Originally Posted by ABQMom
What I didn't expect is the entitled attitude from his gifted teachers. We are in a very high performing school, and somehow the teachers have gained an arrogance about being gifted teachers and have a philosophy that if you can't keep up with the workload, you don't deserve to be in gifted. They resent that they're forced to have a child in their otherwise speedy class that has severe enough learning disabilities that he requires time and attention. They all complain that they don't have time to deal with him and make unique project assignments, etc, to accommodate and that he should be moved back into regular ed (as if those teachers with 30+ kids have any more time than they do with 12-15 kids).

This resentment - and my effort to push back to keep out of the cog that was responsible for everything - made them even more resentful.
I feel your pain here. We were in the same boat at the beginning of the year - high performing IB primary program with a pull-out gifted class that was, quite frankly, more work than I ever did in college. Because DS was unable to keep up, the teachers/principal had doubts about his giftedness (with a 155 IQ, mind you) and DS would call himself stupid. The principal was spiteful and mean and yelled "We're the education PROFESSIONALS" at me when I tried to advocate for a move to a full-time gifted program at a different school. Well, we went ahead and moved him to that school anyway (without the full time placement). Guess what? His teachers picked up on the fact that he should be in full-time gifted within about 10 minutes of knowing him. So that's where he'll be next year.

I think sometimes our outside-the-box and/or 2E gifted kids do better at schools that are more laid back and are not just about prestige and performance. Just my opinion.

Originally Posted by ABQMom
Add to that a child with no filter, and, well, it's been a powder keg of a year. He actually told his math teacher he wasn't doing homework until he was given relevant homework instead of the same work he'd been doing since 6th grade. You can imagine the love that created.
Can I just say how much I love your son for that comment? My son would probably say something like this. And the thing that's so hard about these types of comments is that they're right. They shouldn't have to continue to do things for homework when they've already shown mastery. If the professionals who create, implement and/or execute these programs had read even a portion of the literature that's out there about gifted kids, they'd know this too.

Originally Posted by ABQMom
Somehow what is good for a laugh track and a boatload of money on Big Bang Theory is not in the tiniest bit funny in real life.
I keep telling my husband that I feel like we're raising Sheldon Cooper. I wish his mother was a real person so I could buy her coffee and ask her advice. smile