Yesterday, DD7 told me that she is sad most of the day at school. She first lost interest in schoolwork at the end of Kindergarten. It didn�t get much better last year in 1st grade. I met with the teacher several times and we could never solve the real problem. Some days DD7 would spend huge amounts of time doing the simplest worksheet and consequently missed a lot of recess, which I found out about later. Differentiation meant that she could do �challenge� worksheets after she did her �first grade� work. She wasn�t impressed and chose to spend any free time she had reading.
I didn�t realize how upset she was until last May when she said �I don�t like going to school anymore because I don�t get to learn much�. Also, she wasn�t sure she wanted to go to 2nd grade because she didn�t think she would learn there, either. After looking at the state curriculum, I agreed. This conversation really woke me up, so I met with everyone I could think of. The principal said that their policy forbids subject acceleration but they would let her take subjects �deeper�.
To skip, she had to pass 4 tests with a 90 on each: Math, LA, Science, and Social Studies. I wasn�t sure if I wanted her to skip because she finally made a good friend (in her GT cluster, of course), but I thought that the results might help our case. I got her a huge pile of library books on SS topics, and she just devoured them. I hadn�t seen her that happy in a while. She was extremely motivated to practice math and finished the test very quickly. We got her test results right before school started, and she received almost perfect scores on Math & LA, passed science, but just missed on SS. Both she and I can�t figure out how that happened. The irony is that SS is the only test we studied for!
Since 2nd grade is heavily focused on math & LA, we are even more concerned given her test scores. This year, they will increase her GT pullout to 3 hours a week, but I do not think that will solve the problem. When I ran into the principal at Meet the Teacher night, I got the usual �it�s a good problem to have� and �we have several kids in this situation�. On Monday, we are going to meet with her, the 2nd grade teacher, the counselor and the GT teacher. I know they are going to push differentiation as a great solution (which is supposed to be better this year � how could it get worse?), but I don�t know how to make this a productive meeting or what to do next. Thanks for any suggestions that you may have.
