I woke up angry at 4:37 a.m.

In the last few days alone, seven different families reached out to me. Not asking. Begging. They wanted help with their kids’ mathematics.

If you live in Croatia like I do, you already know school finished on the 12th of June. So there are only two reasons a parent calls a math teacher in the summer. Either they want their kid to practice over the break. Or their kid has a remedial exam coming, and if they fail it, they repeat the entire year. Not just math. Every subject they already passed.

All seven calls were the second kind.

It breaks my heart every single time.

I don’t give private lessons anymore, so I didn’t step in. But I have been furious ever since.

Here is what upsets me. Most of these kids sat in math class the whole year.
They showed up. And somehow they didn’t earn an A, a B, a C, or even a D.
They earned an F.

So who do we blame?

The kid who came to every class and still couldn’t scrape a passing grade? Or the teacher?

There are teachers who proudly announce that almost half their students fail math. They say it like it’s an achievement. They wear it like a medal.

Really?

Is that a high standard? Or are you a bad teacher who couldn’t get a kid who showed up, took notes, and tried the problems all the way to a D?

We both know the answer.

And don’t get me started on the salary part. The same teachers who fail half the room are often the same ones being most loudly protesting about pay. Yet somehow they never find the time or energy to actually get better at the job.

I’m a mathematician, so let me do what I do best. Let me show you the numbers.

In Croatia, a high school teacher works directly with students for 20 hours a week. And those aren’t full hours. They are 20 blocks of 45 minutes.

But their paycheck covers 40 full hours. The other half is paid preparation time. One hour of prep for every hour spent teaching.

Now here is the part nobody mentions.

A teacher usually works with the same generation. That means the same lesson, delivered to 5 or six 6 at the same level. So he or she teaches roughly four identical lessons a day, just to different rooms.

And they are paid for four hours to prepare the one lesson he repeats four times.

So tell me. How exactly is the teenager the problem here?

Years ago, when I was teaching in school, almost 35% of my students got an F on a math exam. I was furious. Frustrated. Sad.

But I blamed myself. Because it was my fault.

My daughter had been sick, and I had to take time off. The school couldn’t find a substitute. When I came back two weeks later, I rushed. I delivered the material without checking that anyone understood it. I gave them no time to practice.

I failed them. They had done the best they could with what I handed over, which was almost nothing.

So I didn’t put those grades into the system. I held extra hours instead. I taught the material the way it should have been taught the first time. I gave them the chance they were owed.

That is the whole difference. It was never about being strict. It was about owning the result.

There are 4 types of teachers in this world.

Type 1 gives a lot of knowledge and energy and expects a lot.

Type 2 gives a lot and expects little.

Type 3 gives little and expects little.

Type 4 gives little and expects a lot.

Type 1 is the teacher you remember for the rest of your life.

Type 4 is the one who fails half the class and calls it a high standard.

If your kid is struggling and the teacher is a Type 3, or worse, a Type 4, please stop blaming your kid. He had a bad teacher. That is the entire explanation.

If you are a parent, you are not powerless.

Talk to the other parents. You will find out fast that your kid is not the only one. Organize. Request a meeting with the principal. Put it in writing.

These teachers should be reported. There is no worse kind of professional than a bad teacher hiding behind a badge that reads, “I’m strict and I have high standards.”

A grade measures two people. The student and the teacher. We only ever read it as a verdict on the student.

That is the mistake.

When half a class fails, that is not a story about fifteen lazy kids. That is a story about one adult who didn’t do the job, and then found a way to feel proud about it.

So here is my question for you this week. Was there a subject you spent years believing you were simply bad at?

Reply and tell me about it. I read every response, even when I can’t answer them all.

P.S. If you are a student reading this, I have just one message for you. You are not bad at maths. You just had a bad teacher.

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Until next week’s issue, keep learning, keep building, and keep thinking like a mathematician.

-Terezija