My DH and I have joked sometimes that if we knew ahead of time how many school staff members were going to be at some of these meetings, we would have rounded up random people to equal the numbers...paid random strangers to sit across the table with their hands folded and not say anything, but be a body on "our side".
As a mom of a highly gifted boy we met last week said, "sometimes it's like talking to someone who is from an alternative universe...you hear the words but they don't make any sense for the situation!"
Last year the pull-out enrichment teacher always came to the meetings that never solved anything, and she just sat there with a faint smile on her face and her hands folded and never said anything. And DD wasn't even in the enrichment program then (it didn't start for DD until this year). For a variety of reasons, including the teacher's odd non-participation at the meetings, she is not one of the kids who attends pull-out enrichment at this school.
Good luck.
