Looking for extra practice problems, my teacher flips through our 700+ page algebra textbook. She closes the book, realizing that it doesn’t cover the material designated as our review topic for the day–order of operations, a unit covered in many middle school classrooms. She decides to make up her own problems instead.

Three years ago, Parker began to track Middle School math in an effort to eventually offer additional advanced math in the Upper School. But the current sophomores who are part of the program are not yet seeing the benefits.

When I was in eighth grade, a pilot program called the “Enrichment Program” was introduced. This program was offered to math students who had received a grade in the A-/A range in math class the previous year.

Although there was not a concrete schedule, usually once or twice a week “Enrichment” students were pulled from their regular math classes and taught accelerated algebra. We were expected to maintain a high class average in our regular class and had to complete the assigned homework for both classes.

A few days before each enrichment session, we were emailed a link and an attached pdf with practice problems. The link would take us to a Khan Academy video.  Sometimes more than one. (Khan Academy is a website with educational videos.) We would then be responsible for completing the problems despite limited instruction and knowledge. While this type of learning can sometimes be beneficial, during the session, we would be told the correct answers and assigned more practice problems–instead of actually going over information. This is how it went the entire year.

The goal of the “Enrichment” program was to provide the eighth graders with a foundation that would allow them to take a more advanced track in high school. In the former set-up freshmen study algebra, sophomores geometry/trigonometry, juniors pre-calculus, and seniors calculus. The hope was that after going through “Enrichment,” my fellow eighth-graders and I could begin geo/trig as freshmen and, as a result, take a more advanced calculus as seniors.

But it turns out our math knowledge wasn’t all that enriched. When my freshman-year math teacher learned that we didn’t know how to solve some of the basic geo/trig problems in which algebra was involved, she was forced to adjust the curriculum to remove complex algebra concepts.

Currently the twelve of us “Enrichment” kids are in our own class–Higher Order Algebra. We’re supposedly going to be re-learning (which actually means learning for the first time) Algebra I and II at an accelerated pace, and if we move fast enough, we’ll transition to pre-calc next semester. The rest of our track is still unknown.

Our class has no structure. One day we’ll be learning one thing, the next day something completely different. Sometimes our teacher will have us review something that we should already know–but we end up having to learn it from the start.

To be clear, this is not the fault of our teacher.  There are so many gaps, so many holes in our math knowledge, that it’s too hard for the teacher to form us a solid curriculum.

There was a lack of coordination between the “Enrichment” teacher and the Upper School math department.  When it was discovered that we did not in fact learn what we needed to, it simply was too late. Not only do we not know enough math, but what we did know was filled with unknown gaps that our teacher has had to–and will continue to have to–figure out.

Luckily for the grades below me, the program was changed. Eighth grade now is split into two sections, and a new math teacher has been hired to teach algebra to half of the grade full-time. They are able to obtain the experience and the knowledge my group was intended to receive but did not.

There was a lot of debate before the program was created about whether or not Parker should begin tracking classes in Middle School. I was completely for it–I was eager to cover math topics that were not already available. But maybe Parker wasn’t ready.

The future of my math track is and always has been vague. We lacked concrete plans, never knew more than a year ahead what class we were going to take. There was an insufficient amount of communication, and no one was aware of what we were or weren’t learning in relation to what we should’ve been learning.

This doesn’t only happen in math. Many other students feel the same way about other departments. Some feel that the Spanish classes are not in sync, some criticize other humanities classes for teaching in different ways with varying levels of difficulty. I’m speaking only to math, but being in my class, as unclear as it is, helps me understand how other students feel.

Maybe teachers could send out a form every so often to make sure that students have complete comprehension of material. If many students fail or get low scores on a test, maybe it isn’t always that they didn’t study enough, but that they don’t understand something and need to be taught again.

What I’m saying is this: My math situation could have been prevented. Teachers should have noticed our lack of proper math knowledge instead of continuing to push us into a higher class.

When I replied “yes” to the “Congratulations Enrichment Students!” email, accepting a spot in this new track, I had no idea what was in store. If I had known, maybe I would’ve replied differently.