Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy it JUST hit me

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?!

Well, we fought hard for three years. Then we decided to homeschool. Now I have to fight with myself, rather than a constant revolving door of people!

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?

this isn't going to be very inspirational, but we just left. we gave up the deposit (three days after the deadline), and ran to the hills - totally Iron Maiden-style.

but if it helps... you've put your finger on the precise the reason we bailed. if we'd stuck it out, we might have had some teachers who "got it" along the way, but i could see that every time we hit a snag the place would simply close ranks against us. it just wasn't workable.

The vast majority of teachers and administrators have very little if any training on differentiation, let alone acceleration, dual credit, or other such concepts. The public school system was patterned after a Ford system of assembly. The vast majority of teachers expect to be able to teach down the center line and students must adjust toward that center line. Most teachers and administration were taught one class on methodology in college and had zero training in GT education or issues involving GT children.

In short, there is so little training in dealing with anyone's child who frequents this forum that teachers and administrators don't know what they don't know let alone how to effectively supply what it is GT children need.

Yes, this is going to be a battle every year. 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.

In a phrase:

helicopter parents from hell. No, they aren't SUPER common, but far more common than a child with an IQ score over 140 is, let's just put it that way... So statistically, teachers/administrators are far more likely to have seen a parent who is WRONGLY convinced that their child is a genius who is misunderstood than a parent who has a child who is really HG+.



As time goes on, educators have, more and more, had experience with this type of parent. Now, two contributing factors-- the special snowflake syndrome that has many parents of average and almost-MG kids thinking that the school isn't meeting their kids' needs (and in some cases, they are RIGHT about that... keep reading) and also wildly overestimating (wishful thinking?) their children's actual ability because of incessant hothousing. This cohort, by the way, is what leads educators to suggest gently (and not so gently) that all kids even out by 3rd grade, and other similarly asinine things. Among THAT group of children, those early emergent literacy skills, etc? Kinda true. They aren't actually on a different trajectory entirely the way HG+ kids are, so yes, the gap narrows (or something like that) over time as other kids acquire literacy and numeracy that the snowflakes' parents drilled before kindergarten.

Secondly, NCLB means that kids in the third quartile of achievement are actually getting the instruction which is aimed squarely at them. Why? Because that is the group which can be moved into "meets" expectations on all-important annual testing. The lowest achievers probably can't, but they get instruction and accommodations (dictated by federal law, those). The second quartile achievers can just coast and they'll be fine-- they get to feel super-smart for having everything come "easy" (because the instruction, recall, is actually aimed BELOW the mean now), and their parents often get the idea that because their kids have straight A's, that they are "high ability" which can fuel the problem I outlined previously, and the other parents are just happy about it and buy "honor student at" bumper stickers and join the PTA. The highest quartile is where the trouble starts. THOSE parents often know that the instruction is too low for their kids' readiness levels, and rather than being pleased, they are concerned about this and what it might signify... they ask difficult questions. Things like; "Didn't we used to have a higher reading group??" and "what ever happened to the gifted program, anyway?"

In other words, simply by asking/mentioning concerns about the level of instruction, you've already labeled yourself as belonging to that trouble-making group of parents.

In addition, though, you've also indicated that you think that your child is DIFFERENT... ahhh, this is code for educator-speak "special snowflake." In other words, your child is never going to be in the wrong no matter what, and ALL proble roads lead to "look what you're doing to my child" and adversarial interactions.

Double-whammy.


Anyway. Yes, I'm cynical, but I've also seen and heard some pretty crazy things that over-entitled parents feel they can do to classroom teachers in the name of "what I want for my precious..."

It does pay to stop and think about this from the teacher's perspective, after all. If s/he takes YOUR word for it, then s/he needs to take Jane, Timmy, and Jose's moms and dads' word for it, too, and differentiate accordingly. I don't know about where you are, but where I live, there are often 30 children in a kindergarten class. Some of those children come to school without basic preschool skills, and others (like our own HG+ children) may be reading as well as the teacher does. Plus, the teacher may also have three or four really extraordinary challenges in that classroom in the form of behavioral or medical needs in kindergarteners that CANNOT assist in the management of those conditions.

Pretty tall order.

I remind myself of what teachers are ultimately up against when I advocate. I try to couch advocacy in terms of meeting my DD's needs, of course-- but in ways that do NOT increase 'demand' on the teacher.

Administrators, though-- there's much less excuse for their antics.

Just my opinion.

Administrators are given little or no more training in GT education than the teachers, in fact, administrators are often times less sensitive to special needs as they're responsible for a bigger picture.

The best part about our situation...we totally underestimated our DS ability. The 2 psychs we consulted gave us a talking to regarding how far out our kid is and how he has special needs. We are really just a hippie family and don't care about labels and accolades and such.

But I'm sure the school sees us differently now.

Exactly.

We're so not "those" parents, either.

see now THAT is inspirational. thanks for the much-needed shot in the arm!

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).

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

We've found both of these to be true -

polarbear

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.

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

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.

Best advice EVER.

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.

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.

Well, but probably not in their minds. I find that perspective-taking is a very useful thing, here.

Most people don't become educators or administrators for the express purpose of controlling others or indulging in an endless power trip.

The pay just isn't that good, for one thing, and you don't have the kind of autonomy that would make it worth it.

So why DO they do it?

Because they like teaching, because they like kids, something along those lines. I seldom assume that a teacher DISLIKES my child. That usually isn't true, even when there is some hostility in play. Usually they are trying to leverage something out of her... whether we agree or not... and usually they have the best of intentions, however misguided.

So if you are having an advocacy problem, one of several things is almost always the case:

a) communication lapse
b) good faith on both sides, but philosophical irreconcilable differences
c) lack of data to support a conclusive, data-driven result.

In the case of GT advocacy, it can be all of those things. But it is very seldom active malice. (Now, I won't say never, because we've been there, but it's rare.)

So my take is that I look at those three factors and ask what I can do to better understand where the other person is coming from (often they have anecdote informing a position which is profoundly at odds with what we believe and have experienced ourselves), how I can diplomatically CHANGE that perspective with more data or better communication, and finally, a hard look at my OWN biases and consideration of whether or not the other party has a point that I am not heeding sufficiently well.

So when the school said to us;

"You can't both skip AND place into GT coursework. Both are options for differentiation, but you have to choose which one to use."

We considered the source (a person who didn't know my DD and wasn't familiar with her as a student) and referred that person to experts that s/he WOULD listen to (my DD's teachers), since we weren't getting through.

I'm big on "show me where it says that" in advocacy problems. It clarifies what is policy, what is law, and what is one person's opinion. You'd be surprised how often those things become conflated in educational bureaucracy.

Hold it right there! What?!?!

ETA FTAOD my point is - it's literally incredible that you can be sure, when your child is 7, that something will work for the next 10 years. If you can, you need to write the book/bottle the magic!

Ugh ya'll. This is depressing. I know dd6 is unusual. And the school just does not see it all and thinks I am a crazy parent invested in a gifted label whether my child needs it or not. There are a few things I would change, but overall we have lucked out with advocating for dd12 and she has generally had a goodish fit (private Montessori until 5th grade, then skipped 6th in large challenging public). I guess I am lucky though because depending on what the WISC eventually shows, there is an acceleration process in the district whether the principal is philosophically opposed to it or not. But mostly, they just don't see it with dd6.

I'm uncertain of the scenario 22B is in so I may be way out of line, however, I'd tend to agree with ColinsMum. I've yet to meet the parent (and my wife has taught GT for 14 years) who had it all figured out how best to serve their GT child at age 7, even if they'd previously done so with one full grown. Situations, circumstances, individual needs, etc. are just too widely varied and change regularly.

this calls to mind the one positive administrator-interaction i've had this year, from the new principal at the local public school. he told me that this sort of kid literally needs a re-calibration every few weeks, and that is indeed the entire point of parent-school communication.

i can't even express how much more relaxed i suddenly felt. and he was SO matter of fact about it - like it was no big deal. just awesome.

Let me clarify. We're in a virtual school. All we're asking is that they send the next course when the previous one is completed, (instead of having to wait 9 months for the next school year to start). If this would happen then we'd be perfectly satisfied that they were providing everything they could be expected to provide, not that we'd be perfectly satisfied in absolute terms.

Heck, I would be tempted to build a shrine (laffin)

Me too!! (not laughing, even...)

Gotcha.

Is this a matter of "local teachers/admins are fine with this" and "national org, not-so-much?"

We've had that particular problem too. The solution is that you need to involve the highest level LOCAL (state-level) administrator who can deal with national. They'll pay more attention to him/her than to you.

Believe me, at 7yo, we would have thought this was the worst of our problems with our virtual charter school, too...

heheheh... Boy, were we wrong about that. But yes, at 7, this was definitely the problem.



ETA: if you really get in a situation where you're irritated not only with national (for not shipping curriculum and delaying/lying to you) then you can always do what we threatened to... just start recording zeros for attendance hours. THAT got their attention. {innocently} "Well, it seemed wrong to lie about how much time DD was spending working on the curriculum, since we... er... don't HAVE any right now..."

i know, right?! and this was the response i got after telling him that my kid has a string of school problems as long as his arm (desperately sad/hiding her ability/morphing herself into whatever everyone wants/no friends yet almost unbelievably popular/wants to quit school/wishes she was dead.) i didn't even say "gifted" - he just inferred it based on the problems. (!!!)

so i'm totally in for the shrine. hey - maybe i'll start a thread here in september so we can all worship him accordingly! i would love to have some good stories for a change... the past few months have been brutal.

The problem is definitely with the local administrators. The teachers are fine with acceleration. The national organization (k12.com) is not involved, and I can't imagine them being involved. They national organization does pay lip service to the idea of gifted education, but it's not getting done properly in the virtual schools.
https://www.facebook.com/TheFlippedSwitch
http://www.k12.com/who-we-help/advanced-enrichable-learners

The virtual schools simply should make the courses available as needed, but they are withholding them, for no apparent reason other than to show they can. If anyone can think of a "motivation" for their actions, I'd like some ideas.

22B - did you see that HK modified her post, suggesting that you record 0 for attendance hours because you have no curriculum?

I stopped caring if my kids got good grades when I realized they were not ever going to get a good fit or fair chance at an equal playing field.

I got good at saying with a straight face, "No, that doesn't work for me, so, no, we won't accept that this is the way it is."

I stopped limiting my kids' time on the computer when I realized what he was learning online was a better fit that what he did in school.

I stopped freaking out when a teacher called complaining and stopped always assuming "my kid" was the actual problem.

And I started celebrating and embracing their quirks. They're made just they way they're supposed to be, so to %#%%#} with anyone who thinks of them as weird or needing to be fixed so they fit in,