The school I’m at offers dual enrollment classes with a local community college. So, I’m currently teaching Algebra II and Precalculus. Next year I plan to add Statistics to the mix.
Youtube Vs. Jenn
When I first started teaching upper-level math classes, especially Algebra II and Precalculus topics, I discovered there isn’t a shortage of information on YouTube, which is where people go for extra help, including my students.
Rather, it’s all over the place. I can’t go for the information I need in one place. And it’s so time-consuming, which as a teacher, I don’t have time to spend 5 hours per week trying to find the right YouTube video.
Another teacher recommended Jenn’s videos, so I watched some of them. I really liked her teaching style, so I decided to give her a try, and I’ve been a member for the past 3 to 4 years.
What impressed me the most with Calcworkshop and, in particular, Jenn was her teaching style is very easy to follow. She’s able to immediately take the “fear” out of a topic and explain it with ease.
I also found her site easy to navigate. I can go right to where I want to watch her videos.
Even though her videos are probably no more than 30 or 45 minutes long, they’re the best 30 or 45 minutes because they’ll get me prepared for a week of material in that time.
Trusted Support
I also enjoy Jenn’s quick response to my emails. She never makes you feel like you should already know the answer. She just explains it very kindly.
When you’re teaching a math topic, you’re always going to have students ask, “Why?”. They’ll wonder if they can perform the operations differently. And a lot of time, it’s okay to do things a different way. That’s what’s great about math. So if I’m unsure, I can fire off an email to Jenn, and she’ll make sure I’m on the right path with my thinking.
I trust her with my questions and my students. I want the answers for my students that will make sense and be helpful to them. And I know I can get that from Jenn.
Teaching Precalculus Without The Textbook
So initially, the first year I taught Precalculus, I used the textbook for the first semester, and the second semester I didn’t use the textbook.
Instead, I prepared with Jenn’s videos.
So I wrote out my notes, writing everything she said down, and then I massaged it and reworded it in a way that I can understand so that I could teach my students. And they loved it because she has a way of tying everything together and helping you understand where this fits with other topics.
And if I had a question, I would just email her, and she’d email me back. And that went really well. It was probably my best semester of teaching. The students really liked it. They had to take a lot of notes, but I think it helped them understand the topics better.
Trig Identities – A Rite Of Passage
My students last year were griping about learning trigonometric identities.
So, I sent Jenn an email.
I said, “Jenn, listen, these things are killing my kids, and do they have to learn them?”
The easy thing would be just to drop it and don’t teach it.
She said, “No, you got to teach them. It’s a rite of passage, that all students need to have to be able to start college math.”
So I plowed through them. I taught ’em, and her advice was right. I taught trig identities because she told me I needed to. And I’m glad I did because my students have all thanked me for it that have left and gone on and come back.
So I’m glad I listened to her.
A lot of what I cover in Precalculus was based on the conversations I had with Jenn. Like what are the essential things to cover? Because there’s a ton of topics in Precalculus that they’re not going to see until Calculus 2 or Calculus 3.
Her expertise and her advice means everything, because when you’re going through a math problem and you can’t find the answer, and she answers it in one email — that’s priceless for me.
Because I can go back to my students the next day and say, “Hey here’s the answer to that problem.” Often, that unlocks several more problems, so she’s solved several problems with just one email.
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