Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy are you a gifted ed evangelical?

No, I don't mean to ask if you are an evangelical who supports gifted education. I mean, are you someone who sees value in educating others (mainly teachers and administrators) in the benefits and necessity of appropriate gifted education for your children? My story in a tiny nutshell: 2 years ago, if you asked me if gifted children needed "special services", I probably would have said no, they will be fine in the end, no matter what their classroom situations. Fast forward to this past school year and after seeing what DS 6 has gone through and after having him tested and speaking with professionals in the field, I am a believer! I often find myself wanting to educate my son's rather ignorant teachers, but am not sure how to go about it. For example, my son is currently subject accelerated 3 years ahead in math (in 1st grade and attends 4th grade math once a week). I recently had a conversation with my son's 4th grade math teacher who admitted that she was philosophically opposed to any acceleration but acknowledged that for my son, it was a great fit for him. He is happy and excelling in her class. So, in that moment, I felt a need to hook her up with lots of articles and resources so that she could "see the light" and be personally more supportive of acceleration. Is that appropriate? Is that something some of you would do?

Nope. I'm mostly a--

well, I guess I'm a post- Evangelist in this sense. LOL.

I've learned over the years that there are some people who can get it, some people who WILL get it if you lead/guide them, and then there are people who either cannot get it (they simply lack the capacity to truly understand) and those who WILL NOT (because it violates their belief system and cognitive dissonance is so uncomfy).

A surprising number of educators are in the last two camps.

They cannot be reasoned with. Only avoided and detoured around.

There are also those who-- like your son's math teacher-- are in that latter camp but have some peculiar selective blindness re: genuinely HG+ children. We've run into them, too. Honestly I don't rock their world, as much as I would like to. Generally I've discovered that if you PUSH them to accept what they aren't ready for, it backfires and then snap back to a more rigid stance with your own child instead.

I need the cooperation too much, basically. So I leave them alone, they give DD what she needs, and we all go on about our regular business.

This puts you in the camp of people who only believe it when they experience it.

So, would there have been any way of convincing prior you that "gifted children" need "special services".

Kind of like my father.

Me: "Can I be grade-skipped?"

Dad (the guy who actually runs the school system): No. I forbid it.

I did have lots of special powers, like the ability to alter my class schedule and miss school for activities at will, but grade skipping was outside the realm of possibility.

I live in an affluent suburb of Boston. Massachusetts students typically rank near the top on national tests such as the NAEP, and our school district ranks high in Massachusetts.

The teachers and administrators do not want to hear about gifted children. Here is the belief system:

"We have great schools -- give us more money (pass a tax override) but otherwise shut up. You are free to afterschool your children, but don't expect us to consider what your child knows. If he is in 5th grade, he studies 5th grade math. Period. What are you complaining about? Look at our MCAS scores."

Got the teeth guard and big padded gloves, but nowhere to go with them. The school gets it, the district gets it, the TD coordinator is on board, and the choir is busy.

I've been stirring for the argument since I was DS's age, and have found myself in a place where I couldn't fairly ask for more. On the other hand I am in one school with a magnet program that is speciically learner oriented.

But this thread has me thinking I should look at spreading the message further as I may be in a position to do so if only subtly.

Yes, I could have been convinced. I was not hostile to the idea of gifted ed. I was simply uneducated about it. A few key articles could have easily changed my mind I think. But I tend to be a fairly open person and am happy to take in information and change my mind about things. It's just now I feel like an evangelical! I want to go from door to door and spread the word at my son's school.

I did incidentally just land a position at my son's school. I will be working on curriculum development and lesson planning. I became the squeaky wheel this year and they have decided to put me to work!

DW and I have sought to educate our friends with younger kids who exhibit the traits of giftedness, because, "Oh boy, you have no idea what you're in for!"

As for the school, they think they know everything, so there's no point in talking to them.

Precisely. I was accommodated, similarly, via a combination of delinquency and absenteeism. Mostly.

I wasn't a non-believer in the past, just naive. I had no idea about the variety of giftedness, but I have learnt so much in the past year. Now, I am passionate about advocating for my son. Once upon a time, I didn't think it was appropriate to put my son in kindy a year early (scared of the "social implications"), but now I am demanding this and that for my boy. I also encourage other parents to look closer at their children; I have even led a couple of parents towards the idea that their child could be gifted.

My son goes to an apparent school for gifted kids, although they are quite reluctant to do anything to help gifted kids before the age of eight. I will be organising a gifted education coordinator (from a private high school) to go in and talk to the teachers. She starts off by talking to them like they're kids, and after 15 minutes of boredom she explains that that is what it is like for gifted children in class.

I am in one of the largest school districts in the country.

Recently while at dinner, I met an administrator who works at the district office who stated he believes every child should be given (by the district) an ipad/laptop for school use,

AND
should be allowed to learn at his own pace, as well as being able to pick topics of own interest (within reason) to learn the key curriculum.

He also supports online learning. and something about a "cloud"? I told him I had pulled DS from K d/t unchallenged etc, and he said "good for you" and proceeded to explain if more parents would challenge the "150 year old English model of education" that is outdated etc, the district would take notice.

He said he believes gifted kids should be given whatever it takes to reach their full potential, that they are our future, and that they are being given a disservice by the educational system- across the country.

it was quite enlightening to hear him.

Cloud = all the software and data frills tucked away on the internet with none of the clunky server hardware hanging out in some janitor's closet hoping for the budget to include a computer technician.

I still talk about the needs of gifted kids, but keep my expectations low. I've read too much and met too many people whose ideologies or hangups won't permit them to see the facts to feel any differently.

The education situation in general is sucky, and the ideology is a big part of that. When we were changing schools for our two youngest two years ago, I told the principal that DD had been skipped kindergarten. I could tell that he wasn't happy about it by the way he told me "We're stuck with it and we'll do our best."

A few months ago, I was at a parent-teacher conference with her teacher. She told me that DD can be a bit more immature than her classmates at times and that her much younger age (very late summer birthday on top of the skip) was certainly a factor. Then she caught herself and added, "But I'm not saying she she should be it he grade behind!!! She definitely belongs here! <3 <3 "

DD does very well academically and has friends in most of the K-8 grades. She has four very good friends in her own grade and is always getting invited to parties. The people in the school are well aware of how well she fits in, and I think she's become something of a grade-skip success story. So I take this as a small victory in the world of advocacy.

This is maybe off topic, but as I was reading this thread, I realized that I maybe still don't believe that my daughter wouldn't be well-served at the elite private school down the road. She is DYS, with both sets of scores comfortably above the DYS cut, but she just seems really normal to me. I'm pretty sure the school is full of many at last MG kids, and I don't know that my daughter would stick out there as needing anything extra. We homeschool and always have, so I guess I just don't have much of a basis for comparison.

Am I kidding myself? Would she be bored silly if I sent her there? Not that I am thinking about it at this point, but I guess I just always wonder. Is this just my gifted denial kicking in?

I had the thought the other day that "gifted" might only really be a relevant term when there is some discrepancy between the student and the learning environment. In my "g" home with her "g" brother and our other "g" homeschooling families, maybe my kids really aren't gifted in any functional way. They are just average. See what I mean?

And then there's still my question -- what would the disparity look like at Fancy Private School? I'm just curious...

Gabalyn it really depends on the school, by the high end private my kids used to go to absolutely was heavily skewed to MG kids, at least one 140+ kid per grade (50-60 kids) and he special ed team saw a LOT of bright but LD kids.

My kids absolutely found peers a lot more easily there (both miss HG+ and miss MG/2e). They catered better to my MG/2e kid at the time we were there, but I think they'd be far better for my HG+ dd than her current public school is and we certainly hope to get her back into a similar school ASAP.

This honestly makes me think I need to look at the Fancy Private Schools in my town. But my town isn't very big.

DS is a buckle-down sort of kid. I don't think he'd react badly to pressure-cooker, though I could be wrong. He's also not the creative push-back personality that his sister is.

Ha. I was all set to be a gifted advocate in our schools, but we ended up sending him to a Non-Fancy Private School that didn't require advocacy -- they just give DS the materials and challenge that he needs.

Obviously, we still pay taxes and thus have a stake in our town's public schools! But because DS has never actually gone there, I can't realistically have a say about what's going on in those schools. No one will listen. Lack of gifted support is the primary reason we're not sending him there, but now I'm in the catch-22 of not being able to effect any change at all.

So I kind of feel stuck. I mean, I'd like to not have to pay for private school tuition, but I'm not going to send DS to a public school that can't serve his needs and then spend the next N years fighting for a gifted program (probably in vain, since other parents have fought and failed). Am I right? *sigh*

Personally I have been truly appalled at the complete lack of open mindedness that I have recently encountered at my DDs school.

They say that she needs to be a child and that she should be held down to her age-grade but that I should enrich in after school hours.

They simply do not see the contradiction there - she is supposed to go to a full day of school and afterwards, instead of playing normal kid games, she is supposed to crack open the books - how is that not robbing her of time that she should be spending best by being a kid?

So I am going to have to do some evangelizing it seems...

Yikes Mana! My city is not quite like that but certainly there is a heavy skewing to private schooling for gifted children.

Portia, thanks for the reality check. Mana, that sounds touch, and yes, toxic. My DD was NOT academically advanced when she was that age, not in any formal way, at least. I don't know how she would have fared in the environment you are describing either. She's very creative, and I don't know that schools would see that and value it.

Our broken, inner-city district is not an option for us, but I do think it is possible that the private schools are not quite all that -- a lot of "Race to Nowhere" pressure in some, cliqueishness and too much privilege (3rd graders having iphones). I think really my questions have to do with my last few lingering doubts about homeschooling. I still have my days when I entertain the question as to whether or not private school would in fact have been better. But in the end, I think not.

I have heard that the 'worst' school districts can be the best for a child who needs more accommodations. The 'good' districts are so sure of their excellence that they refuse to see a need for anything other than what they provide, whereas the 'bad' districts are used having work things out. I met someone a couple of weeks ago whose child is in one of the 'worst' districts, and he had glowing praise for their gifted program.

(scare quote usage fully intentional)

Having taken the full trip with DS 19 and nearly the full trip with DS 15 I'm of the same mindset as HowlerKarma. My original mindset was that all it would take to sway people was to educate them, I quickly learned (and should have already known) that you can only educate those willing to be educated. What I've found is that there are too many who don't know what they don't know but assume they do. There are also many that assume that since little or no time was spent on gifted education and it's special needs in their college education, that anything you have to say or show them isn't going to be helpful or change their mind.

I've taken the mindset of educating those who will listen and avoiding those who won't. You can only justify wasting so much time on those who already have their mind made up, time that can be better spent seeking other options. I know I've wasted more time being bull headed trying to educate those who don't want to be than I'd like to admit.

I haven't ever been involved in the private school trail, only public school option. There, unfortunately I've learned a couple of things generally speaking, of course not in ALL cases...

1. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, not always but if it's not squeaking it has no chance.
2. Public schools are deathly afraid of any parental confrontation be it entirely civil, factual, and with intent to solve problems or otherwise.
3. If the public school even has the slightest thought pattern that something will cost more money they dismiss it immediately without so much as discussion.
4. You're not going to win over an entire system, if you can find one person who "gets" your kid and the concept, then do everything you can to make the most of it.
5. Expect to supplement your child's education outside of school and expect to need to go to great lengths to do so.

Again, these aren't true in ALL scenarios, they're just more often true than not.

To answer the question--I do not evangelize. I have some ambivalence about the net community effect of the gifted magnet my child attends. It's much better than her first school, but still probably not enough. It will be interesting to see how things progress as my second child enters the system and as the years pass.

I can imagine an ideal school for my children, but I can't imagine it being implemented. I am highly aware of the multiple obstacles that exist to this school ever being created. I really don't want to homeschool my kids, either. I feel pretty done with full-time parenting (as an introvert with two extrovert children, I find it hard!), I think they benefit from being with other adults and other children, and I have a job that I love. We supplement at home with a lot of interesting stuff. However, I am not afterschooling DD because she has too much homework to make this sustainable.

I am sort of beaten down at this point, but DD is maintaining and doing okay, so we will take it. The irony is that neither of my children are 2E in the educational sense and both of them SHOULD be extremely fun to teach in most ways. I'm still waiting for just one of them to get a teacher who really loves him/her and gives him/her wings.

Old Dad, I think your summary is really on target.

We've had fewer problems and frustrations with private schools and more in only one year of a public school than all other years combined, but the school was a very bad fit for our son.

But we've still met people at the private schools who really don't get giftedness at all.