I'm looking for some advice for my dd8, and dd5 about to enter K. I'm finally aware that I need to start advocating, after being extremely dissatisfied this yr.
I have met with the teacher twice (very unresponsive), and am meeting this week with the principal/superintendent (one person) to try to improve things. I'll do my best to describe my situation:
My dd8 is in 2nd grade at a k-8 school with 400 students. GT program starts in 3rd grade, as once a week pullout.
I've always known dd8 is very advanced in reading, has a intense interest in science, and she learns things very easily. She's very self motivated, up at 6am every morning reading and would go to school an hour early if she could. She's extremely energetic, tall for her age and athletic.
Since I've had no meaningful feedback from her school on her abilities I can only rely on 2 tests she's taken: Otis-Lennon where she scored 99.9% on verbal, 86% non-verbal. She also qualified (barely) for the CTY language program. (Being her 1st computer test, I think she could score even higher.)
I'm thrilled that she's happy in school with her friends, but academically she says it's "stupid". Though she reads higher level books like Harry Potter (now on her 3rd time reading them), the class is taught to the lowest level kids. I'm afraid about her not developing good study habits, even at this age. Her teacher has all kinds of excuses for not differentiating. I know she has a bad teacher this year, but I'm not sure how to tell how much is the teacher's fault vs. the school's culture. (I had to ask 3 times for the Otis-Lennon test results. They don't routinely give them out.)
DD8 is very social, and keeps herself entertained in school by creating clubs for her friends where she gets to delegate jobs to them. The teacher also relies on her to take kids to the nurse/office and other jobs in the classroom.
The school teaches so non creatively by the textbooks and worksheets. They did one book report this yr.(homework) with little writing instruction, no revision process, and not a single poem, or creative writing instruction.
DD8 gets frustrated at first when I try to supplement and give her a challenging lesson, but later takes pride in it. She wonders why I make her work when school is much easier. Interestingly, she's not a perfectionist, she really doesn't seem to care if she puts a wrong answer on her homework.
Thank you if you've read this far.
I'm trying to decide whether to stay at this district or to move. This meeting with the principal should help me decide. We have a good rapport, but am looking for ways to approach this without getting a defensive response.
What I expect is a school to use the "best practice" of ability grouping, differentiated instruction, maybe some compacting.
Being direct is not easy for me, but I'll give it a try. I can no longer be complacent.
