it sounds so familiar, they do what they need to do - seem happy enough. It's only when you see them spark again, be truly happy again that you realise how not right it was before.
And then the challenge is getting others to see/understand that when every year it's a new teacher, and the old teacher may or may not have seen the spark. I think the hardest part for me is the way it impacts DD's self-perception. In the absence of work that really pushes/challenges her, she rarely does exceptional work, and is always comparing herself to the work done by other students who get a lot of compliments and attention for their thoroughness. It may be that these students are just meticulous about everything they do, but I have to wonder if their work is so thorough because it actually is at
their challenge level, so they are sparking in the same way that DD sparks when she gets to do something that is at
her level of challenge.
Recently, DD had the opportunity in two subjects to do work that she didn't already know how to do. She excelled--I think to the surprise of many. Interestingly, I noticed a concommitant increase in effort (and creativity, and results) in her other subjects too.
When it comes to the constant dance with the school over what our children need, I think this dynamic is a contributing factor. Absent the opportunities that bring our kids fully "alive", our kids achieve well enough for the school to agree with us that they're "smart"--but the school also ends up believing that we just don't know what the work of a truly exceptional student looks like.
