Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments New to advocating at school

I'm looking for some advice for my dd8, and dd5 about to enter K. I'm finally aware that I need to start advocating, after being extremely dissatisfied this yr.
I have met with the teacher twice (very unresponsive), and am meeting this week with the principal/superintendent (one person) to try to improve things. I'll do my best to describe my situation:

My dd8 is in 2nd grade at a k-8 school with 400 students. GT program starts in 3rd grade, as once a week pullout.

I've always known dd8 is very advanced in reading, has a intense interest in science, and she learns things very easily. She's very self motivated, up at 6am every morning reading and would go to school an hour early if she could. She's extremely energetic, tall for her age and athletic.

Since I've had no meaningful feedback from her school on her abilities I can only rely on 2 tests she's taken: Otis-Lennon where she scored 99.9% on verbal, 86% non-verbal. She also qualified (barely) for the CTY language program. (Being her 1st computer test, I think she could score even higher.)

I'm thrilled that she's happy in school with her friends, but academically she says it's "stupid". Though she reads higher level books like Harry Potter (now on her 3rd time reading them), the class is taught to the lowest level kids. I'm afraid about her not developing good study habits, even at this age. Her teacher has all kinds of excuses for not differentiating. I know she has a bad teacher this year, but I'm not sure how to tell how much is the teacher's fault vs. the school's culture. (I had to ask 3 times for the Otis-Lennon test results. They don't routinely give them out.)

DD8 is very social, and keeps herself entertained in school by creating clubs for her friends where she gets to delegate jobs to them. The teacher also relies on her to take kids to the nurse/office and other jobs in the classroom.

The school teaches so non creatively by the textbooks and worksheets. They did one book report this yr.(homework) with little writing instruction, no revision process, and not a single poem, or creative writing instruction.

DD8 gets frustrated at first when I try to supplement and give her a challenging lesson, but later takes pride in it. She wonders why I make her work when school is much easier. Interestingly, she's not a perfectionist, she really doesn't seem to care if she puts a wrong answer on her homework.

Thank you if you've read this far.

I'm trying to decide whether to stay at this district or to move. This meeting with the principal should help me decide. We have a good rapport, but am looking for ways to approach this without getting a defensive response.

What I expect is a school to use the "best practice" of ability grouping, differentiated instruction, maybe some compacting.

Being direct is not easy for me, but I'll give it a try. I can no longer be complacent.

So is she in the gifted program?

My very first suggestion would be to put it in writing. All of your complaints, what you expect and be specific.

You can also think about contacting your schools local Gifted Program leader.

Thanks, I didn't consider putting it in writing at this point.

I'm assuming she will be in the gifted program, but they don't decide until next September. Her teacher has never indicated that my dd is exceptional. The teacher's comment was that several kids in the class tested well. But DD8 tells me there is only one girl in her class that she relates to intellectually.

(I wish I were more excited about the GT program. I really want a teacher who can give her what she needs.)

I completely understand. The school doesn't sound like they are making an active attempt to communicate with you.

It sounds like you should do your meeting with the principal and if that doesn't bring about some changes or answers, contact your district gifted supervisor.

Once a week pull out programs may or may not meet the needs of gifted children - depends on what the child's needs are. Some schools will administer an individual IQ test (usually WISC IV) which might give a fuller picture of what is going on.

There are sort of 2 possiblities here -
1) the teacher/school stinks and isn't meeting anyone's educational needs
2) The teacher/school is good for most kids, but your daughter has special educational needs in the gifted directions that wouldn't be expected to be met in the regular classroom.

It's hard to know which of these will sound worse to the Principal. Try to organize your thoughts into those two possibilities and make a list of your concerns that point to either direction. Then decide which approach you want to take, and be sure to stress your concerns from that list when you meet with the Principal.

Ability grouping is wonderful thing, and is within the Principal's domain. You may find that if you argue the social-emotional need angle, the Principal may set up a little experiment where she 'stacks the deck' and puts a bunch of gifted girls with a teacher who is already good at differentiating.

I don't know if differentiated instruction is universally accepted as a best practice, but I do know it is very difficult,and time consuming, and hard to teach a teacher to do - so I would rather try and hand pick teachers who are already good at this or move my child to a classroom where what is being taught is close to his readiness level, than to storm the school demanding that every teacher be trained in differentiating.

I've seen several classrooms where the teachers look me full in the face and state that they are providing differentiated instruction and shown me stuff that would have bored my son 2 years previous. Based strictly on my personal observation, when differentiated instruction is taught to teachers, pretesting to find out what the child is read to learn isn't part of the package. Again - so many adults feel comfortable in 'assuming' what 'normal development' will be, so that a particular age of a child can be proxy for their readiness level. Often I've seen differentiation presented as "But I do differentiation! Here's the lesson for visual learners and here it is for hands on learners."

As you can see, I'm 'once bitten, twice shy' about differentiation, and the first question I ask when being told that all my son's needs will be taken care of that way is: 'So how will it be determined what my son's educational needs are?'

So I'm re-reading that the school has about 400 kids. If your daughter's verbal ability is truly 99.9% for your neighborhood, then by the odds, there shouldn't even be one other kid in the whole school with verbal ability as unusual as your daughters.

It does sound like she is missing opportunities to develop good study habits, and that she is already learning the lesson that 'school' and 'learning' are two seperate worlds.

Bottom line: See if the school will do some more testing to find out where she is, and look into subject acceleration so that she gets to learn for some part of each day in school. Teacher selection can go a long way, and 'stacking the deck' for social emotional needs might be something the Principle is willing to go along with. Look for summer programs that will get your DD with kids she can 'talk' to.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Grinity,
I can't thank you enough for your thoughtful reply. I think you're right on, and I'll use your suggestion for 'stacking' the class. Maybe I do expect too much of teachers to differentiate.
The disadvantage of a small school like ours is there are only 2 teachers per grade.
I'll post on the outcome of the meeting.

Good luck....let us know. Another approach that is pretty new is auditing a Middle school class while in elementary school. If there is a gem of a teacher in 6th grade...would the school allow ur dd to audit that class for reading and discussion and do age level writing assignments based on the 6th grade material for the 3rd grade teacher. Content can be a drawback....depending on the teacher and the child.

love and more love
grinity

Re the 400 students, and the 99.9% results -- that's assuming that the school population is representative of the test pool's population -- which is not necessarily true. It does sound like there are probably not too many other kids in Kona's dd's boat, though.

Well, I think I got what I expected from my meeting with our school principal/superintendent. It pushed me more toward the decision of moving to another district.

I went down my list of concerns for dd. He had spoken to the teacher and got the impression that dd wasn't interested in doing work at school. The teacher says she'd rather do it at home, that she'd rather not be seen as different to the other kids in class. In response to my concerns he insists the teachers are differentiating and giving enrichment. They've had workshops on it. I got examples of previous students who did very well, went on to Duke, Brown, etc. I was told repeatedly that my daughter will do fine in the school. I was told that the kids often level out after 3rd grade, but that it may not the case w/ my dd. He repeated that social problems are really a difficult part of this school. It has a good share of low income and even a couple of homeless kids.

Also, on that very day, they sent out letters about the gifted program (once a week pullout beginning in 3rd grade), and the advanced math class for grades 5-8, being canceled for next year. These are victims of the state of NJ drastically cutting funding to schools. Our town then decided to cut a big percentage from the budget also, to reduce a new tax levy.

The answer was a big 'NO' on giving my daughter the WISC. He couldn't understand why I would want the test. Since my dd8 just took the Terra Nova test, he assures me that it will give us her level in 5 different subjects.

Is the Terra Nova a useful test? I don't see it mentioned much on this forum.

I did get across that my dd's education is suffering. And I did get some sympathy. I think the principal/superintendent is stretched so thinly that his approach is that gifted kids will just take care of themselves. He must know that our current teacher is bad. I'm in anguish about the unknown quality of next year's teacher. I asked him to choose the best teacher, and suggested that he 'stack' the class as Grinity suggested. He didn't say no...
If I stay at this school it's going to take so much effort on my part.

This advocating was such a difficult thing for me to do, but was a HUGE learning experience. Too bad I may be up against a brick wall here. I am now writing a follow up letter to the principal summing up my concerns just to get it in writing.

Thanks for the support here. Whew!

Kona, I also have an 8yo and a 5yo entering K next year. our town is still maintaining our G&T once a week pullout program thankfully even in the face of the budget cuts, and I just got the notice that dd got in. For that I'm grateful. I spoke to the G&T pullout teacher and LOVED what I heard from her about what goes on in the G&T program, but I got no good info about what goes on in the regular classroom.

When we got the Terra Nova scores, I set up a meeting with the principal. He is a fan of my dd, so that's a good start. He did agree to clustering the identified G&T kids for next year, and will do so in a class that does not have the basic skills cluster. That's good, but I'm still unsure how much will be done in the regular classroom. The principal is new and rather young and he is not going to make big waves like regrouping the grade for math, though I did ask for that as well.

Dh and I have agreed that within 1 month of school starting, we want to touch base with the 3rd grade teacher and see what dd is doing in the classroom and ask for more if we think it's not enough. I have heard that the 3rd grade teachers are good, but I will need to see for myself.

Terra Nova is a 2nd grade test on 2nd grade material, so all it told me is that my dd has mastered the 2nd grade curriculum. If you want to really know where your dd is, you'll have to get out of level testing. I didn't explictly ask for it yet, but the school did not offer to do it themselves. My dd's been going to Huntington learning center for enrichment since last spring (at her choice, mind you) and if we are not getting dd what she needs in school early next year, I'm going to have her assessed there to find out where she really is. And if the school won't accept that then I'll ask them to do their own assessment.

One of the issues I have with my dd is that she honestly is not THAT far ahead academically. She's just on another level in her abstract and analytical thinking, that's much harder to 'see' in school. I think the G&T pullout will be wonderful for her since they focus on creative problem solving which is her strong suit. I'm just not sure it will be enough.

My little one is just a totally different kid, so I have no idea how she'll do in school. I'll be watching and will definitely speak up sooner than I did with big sister.

Good luck to you. we're in the same boat and yes, it is hard work!