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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 429
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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 429 |
I think you'll find though that as parents you'll become better and better at finding work arounds, supplying information, and finding opportunities outside of the school day to enhance your child's learning and meeting their needs. see now THAT is inspirational. thanks for the much-needed shot in the arm!
Every Sunday it brooded and lay on the floor. Inconveniently close to the drawing-room door.
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Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,428
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Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,428 |
I'm not feeling like I need to do any fighting or advocating for DD9 at this point. She is in a FT gifted magnet and things are so much better than they were. They could be better, but they're decent enough and any further effort would be swimming upstream in a major way. However, it is worth mentioning that she is MG, maybe HG (nowhere near PG).
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 2,498
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Joined: Apr 2010
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All the nonsense we are going through with DS school is going to happen EVERY YEAR probably. Or not. You can't tell yet. For us, things got radically better after 2nd grade. The school has gradually come to accept that out-of-the-box solutions were needed for our DS now 10, and while it hasn't been perfect, it's nowhere near the awful mess that it used to be. We have genuine cooperation across almost all the school personnel. I find it useful to stay in problem-solving mode; look at what's going on now, and see what's needed. Don't borrow trouble by planning in detail too many years ahead; the needs are going to change anyway. I would recommend talking to other parents of gifted kids in your district to see what others' experiences are like. You definitely don't want to bang your head against a wall forever, but I wouldn't assume that things won't improve without significant evidence supporting that position. DeeDee
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Joined: Sep 2011
Posts: 3,363
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Joined: Sep 2011
Posts: 3,363 |
[quote=Old Dad]I think you'll find though that as parents you'll become better and better at finding work arounds, supplying information, and finding opportunities outside of the school day to enhance your child's learning and meeting their needs. So, my take away is don't overestimate what advocacy can do. We had a good teacher but structurally she couldn't solve the problem. The school couldn't/wouldn't solve the problem. If you can't negotiate a solution it isn't necessarily your fault and you should find an approach that works for your kid. I feel like there is a cult of positive thinking approach to advocacy and people need to be accept that sometimes you can't get what you need and have to move on to your least-worst option. That might be afterschooling, homechooling, just accepting the current situation, or something else. However it is unrealistic to imply that time and good intentions will solve all of these problems. Maybe its easier if you have a neurotypical, optimally gifted kid... but if your kid is either 2e or PG, or both, I think your are likely to hit insurmountable roadblocks in many school systems. We've found both of these to be true - polarbear
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Joined: Feb 2013
Posts: 1,228
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All the nonsense we are going through with DS school is going to happen EVERY YEAR probably. Those of you with experience, how do you do it?! What baffles me is why are teachers so insistent on holding students back? Do they think we (all parents) are crazy? Why is this such an uphill battle? Being there, doing that. What's so infuriating is that people are choosing to deprive our child of educational opportunities for absolutely no reason whatsoever, other than to show that they can.
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 2,498
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However it is unrealistic to imply that time and good intentions will solve all of these problems. Maybe its easier if you have a neurotypical, optimally gifted kid... but if your kid is either 2e or PG, or both, I think your are likely to hit insurmountable roadblocks in many school systems. Whether these problems can be solved really depends on where you are and who's running things in your particular district and school, as well as how well-trained and flexible the teachers are. And for us it has also depended on what kind of strategic or legal help is at hand. I would definitely never say that all problems of this kind can be solved (and I know full well what the roadblocks look and feel like); just that we've seen enormous progress in advocating for our fairly extreme 2E kid in a local public school. I also think there is a tendency to panicked perfectionism among parents these days (myself absolutely included). My parents sent me to public school, I believe they noticed that it was generally a very poor fit, but I had a great teacher who differentiated where she could and my parents saw no need (or even possibility) to make school fit my needs any better than it did. Now our expectations are much higher, and that's very good for our kids-- it's just not surprising that the system our parents' generation left us isn't yet equipped for that. DeeDee
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Joined: Jul 2012
Posts: 423
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Joined: Jul 2012
Posts: 423 |
I think the vast majority of those who frequent this forum realize that we can all give advise from our own experience with our children, however, as has been stated, education of gifted is very unique and no one method or path works for everyone or even a majority. You know your child best, we've learned to try what sounds like a good plan, analyse it, tweak it, try again, sometimes it's good, sometimes it needs more tweaking, sometimes we go on a tangent, and sometimes we reverse direction. Just be flexible and expect to need to go out of your way to meet the needs of your child because it's seldom that any school system is going to be able to do it on their own.
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181
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Joined: Feb 2011
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I find it useful to stay in problem-solving mode; look at what's going on now, and see what's needed. Don't borrow trouble by planning in detail too many years ahead; the needs are going to change anyway. Best advice EVER. 
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 358
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Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 358 |
We decided to plan one year at a time.
Every time we check the chart it is 2 steps up and to the right.
The school can't keep up. I don't really expect them to.
This year was nothing like the plan.
This forced us out of our comfort zone and presented some wonderful experiences.
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Joined: Feb 2013
Posts: 1,228
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Joined: Feb 2013
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I think the vast majority of those who frequent this forum realize that we can all give advise from our own experience with our children, however, as has been stated, education of gifted is very unique and no one method or path works for everyone or even a majority. You know your child best, we've learned to try what sounds like a good plan, analyse it, tweak it, try again, sometimes it's good, sometimes it needs more tweaking, sometimes we go on a tangent, and sometimes we reverse direction. Just be flexible and expect to need to go out of your way to meet the needs of your child because it's seldom that any school system is going to be able to do it on their own. This just doesn't apply to our situation at all. In our situation there is a very simple solution, that is perfectly satisfactory to us (for about the next decade), that no reasonable person could disagree with, that our child is entitled to, that has no cost to the school, but which one individual can block. And this one individual is blocking it simply because he can. It's purely a power trip type scenario. Sometimes things just are not complex at all, and no analysis or tweaking is needed, and there is no real issue in dispute. Sometimes it's purely a people problem.
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