From the AP Calc EDG

Some students don't do the work.

Teachers can't force them to do the work.

What do you do in those cases?


The traditional (and perhaps easiest) answer is, fail them.

Regular readers of this forum may already have guessed that I hate that answer, a lot. For a lot of reasons: It's seldom possible for a teacher to force a student to drop a class, which means that the slacker will continue to sit in the back, slacking off. And, because few people enjoy isolation, the slacker will probably work toward gaining compatriots-- not just sitting quietly in the back breaking your heart, but actively trying to draw others to join them, against you. So, you've got an intellectual black hole in your classroom, actively sucking attention, focus and energy out of the room.

Not a very positive outcome, and one that teachers seldom can address by the traditional (and perhaps easiest) remedy: throwing the bums out.



Given those realities, my preferred remedy is to have hope. Eternal, unrealistic, unshakeable hope. Never stop asking a student to start working. Never assume that a student can't get caught up. Be realistic with the student-- don't tell them, in January, that they can just start paying attention and do fine-- but have hope that, even if they don't start deciding to catch up until April, they can still gain SOMETHING from the experience.

Remember that there's all sorts of reasons for a kid to take Calculus in high school, and that there's all sorts of things that they could learn from it. One of them is "I can't do calculus." Another is "Nobody cares if I fail." On the other side, I've seen a small handful of students develop their own miracle cures for Senioritis, somewhere around mid-January, and what THOSE kids have learned, I think, is that it's never too late to succeed, even if that means re-defining what that your vision of success looks like.


Google has a really fascinating, extremely geeky internal corporate culture, which is part of why they've succeeding in attracting so many of the worlds best and brightest thinkers. Two of their internal slogans come to mind:
1. "Don't be Evil."
2. "Plan to Fail Well."


So, have hope, even if it isn't realistic. And help the student to understand that success and failure aren't binary, and aren't even mutually exclusive. If they'll let you, help the student to understand that it's possible to fail to meet your goal, and still gain some benefit from your experience.

That, at least, is what it means to get a D in *my* calculus class: My D students absolutely do not know much calculus-- sure, they can define derivatives and integrals, and maybe tell you a little bit about why they're useful, maybe do a couple of simple problems; but maybe that kid can't do a single calculus problem, and still got a D. Because really, my D student is a kid who figured out, too late to succeed in the traditional (and, perhaps, easiest) definition, that they can do this, if they really try.


James Klock
Wells High, Chicago