Neato, that's happening more and more with GS8. I got a bit rattled when he was accepted in the gifted program for this semester, and I was thinking, "what if he continues to get farther ahead of his classmates?" And I decided I'd deal with it when it became a problem. Then at the beginning of this final quarter he took another reading test which showed he'd gained over a year GE in 1 quarter, putting him at 8.1 GE for reading. And I got rattled again, wondering what we'll do if he continues to get farther ahead. That's when I realized, what we are doing is working! He's getting a lot of other things from school, we have fun after school, and he's learning! It is working well for him, too.
Yippee!!!!
((Sun parts the clouds and a ray reaches down to shine on dear OHGrandma's lovely satisfied face!! Flower petals drift to earth and dazzle in the sunlight.))
I've read (somewhere) that the higher the level of teaching the greater the spread will of achievement will be. I believe this to be true, and hope that this doesn't put folks off of excellent educations. It's not our faults, it's just the nature of things.
I'm quite sure that every child in my son's school could be far above where they currently are if we individualized education to every child and filled schools with large numbers of folks who loved to learn and teach their particular subjects - not as full time teachers - perhaps as little as 1 hour a day, or through pre-recorded programs or really well designed computer based learning. Or turn every school into a farm where all the learning activities were based on real life problem solving? We just don't know yet, but we will, if we keep looking. And yes, my guess is that the variety of achievements and the variety of achievement levels would increase tremendously.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
