1. Because DD is socially adept, an outstanding citizen, and can do her work more easily, teachers intentionally sit her next to the kids that other children cannot handle being next to, probably because those kids cannot handle the conflict or distractions. This started happening in 2nd and we didn't catch on why it was happening until the end of 3rd.
We had this one too. DD (now 12) was is a regular classroom in kindergarten. Her teacher had her sit next to a problem child on a regular basis. When DD found out that kid would be in her 1st grade class, she did not want to go back for first grade. I had to go to her first grade teacher and get assurances that she would not be seated near him for at least the first six weeks. The first grade teacher agreed and then commented that the kindergarten teacher had recommended keeping these two together since DD calmed him down. Ugh!
DD12 moved to a gt classroom in second grade. There still were kids who were hyper-talkative, angry, and couldn't sit still. The difference we found was that the teachers understood how much these kids drove the justice-police type (my kid) crazy. They worked with my perfectionist police officer to help her figure out ways to tolerate sitting next to kids whose behavior was less than perfect.
Our other big challenge in the regular class was that DD was a chameleon. The teacher thought that DD was a typical kid. She could blend in at will. The teacher never asked "more" of DD. If she sat there quietly doing her work, then life was good. Since she wasn't a problem, her teacher could ignore her. Her teacher didn't even think that DD should test for the district GT program. When her teacher saw DD's results, she was blown away.
