite their poor hw rate. For the first approach I'm thinking about concepts like giving exam bonuses like +20% if they do enough homework or so. Alternatively you can try out giving them all the materials they need but only making a ridiculously tiny amount of it obligatory. So they'll get a whole work sheet, but only have to do 1a), which is finding the derivative of one freaking function. And to be sure they actually do that peanut you can make the consequences high for not doing it. The idea is that the students feel so offended/ridiculed by giving them such a joke exercise that they do a decent amount instead. I have never seen a teacher doing something like that. So I have no idea if it works, but I would give it a try. If there is no success in motivating the students to do homework, it obviously won't help them if you create more of it. In that case you can do the dirty of dirtiest: black box maths a.k.a engineering. Don't tell them how or why anything works. Just say it's magic and tell them how to solve any task algorithmically. If that is already the case and there is no further room for ugglyfying math, you can get even more bold and start going through abitur exercises, teaching them to memorize how to do any kind of them. This way they won't learn anything for their life, but at leas they'll get the paper. But apart from all that I recommend directly approaching the students ask them why your lessons suck. Maybe tell the Klassensprecher to collect everything from their brainstorm of why your teaching sucks from their pov. Then also make them collect what they wish for instead. And of course exclude caveats like "because it's math" or so beforehand. And finally I don't know how the teaching during the lessons looks like. This one you probably have to figure out yourself.

[@PapaFlammy69]

I've had a lot of conversations with the class already,and the general consent is that the teaching is great

[@SimplyWondering]

​@@PapaFlammy69In that case I want to share some of my perspective as both a student and someone who studies human behavior in contexts like this along side computer science (double major) and also in general loves math. One small thing I want to say before I launch into it about giving the same test twice. While I think the second test performance not improving is indicative of something with the students. I recall an anecdote from a friend of mine who was given a test again in a similar situation. She was really upset because she had spent a ton of time preparing for the first test and had other assignments to work on, the extra test wound up feeling like a lot more work then she signed up for and because she had already put as much energy into that class as she could without giving up grades in other classes this added need to study again in such a short time frame meant she had to chose between potentially doing better on the retest while letting her grades in multiple other classes suffer or just writing the whole thing off as a loss. I say this because I think its worth investigating as if the retest was given during finals or midterms season this effect could have been in play. A) its really hard for almost anyone to give negative feedback especially to an authority figure like a teacher, how are you structuring these conversations? are you coming in curious or defensive? are you asking the entire class because its possible that if you are individual students are afraid to give feedback. is feedback structured in a way so as to remind them and give them clear and easy to formulate responses or are you just vaguely asking how they feel. B) If your teaching is great what else might be going wrong. Do students not have the time to study, are they being pressured by home life or other teachers at your school demanding their time. Do students feel like math is worth studying? I think a common theme I'm seeing in responses is basically "are you keeping students accountable to their homework" and Id like to expand that a bit in general I think part of what teachers provide is the emotional environment needed to learn, and ideally to keep loving the subject. The motivation to learn, showing them the joy and excitement of learning, and being there to support them and teach them to grow confidence and determination from failures(and getting up again) rather than be crushed by their weight.Of course you as everyone else does have limits and its not your job to be perfect. That being said If you think your lessons are good, then Id suggest considering if your lessons are the right fit for the emotional and learning circumstances the students need. perhaps your a massive step up in difficulty from the previous class they took and its way harder then you think with the other classes they have to balance for your students to get through it all. perhaps as others have said the homework incentives arent there. If this year isn't a massive outlier perhaps its worth considering dropping complete coverage in favor of a course that focuses more on getting the students engaged and growing from where they are. if trying to do everything at once gets them to 15% with the potential of a few of them getting to 100% because they learn the material, it might be better to try to cover 50% to get them to 45%. and then trust that those who would have truly gotten everything out of your material can use resources like brilliant to get further. one thought I have is that these students might not actually understand how to learn math, and so your teaching is good but they just dont have the skills for it perhaps the homework focuses more on coverage and in the process misses that they dont have skills in reviewing their work. One interesting assignment idea is having them do an assignment and the next week requring them to investigate and do a writeup on the problems they got wrong for example. I want to be clear that I intend this to be a supportive message. I imagine that you care a lot for your students education, and are generally a really fun professor based on your channel and this video. I obviously don't know your exact circumstances or have all the answers.

[@bastianfrom77]

Hi, ich würde mir zuerst mal kollegiale Beratung besorgen. Entweder in der Schule oder im Schulberzirk von einer Nachbarschule. Ohne diese Beratung würde ich folgendermaßen vorgehen: 1. Ich mache den Schülern klar, dass die mit der Leistung die Klasse in dem Fach nicht bestehen werden. 2. Elternbrief über die Situation mit Gesprächsangebot - am besten Einzeltermine, Gruppentermin nur mit Support Klassenlehrer. Ich würde einen Eingangstest unangekündigt schreibe - sehr Basic über elementare Sachen die man als Voraussetzung zu dem Kurs mitbringen muss: Pythagoras, Bin. Formeln, Nullstelle finden, Gleichung umstellen - fließt nicht in Note ein, ist aber diagnostik. Wenn der Katastrophal ausfällt sind die Probleme vor dir entstanden. Wenn die Probleme vor dir entstanden sind, würde ich den Schülern nochmal klarmachen, dass sie sich jetzt den Hintern abarbeiten müssen um das Klassenziel zu erreichen. Dazu gibt es von deiner Seite 3 Möglichkeiten. 1) S. sollen Nachhilfe nehmen, ist nicht dein Problem. 2) Du bereitest SOL- Einheiten vor über den gesamten vorherigen,relevanten Stoff - da gibt es teilweise auch "freie Pakete" von Kollegen in Deutschland, wir hatten mai eines mit über 1000 Arbeitsblättern zum selbstorgan. Lernen für alle möglichen Mathethemen - Name ist mir leider entfallen. 3) Wie 2. nur mit zusätlichem Gesprächsangebot - quasi eine freiwillige Unterrichtseineheit 1x die Woche. Zusätzlich würde ich das alles gut dokumentieren, ab und zu bei einigen Kandidaten mal Hausaufgaben einsammeln, unangekündigte 5min-Test die die Hausaufgaben überprüfen, usw. Wenn dumm läuft fällt halt 80% durch.

[@MichielvanderMeulen]

such a large failure precentage can help bringing life in the students, that they will take it more serious next time, you need to set a standard at a level you think is good

[@chrisf3665]

It's the same in the US now. I graduated high school before the pandemic started and just recently went back to university to study math. Many of the younger students that I've shared classes with are shockingly lazy. I don't really think it's their fault. Unrestricted access to social media from a young age fucks their attention span and then schools are incentivized to pass as many students as possible to keep their reputation/keep getting funding. I think it's absolutely pathetic that the higher ups at many schools aren't taking a stand. I think it's equally pathetic that parents aren't conveying the importance of education to their kids. We should be failing students that obviously aren't ready to continue to the next class. We're actively setting young people up for failure by not holding them accountable.

[@physiminds]

hi sir im from India .....i aspire to be a good physicist just like you're a good mathematician .....the thing i first saw in the video is the lotka volterra method....i was just studying this in applied dynamics from speigel's book . 😂😂😂maybe the universe is connected .....❤❤love your channel

[@vonBottorff]

I have a theory why so many students don't want to learn math. I picked up this idea by reading James Gleick's _The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood._ Right in the beginning he talks about the early Soviet brain scientist Alexander Luria and how he went to the most backward, pre-literate place in the USSR (Caucasus) and gave the peasants IQ tests. What he found was they weren't smart or dumb, rather, they were mürrisch! They literally got really angry at being asked abstract questions. For example, _A village in Siberia has white bears. There is another village just 10 kilometers west. What color of bears would you expect there?_ They would interrupt and argue, "White bears! What nonsense! We have brown bears." IOW, they were actively resisting going into abstract thought. Then anthropologists started realizing -- in all sorts of aboriginal, peasant, working-class communities everywhere -- there is a social-psychological block to abstraction. They found that in a more "commoner" setting social worth/status was dependent upon being *practical,* i.e., as far from abstractions as possible. Long-standing survival skill, no doubt. One observer concluded that a peasant child in school will probably not be that teachable due to the fact they are getting their life cues from home, family, community, and to start embracing all the hypothetical, abstract learning would be social suicide for them. One of the main problems with math teaching, IMHO, is teachers don't realize what a steep abstraction curve they are presenting their students -- especially students from anti-abstraction social milieus. And without any reason why, no explanation as to why we're being so wildly abstract, yes, it's like the Caucasus goat herders stubbornly insisting on brown bears. HTH/YMMV Übrigens, grüße aus Minnesota, Oberer See

[@theeaglesshadow449]

First off, I am not a teacher. But I have been a difficult student to teach. I remember talking with my physics teacher in high school. I asked him why my grades were worse than my friends (We were all nerds, but I scored consistently lower). He gave me a straight answer. I needed to practice more (e.g. do my homework, because I didn’t). I did not change my attitude towards homework. So, until graduation my grades stayed lower than my friends, but when the graduation exam came around, we would spend a lot of time in class preparing (a.k.a. practicing all kinds of questions.) And my graduation exam grades where significantly higher than my usual grades, not only that, they were amongst the top of my country (I don’t remember the actual percentage though, it was more than 10 years ago). After graduating with almost all A’s instead of just B’s and C’s. My teacher came up to me and apologized. Why did he apologize - After all he had correctly identified why my grades were lower - ? He apologised because he had failed to recognise why I wasn’t able to do my homework and find a way for me to be able to do it. What does this have to do with your situation? The students might not necessarily be lazy, even if it may seem that way, but they may have been adversely affected by the pandemic and thus missed some crucial lessons like the importance of putting in the work and discipline. I don’t know if this is the case for Germany, but in my country, teachers are basically raising the students and teaching them manners instead of the students’ parents. Since students might have had to stay at home during the pandemic, they might have missed some of the important lessons of growing up. So, if that’s the case all I can say is to show them some tough love by teaching them about failure and consequences. In other words, force homework checks every week. It’s not fun or glamorous, but if they consistently refuse to put in the work, you both have proof for their parents and know where the problem lies when they fail their tests. Oh and sometimes providing them the answers to their homework beforehand can hamper learning as they might be able to copy the answers. (Not sure if that is or can even be the case here, but never underestimate the laziness of a student.) Another way to teach them the importance of homework is to spend some time during each lesson to focus on doing homework, but you might already do that… I don’t remember you saying anything about it in this video. And if the problem is more similar to the issue I was having, maybe you could provide them with the logistical means of doing their homework. e.g. a classroom and a supervised homework period or something along those lines. Another good idea might be to ask a colleague, preferably one that teaches a different subject for the same class if they face the same issues. And how they would approach the issue. I hope this might have given you some valuable insight and I wish you good luck with this challenge.

[@GearsScrewlose]

I’ll be honest - I am not a fan of that test: It reads like an end of chapter review from a real anal text book. However, there is not much you can do if the students are under prepared for the course content. I used to be a math teacher - I literally had students who could add fractions. They would put 1/2 + 1/2 into a calculator. And to make matters worse, the parents always blame the teacher.

[@GearsScrewlose]

Could should be couldn’t add fractions

[@Αλέξανδρος56]

''i love them but they're lazy fucks'' thats a general feeling that I have too. One way that i found to make them work is to give them one week assignments that i grade every week, then that i grade randomly, letting them getting used to do it little by little until it becomes a habit.

[@NPCNo-xm2li]

I wish my maths teacher was like Flammy back when I was in highschool. It might've made me be more interested in maths instead of making me hate it until my last year of undergrad.

[@andlex]

If so many students are lacking motivation I do not know if there is anything you can do to be honest. I can remember from when I was a student not long ago that I basically dropped some classes (German, History for example) in order to concentrate more on what was interesting and useful to me (Math and English). I had plenty of time to study for all courses, I was just to lazy and maybe many of your students are the same and do the same. Maybe the class is lacking some use cases of the material that they learn? Maybe you could provide some real life use of the material, or bring in some easy jobs that still require some understanding of physics and math?

[@iamtraditi4075]

This was an interesting look behind the curtain. Thank you :)

[@PapaFlammy69]

[@yyhra]

For me personally, the Abitur is coming to an end real soon with the upcoming exams. I got math and computer science as majors. Our last math exam in probability and statistics had a rather similar situation to the one you described near the end. Our teacher designed it to be as easy as possible such that it would meet the absolute lowest of requirements for the Abitur. He was quite sick for a rather long time and therefore wanted to make up by not subjecting us to exams of the usual difficulty pretty much giving us questions that were used as introductory examples in textbooks. We are around 20 students and maybe 7 or 8 of us managed to get a grade past 8 points (15 points is the highest grade and I got 12 because I misread the a question, I was too overconfident and sort of bum-rushed the exam because of it). All the other ones were below 8 points, with a sizable amount of students below 5 i.e. not passing the exam entirely. And our teacher seemed just as hopeless as you. I can't really tell what it is that makes so many students fail in such unecessary ways but maybe you should try and focus more on the individual student. Slow down on providing everyone with tons of material for them to work on. Try to convey to them that they need to observe and identify their weaknesses and lack of knowledge such that you can overcome it with them. Sure, this is very time consuming and I know that time can really quickly be a scarce luxury - heck, we did not even cover all the mandatory topics of linear algebra for example since our teacher was sick so many times - but I really can not think of any other way. Fact of the matter is that it's definitly not your fault from what I have heard. And this might sound harsh but if your students are not willing to go out of their way and practice enough to actually be suited for such exams let alone the abitur then you should really ask yourself the question if it's a bad thing in the first place if they don't pass. Because if they are not inclined to work for their results in the Abitur they really should not visit something like university to begin with.

[@Cosmos0000]

I'm currently a bit under the weather, so I apologize ahead of time for how much of a disjointed ramble this is probably going to sound like. I've just had quite a few thoughts while watching this video and am probably too foggy-headed to structure them well. 😅 I'm not German, but I had to take the Abitur before being able to apply to university in Germany (I study computer science). I know my own struggles as a student in Germany are somewhat unique given I also had to deal with learning in a foreign language, but many of the issues I had seemed to be ones my classmates also shared. The biggest one is one you mentioned - not having a good foundation of the basics. Things like Bruchenrechnung and just grundlagende Rechenregeln in general... were all lacking for most of us. To help with this, our teacher gave us a sheet with a bunch of basic rules so we could reference them while working on practice problems (I was very thankful for this since it had been quite a few years since I'd taken a math class before this). Another thing that helped was when our teacher would solve a problem with us on the board step-by-step... and I mean every small step, every small Rechnung. Many of us would get lost in the details of "how did you get from this line to the next" until we had seen it done once or twice - my main example here is solving Gauß-Matrices. If the teacher didn't write out the Nebenrechnungen, we were lost. I don't know how possible this is, but I think one thing that would have helped me out temendously, is if I had had a list of topics that I was supposed to know beforehand. Like you said, students have so many other classes they have to take and study for at the same time - having to also play catchup in math by learning whole topics on your own is really difficult and often not very feasible imo. But like I said, I don't know how possible that is. I don't know if they have much time between 10th and 11th grade. Not to mention it requires students taking initiative. lol. I think you're being too hard on yourself. It sounds like you did everything you could to help them out. The only thing I can suggest is talking to the class. Asking them where their hang-ups are. I know kids often have a hard time speaking up, but there might be a couple in the group who would be willing to speak for everyone - assuming they know where the problem is. I know I personally have a hard time pinpointing where it is I'm having trouble in a class. The problem might also just be them not having enough time and prioritizing other subjects that they think they have a better chance of passing. I know how stressful studying for the Abitur is. I found myself having to prioritize due to mental and emotional exhaustion, and I still ended up with very severe burnout afterwards. If it is laziness, which is certainly possible, you can't do anything about it and maybe in a few years they'll find themselves at a Weiterbildungskolleg with an actual eagerness to learn. Side note (because apparently I also needed to vent lol): Here's a gripe I personally have with learning math, albeit more at uni level than Gymnaisum - the complexity of the language used. I think it's important that new topics be explained in as plain and simple a way as possible. Once the topic is understood, then by all means, add the formal language that you also need to know. I don't know how many times I've been so uterly confused and frustrated by my lecture notes, only to turn to someone who understands the topic really well and have them explain it to me in such a simple way that it finally makes sense. Only afterwards do I find my lecture notes helpful. Another thing that drives me nuts is when we're given a topic and its definitions but no real written description of what that thing is. A basic example is when we were learning about Norms. It took entirely too long before it was even mentioned that it's a length. We went though two examples of how to find the Norm in R and C and we were getting these numbers as answers and all the while I'm sitting there like, ok cool... but what does this tell me? lol. The biggest problems I have had in my Linear Algebra lectures are not enough practical examples in class (using numbers and not just variables/general stand-ins) and not always being clearly told what topics are telling me about vectors/vector spaces - what new information I was getting. Essentially, the relationship between what we have learned and the new thing we are learning. I feel like making these connections is essential to having these things stick in your head. It's the difference between understanding something and just memorizing for the exam. Sorry for the long post.... 😅 Also, I love you shirt. lol.

[@lambdadelta3105]

I don't think you're a bad teacher, I think you doing your best is, honestly, you doing a good job. Youre doing all you need too. But I don't think the students are lazy either. At least not in general. It seems more so to me the issue is one of: 1) *how* humans learn 2) how memory works 3) what the education system often demands being *really bad* for how these 2 things work 4) how life can often be for some students Abstract thinking is already something hard to teach, but like, youre trying to do so on a time limit with people who are overloaded with a ton of other topics, often complex home lives, complex social lives to navigate, and needing to also fit in time to decompress with that. Because if they *don't* take care of their mental health and decompress and relax? Then taking in more information is just going to get *harder*. And schools having growing pressure over the years has compounded this problem a lot. A disintegrating social life because of study or too much study will make that worse. A social life is not *optional* here. So, with any subject, they are getting *way* too much *stuff* to remember it all properly. So they are only really going to be remembering the stuff thats presented in a memorable way. Which, is hard to do with time limits and *so much* to cover. Additionally, repetition generally at *best* works for shorter spans of memory, so just lots of exercises is only really going to get them to remember it... until they are done with those exercises for the month. Then its back out the ear it went in from and they will not retain it. But presenting teaching them abstract thinking in a memorable way is just, inherently a hard thing to do? Giving it in a way that makes it clear whats going on often also means giving it in a way thats ironically hard to remember and engage with. But, that does not mean there is no solution. I think something at least worth *trying* would actually be giving them *fewer* answers and fewer repeats. Some explanations, and then some "explanations" wherein you more so make them try to explain it back to you, but less direct answers, and more being put into making the questions in a sense feel like fun puzzles on homework rather than repetitive exercises. Because, I dont think students inherently dislike difficulty, I think they dislike *monotonous difficulty* often found in text books and homework tasks. Which is very different. They will apply complex reasoning to their passions, they will try hard tasks for fun, kids love a challenge! They will challenge themselves non stop. We all do. Its just they are not doing so *here*. So, why? I think its the monotony, more than anything, the grind of day in day out that blurs into one. Lazy is an easy explanation, but mental fatigue and not knowing how to approach the task in a way that doesnt feel like its wasting mental resources while also not getting them grades by the end is a more likely one. So, explaining things in interconnected ways (like explaining a new topic at first through an old one they DID get) and then framing things more as fun puzzles to overcome rather than repetition of info you gave them may help more of them, since then rather than them just trying to absorb what you know, they figure out how to make sense of it from their own point of view. Exercises *will* be necessary inevitably at some point, I am not denying that. Just exercises seem more like a sort of "final boss" for when they have fully understood a given topic or idea or concept rather than just a process of, you explain, you give materials, and then other than you, text books and google, this is *the thing they learn it through*. Granted, doing that in the time pressures of any education system is hard as fuck, its not unreasonable to suggest it would be too many hours of work to pull off, but its a suggestion at least. And it may help. Either way, youre doing your best and dont seem like a bad teacher, the education system and life pressures just make this hard for everyone involved and overcoming that is kind of a goliath task.

[@conando025]

God I can only imagine what you are going through. I always liked math and I comprehend it easily. Now I'm studying Computer Science at University and that rate at which my peers forgot the contents of the math lectures was astounding. Even the ones that did good on the exams seem to have purged that knowledge from their memory. And this is with University students not highschoolers. The one thing I wished my classes would have featured more (I went to School in Saxony) is deeper focus on why. The why to Math was always brought up as a justification of the topic but few students actually engaged with that. They cared for the How to solve problems because that was how they did tests. But for me the Why was more important. To be more concrete using the example of the point and the line question. I feel like most students try to memorize the questions and the thought approach to solve such a problem. (Our teacher put way to much emphasis on this where he even went a head and had us categorize the problem statements to know what method to use) But if you know what the equation of a line entails than the check for if a point line on the line is obvious. It gets to the are of problem solving at the heart of Mathematics

[@abramisme]

I believe you when you say you're trying your best. You are not a bad teacher. You need to come up with better ways for students to internalize these problems. A great way of doing this is having them make their own problems and having someone else in class solve them. Yes it does take up time. But the results will speak for themselves. And for really good help go to the education department and see how they teach math. You may laugh and call it kiddish when you see it. But often times stidents need this. Lots of them lost math skill during covid. And tons just suck at it.