I don't get it

Since I began teaching, I have been amazed at the simple things that my students do not know. I am not necessarily talking about math skills, though most do lack a command of even the most basic operations. Rather, it's the lack of general knowledge and common courtesy that appalls me.

Sometimes, I wonder what my students' home lives must be like. Why are they not learning the simple skills and manners that you should get from home? This leads me to wonder, what I would do differently to insure that my kids behave better and pick up on the basic ideas?

I have no doubt that I have amazing parents. (And I am not just saying that because I know that at least one of them will read this; they are really great.) But I think back on my younger years and I can't think of anything they did that was radically different. Sometimes I wonder if they just got lucky and had three great girls?

Following are two recent examples of how my students are not being taught important things at home. The first caused me to almost pull out my hair asking, "How can you not know this?" and the other is a lesson in courtesy.

1. Today, my Algebra 2 class reviewed exponential and logarithmic functions. I completely understand that they have problems with this material. It is new and it forces them to think through the problems in a different way. But the cool part is that exponential functions lend themselves to application problems and I can finally answer the question "When would you ever use this?"

A problem from today:
Dusty deposited $1400 in a savings account earning 7% annual interest compounding yearly. How long will it take his money to triple?

They were given the formula and all they had to do was plug in numbers. Pretty simple.
They understood what I was asking. They understood the concept that if his money triples then he would have $4200 at the end. They even got the idea of compounding.

But more than 5 students asked "What does annually mean?"
Being a good teacher, if a bit annoying, I answered their question with a question: "If I were to take a shower annually, then how many times a year do I take a shower?"
Their answer: "12 times?"

I am not sure that I managed to keep all of the frustration out of my voice, but I am confident that I did much better hiding my disappointment then I did yesterday when they tried to tell me that quarterly meant 3 times a year.
16 & 17 year olds. 11th graders.

2. I have this student; we'll call him Jack to protect his identity. I know that Jack doesn't particularly care for me and really, I am okay with that. Over the course of the semester he has made it clear that he thinks I lack the intelligence needed to educate his obviously gifted mind.

Recently, I was reading over some journals that they wrote. Jack writes:

"I feel that math is more boring now than before. My math classes before were more fun and now are more boring. I used to like math but now it is starting to get on my nerves because of the way my more current teachers are teaching it. It seems as though my teachers get worse and worse as each year comes."

Where was his momma to teach him that if you don't have something nice to say, then you don't say it at all?

Maybe my parents did get lucky. But as Melissa said when she sat in on my classes, "If we had done that, Daddy would have popped us on the back of the head."