Well, I'm thinking of changing the title of this post to "losing hope and getting more frustrated".
DH wrote to DD's teacher this week to inquire when the differentiation in reading would be starting, and what she is doing since she is not doing the chapter on multiplication. (We know she has made up a game and is now planning an imaginary trip which requires she do 2 and 3 digit multiplication, but only because she told us about them, so we thought we'd see what the teacher said she was doing.) Imagine our surprise when the teacher wrote back and said that they were already differentiating reading! And that the writing journals they were keeping based on the books they're reading is it because they are all reading books at their own level! This journal is not checked for anything but that each entry is a page long and has the proper heading on the page. If the child doesn't write a full page it doesn't count and they have to do another one!
It does not matter if the only thing that makes the entry a page is large writing or a picture drawn to go with the entry (DD has done both because she can't think of anything else to say.
) There is no check that the books written about are at the appropriate level or that the writing is well done.
The teacher also said that the issue is that she can not find books at DD's reading level that are appropriate for her age, so she is having to have her do some of the 3rd grade reading materials. This in particular annoyed us because all she has to do is go to the Scholastic site and it allows teachers to search for just this type of book! (thanks for the info from the ultimate book thread here) Since all schools use scholastic a lot she should know this option is available.
She then went on the indicate that it was "county policy to enrich students within the grade level and not progress them into the next year level material"!!
It absolutely infuriates me that this is a gifted teacher's response. It is no different than what we've gotten the last couple of years with teachers who've had no experience with gifted kids. And, I work in the district, and I know of other programs that do subject accelerate students who are that far ahead.
I sent an email back to the teacher letting her know we were very disappointed in her response and asked her to explain things a bit more, but we haven't heard back from her. I also looked up the guidelines from the county web-page and it does not say that they don't allow subject acceleration anywhere - it's not even hinted at!
It all makes me think that our EP meeting Wednesday morning will be very interesting.
