Can you get a copy of Some of My Best Friends are Books?
I've heard the same thing from gifted teachers--that material should enrich without accelerating. Not sure how this is supposed to work...
I will look into that book - it sounds just like what we need.
We had our EP meeting and we stretched it into a "please explain to us what you are doing because we're not seeing much happening" meeting. It was overall disappointing.
We had to pick goals that they would work on with her to strengthen her strengths
and this would in turn strengthen her weaknesses. (None of which are actually academic, but more personality things!) So, they are going to work on her leadership skills because she is more of a boss than a team leader, and her creativity to see what different ways she can show her understanding.
It was obvious that her teacher was very nervous about the meeting and was unsure how we would react to things. When we explained (again) that DD's frustration will never come through at school because she saves it all until she gets home, and gave examples of what happens. DT said "I know you said that, but I just have such a hard time believing that because she is always engaged and compliant and interactive in class, and always seems happy and content. It just seems so strange that we'd have no indication at all." At this point I said that we see the signs long before she reaches the point of not being able to control herself at school and we step in to do something about it, that is why they won't see it - it is unfair to DD to let things go that far before doing something.
They did decide that part of the problem was that they didn't really know what level DD's reading is really at
because the last testing results were from 2 years ago! So, they decided to give her a reading comprehension test. to see exactly what level she is at. (We should have the results this week.)
They also reiterated that they don't do subject acceleration, only enrichment. I think what this means is that they will teach the kids high level skills, but they will still be tested on the 3rd grade level because they are only doing "enrichment" and not actually expecting them to perform at a higher grade level. I'm going to ask for more explanation about this idea next meeting we have.
The other "interesting" thing we got confirmed is that even though it is a gifted magnet program, not all of the kids in the class are actually gifted! About 1/2 of the class meet the standard of being gifted (a gifted checklist score of >25 or an IQ of >= 130) the other half is simply high academic achievers whose teachers felt that they would benefit most from a gifted program. One of DD's friends at school is in this group of high achievers and I was talking to her parents last week and they were saying how they love the program and are so happy with how much their DD is being challenged in it! She is working hard to keep up, but is loving it. They were a bit shocked when we said that DD is not being challenged and is actually a bored with it all.
We don't really know what to do now. We had such hopes for the program and are now so disappointed we're sort of in a slump of "what else are our options?"
I'll keep you posted.
