I do think it's important to take a deep breath and remember that in most public school districts, PG kids are
very rare.
We have encountered several teachers who had "heard about" kids like my DD, and a few at the national level that had actually encountered a few like her. Bear in mind that this is a cybercharter that
at the time had some 35K students enrolled nationwide from K through 12. I never got a clear sense of just HOW many kids like her they'd seen-- but-- a few.
That population is also somewhat enriched since kids like those of members here tend to wind up outside of the mainstream (for obvious reasons).
We also encountered a high school counselor who had been with our local district for 20+ years who had seen one other student like her. That was what finally convinced
me, actually-- that this was a person who was reasonably with it, had pretty much seen half of the kids in this town (which has no high-achieving private schools), and the kids here are in a pressure cooker setting-- fully 25% of the students in the district are "identified" as GT. But of the perhaps 25,000 students he's seen in his career here? He's seen ONE other PG student, and knew that they didn't really have the
ability to give her what she needed.
He's seen probably a thousand MG students.
But only one other like my DD, and the best thing that they could do for that child was to move him into college coursework at 14-15-- like my DD.
Her research mentor at 14 had seen a handful of them-- due to her research connections at UW, which has a program intended for HG/PG students to matriculate early at the UW. She knew what DD was.
But until she was about 10-11yo, we were into "Wow, I've HEARD about kids like this..." territory. She was fascinating to them-- but it didn't mean that they understood her in the slightest.
We also had a lot of people DOUBT how gifted she is over the years simply
because she blends in so well when she wants to be under the radar and not on display as a circus sideshow. Naturally someone with excellent social skills can't be that smart.
Repeat-- PG is RARE. Even professional educators will not very likely have actually interacted with such a student before.
