Yes, this makes me so sad. He had so many funny things to share, and he ruined it and now I can't even hear a quote from his show without an icky feeling :(

Whichever you choose, I think the musketeers, count of monte cristo, and tale of two cities are all culturally relevant works -- I'd recommend an abridged graphic novel for the ones you don't use, even one for quite a bit younger children, just for plot familiarity.

I'm not super familiar with WebAssign, but MyMathLab includes the ebook AND the videos as part of the whole package.

Trigonometry is included in precalculus as Lisa said. But nobody in college admissions would bat an eye if a student had credits for algebra, geometry, advanced algebra, trigonometry. It would just be a different arrangement of material. Most students benefit from another review of algebra and especially functions/logarithms before calculus, though, which is why it's been shifted.

But it looks like they used Everyday Math before that.

Clan of the Cave Bear is actually pretty cool but just in case you want to know, there is a rape sequence -- a few different times with the same person. The sequels get awfully sexual ... I swear the fourth one should have been called the Plains of Passion ... I read so many times about Schlongdalar's massive ... But if you're ok with that scene I do like Clan of the Cave Bear. I enjoyed reading the others but I wouldn't assign them. The last one (recent) is excepted. That pile of rotten steaming dung ... well, I just pretend it was never written unless I need to warn someone against reading it.

PM Laura Corin if she doesn't respond here. As I recall her son continued in school but had a tentative plan for at-home before deciding on school, but I may be misremembering.

Livestock data would definitely support the body temperature -- animals gain best when they are comfortable, and their gains are delayed when they are either too warm or too cold. Here's some calf data -- http://www.hoards.com/E_calf_heifer/CF_Nov08

I would eat them if I were extraordinarily hungry and for whatever reason they were the only thing around. I really don't like any kind of chocolate flavoring. Past experience has shown it takes about 36 hours without food (I was stranded without money) before chocolate starts to look edible.

I just want to say that since I dropped out of obesity almost four years ago, I have been free of the intermittent and nearly crippling back pain I struggled with for most of my adult life. Even if I woke up tomorrow as fat again as I ever was, these gloriously pain-free years would have been worth it.

It depends. For a talented student of course you can go straight to an AP biology. For a less talented student it might be a good idea to include pre-ap biology, which would cover a standard honors course plus a few of the beginning parts of AP biology, and then proceed to an AP biology class which would cover the rest and include test prep. It's the same thing as how some schools do Calc AB and Calc BC in consecutive years, where the calc BC class reviews AB a bit, then goes straight into calc C and then does test prep, whereas others cover the entire BC syllabus in a year. All of this being said, it is probably advisable to follow the prerequisites -- if they require "pre-AP chemistry" it is likely that the AP chemistry class will expect knowledge of basic chemistry already and will just review it a little rather than teaching it from scratch. If you want to go straight into AP classes I would go for a different provider.

The schools my friends have kids in have not been sending them out. It is good that Math Expressions does this.

Yes, in graduate school we took Real Analysis and Complex Analysis. One year the (non-native-English-speaking) department chair put out a suggested course schedule that included Real Anal. and Complex Anal. listed as suggested first-year courses. This caused an immense amount of snickering among the graduate students, and the next year (after the secretary discussed it with him) it was listed as Real An. and Complex An.

I gotta say that I am a very recent convert to MyMathLab. I haven't used it before this semester (I really like to see work) but I am converted for most types of problems. It hasn't made a difference to my strongest students or my weakest students, but my intermediate students are all about one grade higher than they would have been before, because they never redid their incorrect homework and just moved on to the next one. Now they know immediately that it's wrong.

Plus they feel stupid because "This is first grade math, why can't I do it? How stupid am I if I don't understand first grade math?" ==

Yes yes yes. One or two to show that they get it? Fine. Explaining MANY addition problems? Seriously, if I carefully explained how I knew two plus five is seven, why on earth do you need me to explain two plus seven? Turning math into language arts just makes one more thing for kids who struggle with language arts to hate.

I do actually agree that they should be able to explain how they know their answer, but I also think that explanations should be appropriately modeled and I am not sure this is happening in schools. I have said before but I will repeat -- I think a tremendous amount of this resistance could be done away with if the major publishers would publish a FREE, online, "Parent's guide to xxx math" for each grade. And if I had any say in texts I would strongly push for whichever publisher did this first to be adopted, because it would be worth it to not have parents calling/writing me to complain about the text when I agree with them. Honestly this is why my friend's small private school went with Math Mammoth, because it was still CC and the directions were on the sheets so the parents knew what the kid was supposed to do. Most of the parents are much, much happier than they were with a more standard school program.

Not sure, possibly content?

This is something where I would recommend your student complain to the department chair. It is possible that they can't find anyone else, but you can be assured that the department chair will remember this. They do not like complaints.

Yeah, no curriculum is going to help with this kind of behavioral issues. Save the money and use one of the decent curricula that you already have. Hoping someone else can give you good advice on how to work out the behavior. MUS is Math U See BTW. While I'm thinking about it -- was there a time when he was not so resistant to math? Where did he learn what he knows now? What changed between then and now?

What this story is convincing me is that I shoulda been a clerk.

I only do if they directly tag me or I see an actual thoughtful discussion. They bug the crap out of me but since most of the people sharing them aren't really open to the idea that it's not ALL WRONG it's not really worth my time to say anything.

Hm, it's pretty hard to think of something in my line of work that I would absolutely refuse to do even if it meant getting fired immediately that isn't preposterously unlikely. There are things that would have me doing it anyway to continue getting paid but getting my CV out immediately, like getting ordered to pass a specific student regardless of the student's academic performance. But that's really an ethical belief more than a religious belief.

Usually precalculus comes next. Stats is another option if the student isn't headed for a STEM career, but if stats is chosen algebra review should be included for college placement tests. There are a few other options if the student isn't college-bound or really needs something out of the box.

The hardship is bad, but quite honestly if she's academically prepared she can do something like dental hygiene later. If she's decided that SHE needs to do it for a family's sake, it will go much better than if she is doing it because Mom says it's a good idea. There are things someone can do culinary-wise that are not being a chef, like the people who have a gourmet food truck. Also I would try very hard to get her restaurant experience as soon as she is able to legally work near you -- summer job, and quite honestly I would have absolutely no issue giving a high school credit and calling it 'culinary internship' if she worked during the school year, although I would not let it displace academics. She may very well decide that she would much rather be a talented amateur who has a day job.