Teacher fired after assigning violent math problems to third graders

[n2doc]

By Eric Pfeiffer


A Washington, D.C., charter school teacher has been fired after it was discovered the teacher had assigned third-grade students a number of math problems framed around violent and illegal scenarios.

At first, the unnamed teacher at the Trinidad Center City School claimed he had been ordered to assign the problems, but it was quickly discovered that the teacher had actually downloaded them from a free homeschooling website called "HomeschoolingParadise.com."

"I was absolutely distressed," Dr. Beverley Wheeler, the CEO of Center City PCS, which oversees Trinidad, told WUSA9. "It doesn't follow anything we do. We are about character, excellence and service and I found them to be violent and racist."

Even more baffling, other parents at the school say the teacher in question is a minister.

more

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/teacher-fired-assigning-violent-math-problems-third-graders-201910368.html

[randome]

1. Those charter schools.

They never have the kinds of problems you see in public education. Right?

[Loudmxr]

2. I agree. Most kids don't think these problems are cool till 5th or 6th grade.

[southernyankeebelle]

3. But he got the math problem from a charter or home school online by downloading it? Gee it makes you

wonder what they are teaching in this home schools.

[Fumesucker]

4. It's best to be wary of any website with "paradise" as part of the URL..

You can get a nasty infection that way.

[JHB]

5. Looking at the homeschooling site...

...it looks like a non-religious site. Looking at their other 3rd grade problems, I'd say they're going for a "Garbage Pail Kids" style gross-out tounge in cheek to make the word problems less dull for kids.

[Lochloosa]

7. Some of them yes, but this is ok for a third grader?

Charles and Simon went on safari in Africa and came across a herd of grazing African buffalo. Charles shot 203 buffalo with his shotgun and Simon decapitated 2094 buffalo with his machete. If 2851 buffalo escaped, how many buffalo were grazing in the first place?

[left is right]

6. I read the examples cited in the article

and I think he was trying to appeal to the mind set of 3rd grade boys: vampires, fleas, and leeches all sucking blood. I bet the boys giggled and then set to work figuring out the answers. I saw only two problems with the approach. 1) The creature population of the problems were so fantastically large that they were absolutely improbable/the one about sucking 1300 pints of blood is also scientifically impossible but the science was already corrupted by the presence of vampires so maybe that is a wash. 2) The problems would have little appeal to girls and that in my mind was the biggest problem by the time they hit middle school, girls will have given up on math as either too boring or too complicated. Perhaps their 3rd grade teachers never engaged them in by providing them with fun questions.

[frazzled]

8. Yeah, where are the girl problems?

Fancy Nails offers 143 shades of glitter nail polish, at $3 a bottle. Alicia has saved $36 from her allowance. What percentage of the Fancy Nails stock can she purchase?

(Okay, I'm bad at making up math problems. It's because I'm a girl who got bored easily after HS Trig class. My son turned out to be a mathematician, however.)

[Angry Dragon]

9. Nothing wrong with your math problem

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