Do your teachers ask something ridiculous from their students?

[miso soup]

Sure, IB requires a lot of work, but that doesn't exactly excuse the teacher for something that they make some of us fellow students do. No, I'm not trying to belittle them, but I am wondering about why some teachers give us a little too much work....

Anyway, I'm curious- what does your teacher want you to do? like for example, in my psych sl class, our teacher gave us homework that consists of looking up and researching a study, which we are fine with since we need the study, but how can we do the homework when there's no information any where ._. the only one who could actually get anything was a classmate whose mom had records of the study from her medical books.... not exactly helpful for those who don't have the same resources. and according to the people who area taking chemistry sl, the teacher's work is just.... a bit ridiculous. according to some of my friends, the teacher makes them complete 3 labs in 1 class period(90 minutes), and each lab requires at least an hour, meaning most of them are always way behind, and that some of the drill questions are like 50 points, along with cleaning their stations. one of my friends whose a neat freak and whose station was spotless only got a 25/50 for cleaning...

so anyway, do your teachers ask something ridiculous from you? and if so, please provide some examples and please no bashing teachers... if you're going to point out a flaw, please do it in a professional way. there are some times where i think my teachers are being difficult but i know that they really are helping. and my teachers are awesome anyway lol

[dessskris]

interesting topic!!

umm yes sometimes I find that what teachers ask us to do is ridiculous, but not so often, I think

in my Chem class we conduct experiments every week. yes, every single week, on Fridays.

in the Geog class here I heard from my friends that the teacher never really taught them in class. the teacher always gives them tasks and they need to do their own research to finish it. I don't even know if what they found on the net are even in the syllabus as sometimes in IB there is a certain extent you need to know something.

in my English B class we have to read books and write book reviews once every 2 weeks or so teacher said it's to improve our vocab but come on, I've got a lot to read for my Indo A class and I don't want to read more for English B!!!

also recently my Econs teacher gave me 2 worksheets to do (the Paper 1 type of question) plus 3 IAs (commentaries) and I only had less than 2 weeks to finish them all. actually I haven't done anything and they are all due this upcoming Monday.

that's all I remember now... will post again if I remember some other ridiculous tasks our teachers gave us.

[Guest Soiboist]

in my Chem class we conduct experiments every week. yes, every single week, on Fridays.

Agreed that it is quite stupid, after all the experiments are such a small part of the IB.

The most stupid task that we sometimes get I would say is when the teacher put us into different groups, give us all different topics in a certain area, and give us a few weeks to prepare for presenting it. I understand that they want to make the IB "less boring" and let us do something else, but in the end it will just take way more time to learn. If we would cover all the material by our own it would not only be quicker, but you would actually learn all the stuff. Through this method you'll barely know the material from your own group.

[ninety]

in my Chem class we conduct experiments every week. yes, every single week, on Fridays.

Agreed that it is quite stupid, after all the experiments are such a small part of the IB.

We have at least one experiment a week, too. It can't be helped because for all the sciences, IB requires a certain amount of teaching hours to be dedicated to practicals/experiments.

[suggaplum]

in my Chem class we conduct experiments every week. yes, every single week, on Fridays.

Agreed that it is quite stupid, after all the experiments are such a small part of the IB.

We have at least one experiment a week, too. It can't be helped because for all the sciences, IB requires a certain amount of teaching hours to be dedicated to practicals/experiments.

Completely agree. It is much better to actually do the hours instead of commit fraud like one of the science teacher in my school. He left all the practicals for the last week and apparently did "40 for SL and 60 for HL" practical hours. So it is reasonable and it builds up your IA writing skills for science, which is good. Anyway, you only have to send in 2-6 practicals in the end so these don't really matter..

Half of my teachers don't really TEACH and that is probably the most ridiculous thing in my IB life. I had my chemistry exam last week and the teacher didn't teach us two HL topics - - he sorta just completely left is untouched and pretended that he "forgot" all about it.

[Brian Hunt]

In English A1 HL we tend to start a 400 page novel, have some sort of quiz over half the book after about a week, and then are expected to finish the book within three more days. These books are always read outside of class while we do seperate work inside of class. In Chem SL we share many of the same problems as mentioned previously in this thread such as many labs with little time, but my teacher is very flexible on when we can turn in work.

[Drake Glau]

Hmmm no not really. I actually feel like I had very little homework for being in IB =/

I also tended to not do it until the night before so instead of having 2-3 hours a night I had 6-8 hours one night and the rest off It seemed to work better for me.

Actually, now that I think about it, some of my teachers actually asked us if anything big was due soon before assigning anything that'd actually take time. Our bio teacher pushed off a test because the EE deadline was the same week once...

Edited May 15, 2011 by Drake Glau

[Proletariat]

In English A1 HL we tend to start a 400 page novel, have some sort of quiz over half the book after about a week, and then are expected to finish the book within three more days. These books are always read outside of class while we do seperate work inside of class. In Chem SL we share many of the same problems as mentioned previously in this thread such as many labs with little time, but my teacher is very flexible on when we can turn in work.

That's not really too unreasonable. I can't imagine you do this consecutively, since IB only mandates 15 books spanning the two-year curriculum.

As for the labs, someone mentioned that they are a very little part of the IB mark. While this may be true, one should remember that labs are very much a part of the sciences in the university and beyond levels. The one thing I hate is teaching to the test, so I would really caution against complaining about something meant to prepare you for success in the long-term. The purpose of education isn't for you to bring home a piece of paper with 95s and As written on it.

I actually don't think I've had to do anything too ridiculous. My school definitely has the most relaxed IB program out of any in my city. What I find ridiculous is the fact that I learned three courses from teachers that have never taught the IB content before, and in all three classes I ended up not learning key concepts. What came closest was probably Film; because the class started in second semester this year instead of the usual first, I basically had to squeeze the year's curriculum content into 1 month, doing the three big projects which comprise make up my entire grade in the class (and they're big too; my IS had a higher word count than my EE, and my film portfolio was basically written, shot and edited, by myself, in the span of two weeks.) It wouldn't even have been too bad at that, if I didn't have the performance week for my play in the second-last week of that month.

[Guest Soiboist]

In English A1 HL we tend to start a 400 page novel, have some sort of quiz over half the book after about a week, and then are expected to finish the book within three more days. These books are always read outside of class while we do seperate work inside of class. In Chem SL we share many of the same problems as mentioned previously in this thread such as many labs with little time, but my teacher is very flexible on when we can turn in work.

As for the labs, someone mentioned that they are a very little part of the IB mark. While this may be true, one should remember that labs are very much a part of the sciences in the university and beyond levels. The one thing I hate is teaching to the test, so I would really caution against complaining about something meant to prepare you for success in the long-term. The purpose of education isn't for you to bring home a piece of paper with 95s and As written on it.

That it prepares you for university is certainly true, and that is of course good. I was perhaps thinking a little too narrow-minded, because I'm taking Biology as my "third HL" which is there more for complementing to my other two HLs rather than for that I will eventually study it. So I'm more interested in it theory wise than for the practical work. But you're right, for people that will study natural sciences labs are probably the most important part. My teacher doesn't seem to devote very much time to labs at all though, the IB1s did only two during the whole autumn period. Seems as that it will not be enough for reaching the 60h requirement for HL.

[Proletariat]

That it prepares you for university is certainly true, and that is of course good. I was perhaps thinking a little too narrow-minded, because I'm taking Biology as my "third HL" which is there more for complementing to my other two HLs rather than for that I will eventually study it. So I'm more interested in it theory wise than for the practical work. But you're right, for people that will study natural sciences labs are probably the most important part. My teacher doesn't seem to devote very much time to labs at all though, the IB1s did only two during the whole autumn period. Seems as that it will not be enough for reaching the 60h requirement for HL.

I think there are a lot of teachers that mark something as a lab when it really isn't one. I know mine did.

And yeah, I guess if someone isn't going into the sciences, then spending an exorbitant amount of time in labs wouldn't be such a plus. I find it strange that IB time allocation isn't necessarily proportional to grading. But then again, when in science would one ever have to design a lab in complete isolation, and without informational resources?

[StSilver]

My economics teacher likes to split our class in half after every topic and make us do a huge debate on the concepts we've learned. For example sometimes it'll be Keynesians vs Classicals or Free trade vs Protectionism, and so on and so forth.

[Proletariat]

My economics teacher likes to split our class in half after every topic and make us do a huge debate on the concepts we've learned. For example sometimes it'll be Keynesians vs Classicals or Free trade vs Protectionism, and so on and so forth.

I wish I could do that in every single one of my classes.

[wombat123]

I don't see why in the IB sciences, we have to collect the data individually. In science, experiments are always conducted in groups....so why do they make us do it individually?

[Drake Glau]

Because they are testing your lab skills. Which involve designing your own design. If you all took data together using the same design that kind of defeats the purpose.

[JustAnotherAsian]

Labs are annoying but they are necessary, so dont blame them teachers.

But the stupid thing, we have to attend classes after our exams...

[DeStijl]

My physics HL teacher made us (yep, all 12 of us) learn the last four units on our own because she failed to pace the class properly throughout the year. The self taught units included the two options - astrophysics and particle physics. Not exactly the easiest stuff to learn on your own.

So to answer your question, hell yes.

She. Was. Useless.

[Rigel]

Yeah, we are practically doing Geography HL by ourselves (although the teacher's very nice and she explains everything so clearly). The main problem, is that noone pays attention in the class.

[Ice Cream is really yummy]

Our teachers try to work with each other's schedule so that we don't get some end-unit homework in math which requires +4 hours to complete (if you understand everything) and IAs, plus quizzes, exams, and projects all within the same week. It does happen though, sometimes. None of us are perfect, and se we make mistakes.

But, for example, just this past two weeks, we've been very busy with MusicFest Canada (missed two days of school), an exam in History before we left, our end-of-unit math homework, english IA before the Festival, and 2 english projects... we've been pretty busy this past week.

Our math teacher sometimes goes through the syllabus too quickly for my liking. And so does our Chemistry teacher. So in both classes, we would be learning like, one month's worth of lessons in like, one week, sometimes one lesson will only be 10 minutes long. And in Chemistry, well, it's like we did our whole gr.11 syllabus in a few months, and we're starting the gr.12 syllabus, PLUS the IB syllabus which goes in more depth in some areas.

So, my answer is yes. Some teachers DO give a lot of homework, and since the teachers have their schedule to abide by, they sometimes make everything due in the same week (and I don't think they always make it that way)