Some context:
I was having a meeting with her and the president of the board of trustees about school improvement. My job was to go through their 5 year old strategic planning document and identify places where the school might change/improve. They had something in the document about developing a system for dealing with kids with learning differences, so I asked if they had a policy for dealing with gifted kids. She used the term "gifted and talented" several times, but when referring to PG kids, meaning those who would require extreme accommodations to thrive at the school, she used the term "smarty pants kids" several times. At the time she didn't know we were thinking about the school for our younger son, who probably verges on her definition of a "smarty pants kid."
In her defense, she seems to get it about math acceleration and she doesn't have a problem with whole grade acceleration. If my younger son were to go there, he would need a grade skip on entry and then an additional one or two year acceleration in math.
I am usually pretty impervious to word choice, but for some reason, the "smarty pants" thing really bothered me. To me it means someone who is obnoxiously smart and showing off about it, a behavioral thing that can (and probably should) be changed, whereas we were discussing kids who needed extreme modification of their educational environment because of who they are--not something can (or should be) changed, but something to be cherished.
