Sandra Said Yr12 Chemistry

This letter is addressed to inform you regarding what has been occurring during chemistry lessons.
Firstly, our current teacher isn't explaining a vast majority of things that should be covered, as it's in
the syllabus. From the start of this year, my class and I have been trying to get on with our work as it
is our HSC year, yet we are at a disadvantage as we have to self-learning and study because we
aren't provided with the background knowledge. I have spoken to a teacher regarding this matter
and she said, “teachers are required to be proving students with 85% of the information and the rest
is for students to elaborate on their own”. This is the opposite with my chemistry class, as she gives
us all the work to do for homework and in class, we spend our class time doing the minimum to no
work. I have tried to study for my prelims, and I opened my book and there was no content that
would be useful for me to use for my notes. I have also printed out the syllabus with all the dot
points of what we should have learned and there were so many empty dot points that she didn’t
teach us. I understand that some teachers might not go in order of dot points of the syllabus, but
they would come back to it. Yet this wasn’t the case, she would skip them and not come back to
them. Furthermore, my chemistry class is under lots of stress as we are required to teach ourselves
the content. 
 
Secondly, our assessment task depth study about equilibrium and acid reaction is our first
assessment task that we would complete in year 12. This task is 30% of the total assessment marks
in chemistry, and we are required to get 16 periods in class to complete all the experiments
required. In total there are four experiments that we need to complete in class and the fifth is the
assessment task that we conduct independently will doing the scientific report ourselves. In class,
we have already seen the demonstration of the two experiments, yet no one knew what the teacher
was doing as she didn’t explain what would happen all she said was “read the textbook and you
should know”. Additionally, these experiments were supposed to be written for the students to copy
down so we know how to write a full scientific report for our assessment. We informed her that on
the assignment notification it says that the teacher would provide the students with a scaffold, yet
she got mad and started yelling at the class saying that we are mocking her and that this would be
good practise for us to write it ourselves. On top of that, the experiments we have completed should
be done over four periods each, this means eight periods in total. We have conducted them in two
periods and the scientific report she had it assigned to us on google classroom to be done at home. I
have spoken to other chemistry teachers and students to ask if that’s what all the other classes are
doing, so I am aware of my class is at a disadvantage. Everyone that I have spoken to stated that
they were provided with the scientific report and understand what occurred during the experiment,
as their teacher went through the results. Yet my chemistry teacher, wanted us to write a report for
homework on something we don’t understand. Plus, she threatened us by saying she will give us N-
awards if we don’t have it in and stop complaining. Thus, I feel like we are at a disadvantage as this is
our first assignment and we need to work hard as it’s our HSC year, but she isn’t helping us achieve
our best.
 
Lastly, multiple students were away for a week because of the HSC’s because they do accelerated
math. They asked our chemistry teacher what they have missed so they can catch up, she started
raising her voice and saying that we are wasting her time. She then stated that if you miss any
content come the lesson after to talk to her, yet the time they talked to her was the next lesson.
Also, my chemistry teacher doesn’t teach us the content that should be covered for us to be able to
complete the upcoming assessment task. We are required to learn about ksp, and I asked her when
we are going to learn that as I have no notes on it and no one in my class has, she stated that she
can’t cover it as it will be tested in the assessment task, so we need to research it ourselves in our
own time. Yet I have spoken to the assessment coordinator and other classroom teachers and they
said that they already taught it to their class, and it is required to be covered. I only want to get this
situation dealt with as I don’t want our marks and ranks get affected as it is a very important year. 
 
Sandra Said Yr12 Chemistry

Thank you, for reading this message and helping in solving this situation.