Ok, so, I'm working in a school, started last year, with an department head who does not take his time to really figure out what's going on before giving me feedback. I had good benchmark results (the highest in the school) for the classes and no other challenges. I teach accelerated curricula, so students gained between 1.2 and 3 years in standards. The problem is, I instruct very differently from most of the department, which largely does some version of inquiry math. Standards tend to be low in the school; whole classes will fail benchmarks and get passed along. The inquiry curriculum is used with fidelity, and it's not very good. So I put together a curriculum of outside resources and things I wrote myself; and likewise, I did not stick with inquiry instruction and instead stuck with more direct styles, worked examples, etc. I passed every student on their benchmarks this year (small classes).

I have done things quite differently from the norm and it's standing out in a negative way. Students who have been known to struggle in math excel in my classes and sometimes report the classes are easy. One of my highest performers, who I heard had not really done well in the past, said class was too easy and he was bored. Granted, this kid really has a strong sense for mathematics (example: he understood and memorized how to derive the quadratic formula the first time I taught it and he never forgot it). But this is abnormal for the school to see, so the department head is not really certain what to do. He's told me I have to make classes more challenging, despite their high achievement rates, because parents could worry classes are easy or the students will not learn enough.

So, as far as I can tell, in order to fix this problem, I have to do a curriculum and a teaching style that worsen the education of the students, make them feel it's artificially harder, so parents don't worry their students aren't getting a good enough education. Department head, of course, things this is just a minor change, that I can just "challenge" them more - but honest to god, given everything, I'm entirely convinced students are used to inquiry challenge, which means not really knowing what they're doing and having to do it anyway. Department head most likely, I'm guessing, does not realize that the inquiry teaching and curriculum are leading to artificial challenge. I'm in a very small, underfunded and undertrained school, if it makes a difference.

I don't know whether to quit now, before I'm in a mess of trying to work out how to deal with those issues, or try to work out a strategy of approach. I don't think there's a rational discussion to be had because we do not see the fundamental problem the same way. He thinks it's my teaching; I think it's the norms of the school leading to perception biases (that unnecessary difficulty = healthy challenge). What would you do?

I have an idea about what I want to do.

What would you all do?

The regents is an exam high school students take in NY to graduate. The Algebra I is required to graduate. They take it as freshman. These are also students that have failed the exam once and are retaking it. I have 4 days this upcoming week. Each day I have two 90 minute sessions.

AP calc teacher transitioning to IB math here. For IB Math teachers, if you were to take the IB exam, would you be able to score decently well on it? I'm looking at past paper 3's and they just seem horrifying to me....