I'm happy to answer.
He threw his backpack down on the first day of school and exclaimed that he wasn't going back. He's not a child prone to such outbursts.
He began losing recess time for misbehavior. This is a rule-oriented kid whose greatest pride in K was that he had never even gotten the "yellow" warning light, let alone the "red" misbehaving light in the traffic light of behavior. Losing recesses was totally out of character
He was cranky when he got home, acting out, throwing tantrums, etc. He threw more tantrums in a month than he had thrown the whole rest of his life combined--and it wasn't even close! He had always been a sunny, happy kid. Suddenly, he was anything but.
Finally, the work he was being assigned was obviously far below his capabilties and I saw no signs that the teacher was making any effort to differentiate for him. When I tried to *gently* advocate on his behalf in an e-mail, merely asking for more challenging books to be sent home--an adaptation which would require NO additional work on her part--she lashed out at me, taking it personally (as in "You don't seem to have any faith in my abilities!"). An apology from me, complete with a confession of my own insecurities about parenting DS, was met with silence. She didn't respond at all. I felt she was dreadfully unprofessional, and I feared how my son was being treated.
Shortly after that, she began bribing the class to try to get them to behave, as well as taking away recesses from the majority of the class on a far-too-regular basis. She was having trouble controlling the class--which contained at least two other GT kids that I know of, both of whom were also acting out.
That was when we had seen enough, and we pulled DS out.
It wasn't really much of a choice, actually. The only choice was between going to the principal to agitate for a different teacher or pulling him out altogether. We decided it would be so much pain and suffering to get a different teacher, and it probably wouldn't help. None of the 1st grade teachers were that sympathetic to GT kids, and the work level would remain the same regardless of the teacher. It just didn't seem worth it, so we pulled him out instead.
Does that help?
Are you having similar problems? I'm happy to talk.
