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You have admirably overcome many challenges. You are quite right that most people tend to judge by first appearances and your story isn’t one that would usually be revealed at first meeting. I hope you will have encounters that will give you joy, satisfaction and the feeling of being appreciated.

I’m not sure how relevant my comments would be since my son didn’t have any inherent learning difficulties to overcome, but considering our DSs have the shared experience of self-learning maths at a young age with YouTube videos, I thought I would offer a reply based on our experience.

Throughout primary school, DS has always had a much better understanding of maths than any of his teachers (their comments in his school reports have all included some form of such acknowledgement). Even at high school, by Yr 8, the Maths HoD, who was the only teacher capable of teaching the highest level of secondary school mathematics, made a comment to me that DS was superior to her entire faculty in his knowledge and problem solving abilities.

Their great positive contribution to his extraordinary pace of learning was acknowledgement of the above and their active search of ways to enable him to self-learn. They never imposed grade level work on him - in the early grades, we modified his tasks such that he did the same math sheets, but he provided his answers in Roman numerals, binary, or other number bases and by Yr 4 (after he achieved a perfect score in the national numeracy assessment for Yr 3 students) they let him spend time on class computers researching whatever maths topics piqued his interest.

In this digital age, there are so many subscription based and free resources that kids can use to self learn. In his primary years, DS used his access to class computers to watch ‘Numberphile’ videos that posed a lot of thought provoking questions such as what rational vs irrational numbers would look like plotted on a Euclidean plane. Our local high school arranged subscription based access for all students to Maths Pathways which is a self paced maths program with built in teaching videos. When uptake was low due to the $60 annual fee, they switched to Maths Online with an annual fee of $12. Both of these programs are tailored to the Australian curriculum, but I suspect there’s a large overlap with US curricula, given each state has developed their own. Whilst we’ve only used Khan Academy for the occasional topic, I understand that it broadly covers the topics taught in US schools.

In summary, all of DS’s knowledge and skills were self-learnt and we owe a debt of gratitude to the teachers who recognised that providing access to materials was the best way to support him. This has stood in him in great stead for university, where his independent learning approach enables him to get the most out of lectures and tutorials.

Primary school teachers have around thirty students to cater for and high school maths teachers would typically teach a class of thirty at each grade, so they simply won’t have the capacity to accurately track students working beyond grade level. I’d encourage your DS to continue self learning and invite him to discuss with you what resources and support he needs to continue learning, so that your advocacy is specific and targeted, rather than expecting a teacher to individually track each student who is working beyond the grade level, when their main priority is to ensure the rest of the class achieves grade level competency.