Just received DS6's 2nd semester report today, and feeling a bit sad. His teacher just does not see the same kid I see at home. Where I see a kid who is reading way ahead of his peers, has intuitive math sense and can learn at lightning speed, she sees a kid who is "meeting the standards." He has lost his spark; he just isn't as motivated and excited about learning as he used to be.
Maybe if your focus is on keeping the classroom orderly and conforming to standards instead of teaching the individual child, smart but efficient (lazy :)) kids like my son will do the bare minimum. I'm not sure exactly what's going on in class, but evidently he is not at all showing what he can do, probably because he isn't expected to. If he continues at this pace, he will indeed prove that "everybody catches up to the advanced children by third grade." And I think that would be a shameful waste of his ability.
Denial and doubt moment: Is it possible that a child who was reading and spelling at 2, studying the periodic table and drawing models of radon at 5, and doing multiplication and division in his head at 6 isn't gifted after all? Am I expecting too much?
On the bright side, we just made the decision to move him to a small, private school for 2nd grade, where they'll be able to differentiate the curriculum for different skill levels. The student/teacher ratio is 20 to 1 (public schools in our district are moving to 30 to 1 next year). I hope we'll be able to steer him away from this underachieving rut and get him loving learning again.
