Hello! I’ll be posting this in r/teachers as well, to cover my bases, but I am going into my 4th year teaching, but first year as a certified math teacher.

I used the be a language support teacher in a math classroom, so I’m not going in with 0 experience, but would love advice.

In high school with higher level math, have a solid foundation in multiplication, division, even addition and subtraction, is SO important. Some teachers act as if calculators make up the difference, but I really feel like they don’t. Kids can’t be expected to figure out how to simplify a fraction or factor quadratics by just trying different combinations on a calculator.

So my question is how have you all handled this gap? Do you do multiplication drills in highschool? Do you have routines or try to build their number sense? Do you think it’s a waste of time?

I have such huge gaps in my classrooms as I’m sure lots of you do as well, will take any help or advice I can get!!

End the use of 'arbitrary' bases.

The example is from this post by u/Guilty_Invite_7126.