I am completely new to this forum and still feel completely new to the whole school system. I have an 8 year-old son in 2nd grade, public school.
I cannot say for sure that my son is "gifted," however he has always shown an uncanny knack for being a bit too smart for his own good.
He was reading before entering school (by age 4 I believe, though his pre-K teacher didn't believe me - probably thought I was just a proud mother - until she read a book in class, got the words wrong and he ended up correcting her!), his math skills are advanced, he is extremely perceptive, analytical, creative, etc. So, I think, at least right now, he's very advanced for his age.
I volunteer a lot at school, and I work with a lot of the other kids. Based on what I see, I feel he is beyond the majority of his classmates. There is another mom I've met whose daughter is in his class. Last year she was in a different class, but I recognized her immediately as an advanced student. This year the two of them are routinely paired together so they can challenge each other intellectually.
The struggle that this other mom and I have is that there are no programs for gifted kids at our school. And we're feeling frustrated because there doesn't seem to be a lot of push to help these advanced kids. For example, the school library is partitioned into different sections: easy fiction, easy non-fiction, easy chapter, fiction, non-fiction, and popular (like Magic Tree House). In first grade, the kids only had access to the easy sections. We had to request personally from the teacher to allow our kids access to the easy chapter section.
This year, we have repeatedly asked our teacher to give our students access to the rest of the library. The kids got access to the popular section. Okay, but what about the rest of the library? My son loves science and biographies. We have been told that the kids can find challenges in all books, even picture books, and that they should be looking for themes and message and whatnot in every kind of book.
We don't feel that's good enough. Our children love to read, and love to read interesting, unique, statistics-filled books. We both feel like we're struggling to try and represent a small portion of kids that are completely under-represented.
We know we want to do something. But what? Where do we start? How can we get a gifted program in our school? There really isn't anything until high school - and that's not good enough. We need to engage the kids now - not eight years from now.
Is it possible to start a program in a school, or should we start something after school? How do we identify the kids that need to be involved?
There's so much testing, so much available to the kids that are developmentally delayed - money, programs, aides that sit with the kids... but nothing for the advanced child. At best, my son, the other mom's daughter, and two other girls are grouped together in their own reading group while the rest of the class does a different reading exercise. That's it?
Any advice on how to start off on this journey we want to take is greatly appreciated.
