I have to admit that what Mathemagician is saying is, well, as someone who struggled with math, it's just nice to hear his thoughts. He is correct that you simply cannot take an Algebra II class and attempt to turn it into a remediation course. It seems he's meeting the students where they're at and making necessary adjustments being realistic about what he can accomplish in a short amount of time each day with dozens and dozens of students who may or may not have a solid foundation in math.
We did logs back in January. Fun times! They take a while to get used to, but you'll get the hang of it. We are on the probability/statistics section. After this we have trig, and then the year is complete.
As someone who has a math learning disability that was undocumented (my teachers were confused by the fact that I could understand and talk about math concepts, but would bungle the actual problems), a calculator was essential and what little assistance I could get from it probably prevented me from outright failing every math course I took from 7th grade on. We were still required to show our work and the steps we used so our teachers could point out where we had gone wrong with the problem. I know of some schools where the calculator answer is all that is required. The mind, she boggles.
