> But... at the risk of sounding snotty, there just isn't anything that a public school could cover that should have the teacher scrambling to learn the material, unless the school did something radically stupid.
In my experience, it was usually just that. Either the teacher was given a new textbook or curriculum the prior summer with no evaluation period, or the instructor was transferred from one subject to another due to a financial or staffing pinch.
For example, I had a teacher who specialized in teaching algebra and trig, but had to be pressed into teaching calculus one year. While he knew enough of the material to grade and write assignments, his ability to explain the more obscure stuff in lecture was hobbled by his forgetting most of the material was about last time he was exposed to it. I've also had instructors bounced between teaching English and Social Studies because administrators thought they were similar because the tests of both subjects involved essay answers.
My experience may also be atypical, since at the high school level, I tended to take "honors" courses, which usually were an afterthought funding-wise than the majority of the "college prep" or "remedial" classes.
> But... at the risk of sounding snotty, there just isn't anything that a public school could cover that should have the teacher scrambling to learn the material, unless the school did something radically stupid.
In my experience, it was usually just that. Either the teacher was given a new textbook or curriculum the prior summer with no evaluation period, or the instructor was transferred from one subject to another due to a financial or staffing pinch.
For example, I had a teacher who specialized in teaching algebra and trig, but had to be pressed into teaching calculus one year. While he knew enough of the material to grade and write assignments, his ability to explain the more obscure stuff in lecture was hobbled by his forgetting most of the material was about last time he was exposed to it. I've also had instructors bounced between teaching English and Social Studies because administrators thought they were similar because the tests of both subjects involved essay answers.
My experience may also be atypical, since at the high school level, I tended to take "honors" courses, which usually were an afterthought funding-wise than the majority of the "college prep" or "remedial" classes.