Just wanted to share how my school meeting went last week. I met with the Principal, my DS8's teacher, and the floater teacher who has been doing a pullout math group with him (allegedly the 2 top kids in math from each of 5 classrooms).
Overall it went pretty well. My main priority was to listen to what they had to say, not get upset in front of them, as we had a very upsetting week due to two other issues and I was feeling pretty beaten down, and to try to advocate/push on some fronts. I did all 3
My way of background my DS is in 2nd grade in public school. There is no G/T anything until 4th grade here, and I think he has learned very little in math over the last 3 years. I mentioned this to his teacher at the beginning of the year and she seemed skeptical, so we decided to do some testing to have some objective evidence. The testing showed pretty much what we expected - HG kid with a particular math talent.
One good thing from pushing on the teacher a little bit (lovely woman) was that my DS was pulled into this small group starting in December that moved much faster and also did enrichment type math - it has helped alot - my DS was coming home in tears and angry over the "baby" math and now he says he likes his small group although he still wishes he was learning more new stuff (for example they just started learning multiplication and division - circling groups, etc. and at home he is working on long division and multiplication). But it is a much better situation.
So, at the meeting, I explained the test scores and what they suggested. Then the principal said she agreed that we had to keep challenging him, etc. etc. She does not like subject acceleration because she has concerns about the maturity issue and the knowledge gap issue. I (nicely) said that I didn't think the research supported those concerns and she was nicely disagreed but conceded that he research was mixed and that he would be able to remedy any gaps easily. His teacher focused on the maturity issue (she likes him, but it seems to be her big issue - my DS is def. not overly mature, but is normal for an 8 year old (he is very tall and looks like a 10 year old and I think that even when people know he is 8 they expect him to act like a 10 y.o. - I know I do sometimes).
One great thing is that it looks quite likely that the small group will continue until the end of the year. While this isn't a perfect solution, it isn't a bad one either, and it gives us time to work out something for next year (when there most likely will not be a floater teacher).
The principal is going to have a couple math curriculum specialists talk to him and we left it at that (and the fact the small group is likely going to continue). We agreed to continue to discuss options. I did email the principal because I felt like I came out sounding like I strongly wanted a subject skip, when I view that as one possible option (and not necessarily the best - I would really love it if they would let me get him a mentor). And I wanted to clarify specifically why she was having him meet with the curriculum people (she said not testing, but I didn't clarify exactly why so I would like some sense of where she is going with that).
So, for a first meeting, I think it went well enough. I am trying to remind myself that this will likely take a while. Especially if the small group continues for the rest of the year, it will give us until school starts in fall to come up with a plan for 3rd grade, which is a nice amount of time to reach a resolution. And in the meantime, he is generally pretty happy.
Thanks for all of the suggestions about how to approach this meeting - they definitely helped.
Cat
