Courses I Currently Teach/Have Taught

This course includes a brief review of pre-calculus topics including curve sketching, solving, trigonometry, sequences and series. The course will give students a foundation in limits and how they lead to derivatives. Students will learn differential techniques and how to apply them. The course will finish with a study of integration techniques and applications. This course is not intended to prepare a student for either A.P. Calculus exam.

A.P. Calculus is designed for the student who has already completed the four-year college preparatory math sequence. Topics from both differential and integral calculus are presented. Concepts and proofs are developed through the methods of analytic geometry, and major emphasis is placed on the application of this material to practical and physical problems. The course follows the advanced placement board outline and schedule so that students will be prepared to take the A.P. exam in May.  

Computer Science is designed to introduce the student to the basics involved in programming. The major emphasis of the course will be on learning the concepts and techniques of programming and on writing and de-bugging programs. Topics will include graphics. 

Building on their work with basic quantitative and categorical data in previous years, students will extend their study of statistics: modeling date, linear models, normal distributions, conditional probability, and using statistics and probability to make inferences. The essential questions to be answered are: How do we use data to describe patterns and features? How do we best collect and interpret data through experiments and studies? How do we use probability to make predictions? How are statistics used to make inferences about a population? Students will work with real–world data and applicable data sets to investigate the world around them. 

The course develops further the idea of a function, extends the use of the coordinate system to include non-linear functions, introduces logarithms and trigonometric functions and introduces inferential statistics. Common Core State Standards are followed. 

Pre-Calculus Honors is designed to prepare students for calculus. This course provides an extensive study of topics from algebra, trigonometry, and analytic geometry. Functions, their properties, and their graphs are stressed. The concept of limits will be introduced. 

Pre-Calculus emphasizes and builds upon the function concept. The course is intended to strengthen algebraic skills within a study of trigonometric and circular functions. Other topics to be covered include probability, exponential and logarithmic functions, polar coordinates, conic sections and curve sketching. A brief introduction to limits may also be included