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Mr W has a new morning teacher the last three weeks whom we had not talked to. We usually talk to the afternoon teacher. He is in with 4 and 5 year olds.

This woman evaluated him last week. And then gave us a copy.

Her academic eval ended at the alphabet, and counting to 10, which she indicated he had mastered.

The addition, subtraction, plus all the geometry she did not do.

She then said he was a little impatient with the other kids and was not working purposefully.

I suggested he was bored.

"No, he is not bored." was her response.

"I disagree. Why did you not eval him past the alphabet?" I asked.

"That is 4 year old and Kindergarten stuff." she said.

!!

"Looking at this list, he knows it all - except for what a scalene triangle is. He knows about 300 words by sight and can sound out many more. Reading is not even on this list and he is reading. He can even search for stuff on google."

"Most of our parents do not work with kids at home.." she said.

"And neither do we."

At this point we are thinking about our options.

Sigh, I'm sorry!

Teachers - in general - BELIEVE. The only way to convinse her that the passion is coming from your son is to sent him home with her for a few days. ((scary thought!))

So what are the options?
Grinity

Yikes! Well, he might yet win her over, I understand he is quite a charmer

Our dd's teacher was kinda skeptical when we had her moved into k at age 4, but now she just laughs and tells me all about how dd is doing her math better than most of the older kids (knows what the various dot patterns mean on a die without having to count, takes time to lay out all her counting beads in interesting patterns, but still finishes really fast, etc.) So....thankfully we are doing ok (so far!)
Hope she starts to get it for your guy, or you find some other options.

When my eldest started preschool, I gave his teacher a rundown of his reading abilities. She looked at me like I was speaking Martian.

He was 4! Four is early to read, say, simple words, but not outrageously so. This would mean a few other kids in my son's class would have been past mastering the alphabet. But the message would not sink in, no matter how many times I brought it up. It was frustrating. They wouldn't even let him do SRA cards until kindergarten.

You might try asking the afternoon teacher to evaluate him at a higher level.

Sometimes teachers have a conceptual barrier around giftedness and they have to see the child pass their own tests before they believe.

We struggled for three years. We never really succeeded with math, but one teacher was good about accelerating my son's in reading and language arts. When he moved past her (2nd grade), we had the same problem. I finally convinced the 3rd grade teacher to let him do a reading/book report project that her kids were doing. He completed it in a week, in the car, as we drove to/from school. This was a three-week project in her class. Everything changed after that --- because he passed an evaluation that they had designed.

Dunno if this would work with your son's teacher(s), but I'm throwing it out as food for thought.

Good luck.

"not working purposefully"

At what? Coloring letters of the alphabet and gluing sequins on them? Counting to three or five out loud with the class with unbearable slowness so that everyone can keep up? Yeah, those are riveting.

I'm glad I have never had this problem with DS8 -- from the moment he set foot in the preschool, everyone there knew exactly how much he could read because he did it out loud, constantly. He read all the forms to the director while I was filling them out. He read her everything on her desk while she was distracting him from that. He's his own best advertising -- but that probably has something to do with his Asperger's, because he just didn't have a filter to stop him from doing that. It's a mixed blessing!

Have you talked to the director/owner of the school? I would hate to see you jump due to a new teacher when you have been praising the school up to this point.

We were so very, very spoiled when DS was 4. He was in a private preschool and by luck, his teacher had been an elementary teacher in Hong Kong. Because she wasn't certified here, she took a preschool job. Each day when the other kids were napping, she and my DS would work on real school. They did science experiments, read books together and both really loved the experience! I think this actually tainted our perspective- we fully believed all elementary teachers would be delighted to have him in class!

Perhaps you can ask her to just try the evaluation and see where it goes? I think most teachers don't go above because they don't want to upset parents, create a hothousing situation, mess with a kid's self-esteem or whatever other excuse they have.

Because he is with 4 & 5 year olds, he should be evaluated with at least the same evaluation used for them. If the evaluation is to see if any kids are above level, then he also needs to be evaluated for above level work.