Catalana...we have been fortunate in some regards and worked pretty darn hard in others with his school situation. We saw signs of giftedness early on and many people made comments to us which prompted me to start researching. We live near William and Mary Univ, and have utilized their gifted center and camps. We first had him tested by them on a very abbreviated WPPSI and Woodcock Johnson (interestingly, he was 5, not interested in math at all, and scored in the 70% for the math section, 99% verbal). They suggested teaching him about money. So we did and his math went from non-existant to long division in the course of six months (mostly on his own).
My son attends a public school, that has a pretty high % gt population. He was frustrated and bored in K, and we successfully advocated for him to get more challenging reading and the teacher game him some 2nd/3rd grade math sheets. He was identified for the district pull-out, and through a conversation with his gt teacher there, she initiated talks with the principal. He was put into first grade classrooms for observation with four teachers and a "trial period" . Painful process, but it resulted in the schools first grade skip (I believe district's 2nd). This year he has a teacher with a master's in gifted ed and has handled the skip relatively well. It isn't all roses though. The school is very heavy on worksheets and low on creative projects. Like so many schools today, there is still a lot of pressure on teachers to focus on the state standards testing. We wanted a full evaluation to hopefully advocate for more project based learning and greater challenge. He is still underchallenged and even after the skip, walked in and scored highest in reading and math from day one. It is always a work in progress to get what these kids need, isn't it
We been blessed with great teachers so far. Our psych recommended "side-stepping into other areas like statistics, physics, applied math etc...to let him broaden rather than just accelerate. She is going to write the report to suggest this as a way to let him go deeper next year when the class is covering material he already knows. We will also continue to enrich at home.
