Rubber and road

Today is a very depressing day. Today is the second day of testing (final exams for the 3rd quarter). A great many students are tanking, completely, when faced with some pretty elementary stuff (Put a point on a grid. Put another point on that grid. Calculate the distance along the straight line that connects them. One student has chosen (-3, 3) and (3, 3), and now she's stuck).

Where the rubber meets the road: these students, this population, are clearly not going to learn much meaningful mathematics, with anything remotely resembling a traditional curriculum. I need to refocus, to completely overhaul the way I teach them, to make it more fun, more exciting; that also means moving further away from what other teachers in my department are doing, which in turn runs the risk of leaving them stumped when and if they face a more traditional math test.

Maybe the answer is to worry less about covering a lot of content: pick one mathematical idea, and delve. Maybe the answer is to learn more about how elementary school teachers develop foundational skills. But clearly, the easiest answer is to just not worry so much about it-- and that's also the most dreadful, horrible one, and (I think) the greatest contributor to poor educational quality: it's so easy to give up...