Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Hello! Meeting with school Monday...

First, Hello! I have been reading these boards for several months, and finally feel I have enough information to post myself.

We have been struggling with my DS11s adjustment into middle school and 6th grade this year. Since 1st grade he has been in gifted/advanced clustered classes with daily math pull-outs for math. This has worked reasonably well for DS. While he has not seemed particularly challenged, he was not unhappy, so we rocked along with the status quo. We really did not have much to compare him with! We felt he was probably the smartest in his class, but he was not the one getting all the awards and, while he always had high As, he wasn't always the top grade earner for his class either. He is a good kid who does not disrupt when he is bored, he is much more likely to be thinking about something far more interesting in his own head than talking or causing trouble.


Once the exciting newness of 6th grade wore off, the trouble began. He now has gifted classes for math and English/language arts. The gifted kids are spread out among all the classes for social studies and math. He began complaining of frequent headaches and stomachaches, noise, chaos, and frustration. This led to crying meltdowns at the smallest things at school, which resulted in teasing from the other kids, even those in the gifted classes.

The social studies class results in the worst problems but has the sweetest teacher. She has been very concerned about DS. She has a son with AS and is especially sensitive to those kinds of issues. She encouraged us to pursue testing. We have been working to obtain private testing since December. At this point, I only have what the psychologist has verbally told me as far as IQ due to some other issues going on. We will get the full report hopefully by the end of this month. She was able to get me his WJ-III achievement scores, and feels that those will be enough to meet with the school and find out what they can and will be able to do to educate DS next year. I have a meeting scheduled this coming Monday with them.

We are dealing with a WISC-IV GAI of 153, I believe. His WJ-III achievement scores are as follows:
Grade-normed:
Brief Achievement 159 >99.9
Total Achievement 163 >99.9
Broad Reading 139 >99.9
Broad Math 156 >99.9
Broad Written Language 169 >99.9

Age-normed:
Brief Achievement 161 >99.9
Total Achievement 163 >99.9
Broad Reading 143 >99.9
Broad Math 160 >99.9
Broad Written Language 161 >99.9

DS is already one of the youngest kids in his grade and his emotional and social maturity is lagging behind. The psychologist is not recommending a full grade skip for these reasons, but she also says that DS's skills are to advanced for successful differentiation in a regular classroom. From what I understand at this point, all-day gifted begins in 8th grade. I have heard that there is a possibility of all-day in 7th grade next year, but no more than a rumor. We are hoping that the school will be willing to allow some sort of independent study for and social studies with possible placement in 8th grade gifted classes for math and science. We've been also working on a plan for what he could then do in 8th grade if they worry about that.

DS is in both band and chorus this year and is doing well with them. He has some real musical talent and needs to pursue that as well as being involved in group efforts and actually doing something he has to practice at to learn. His gifted English/language arts class is also sufficient, in my opinion.

I guess at the end of this really long introduction, I am asking for any further suggestions for what information I may want to take into the meeting with me. I honestly have no idea how this is going to go. The DYS application is already filled out and just waiting for the final psych report to send it in. We REALLY hope that we can find some other kids like DS for him. We live in a rural area...

Thanks in advance for any insight or suggestions you might have!

Sorry to leave you unanswered for so long. I'm glad to hear that you have the DYS application all ready to roll. You can actually send it in now, and send the final psych report when it arrives.

I'd be suspicious about the idea that his social and emotional maturity is lagging behind. How does he do with older kids in afterschool play activities? It may be that he looks 'overly emotional' because he is being asked to handle much more than kids are able to handle. If a normal 9th grader were placed with 6th graders, how long before that normal 9th grader started to show signs of immaturity? Or if the immaturity is real, take steps to correct it, and then go after that skip. I would talk to whoever the decision maker is about the all day gifted 7th grade, and see if you can explain why it's so important, and maybe get you son involved with a 'pilot' program to do some of the features of a 7th grade all day program if they aren't ready to roll out the whole thing. Pilot programs are appealing.

There is also subject acceleration to consider - perhaps he could spend part of his day with 7th graders, and part of his day in the all day 8th grade program. Can you talk to the teachers of 7th graders and see if they have any recommendations of kids who are going to be in the all day 8th grade program next year who might make good playmates to pursue this summer?

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Let me preface this by saying I don't have the experience that a lot of other people on this board have. I've only recently realized that my kids are advanced and am still in the "barely keeping my head above water while the school all but ignores the needs of my children" phase. But I'm with Grinity. I would b wary of anyone tells you he is not emotionally mature. Lots of kids tend to take cues from the people around them. My son went through a phase in Kindergarten when I actually thought he was regressing. Turns out he was acting like the kids at school. I put him in taekwondo, where most of the kids are older than him. Not only does he get along better with the older kids, but he acts more like they do now.
I'm not saying he should definitely be skipped - but I do think it is one option to consider. I would guess, though, that it would be more difficult to get the school to agree if the psychologist recommended against it.
When I went to my last conference, I went armed with actual scientific papers about why children should be challenged. (I realized a few days before that the college I attended still allowed me to log in and use their library resources as an alumni, so it was like Christmas for me). My son's thing is math, so I tried to stick to math-specific articles. But I'm sure there are just as many for any other subject, or just in favor of challenge in general. The administrators did not seem happy to see me with all of those articles, but they couldn't argue with them. I didn't get what I wanted, but I did at least make a little progress. Good luck!

Thanks for the input. I think the meeting went really well. I met with the head guidance counsellor and the curriculum coach for the middle school. (Both are mothers of gifted kids and the curriculum coach was in the gifted program when she and my husband were in school.) The plan for next year is for all the gifted kids to be grouped together, so that will hopefully improve some of the academic pacing issues DS has had this year. (Less endless repetition, yay!) My husband and I are pleased and somewhat optimistic for now. It is at least enough progress that we can relax a little until we review how it all works after school starts. I tried to give them a good picture of just how amazing DS can be if given the chance to stretch his mind. I also warned them that while this is a good start, he will probably need further acceleration or independent study in math and science due to his interests there.

We are planning the summer with DS with some enrichment camps scattered through to hopefully expose him to more kids like him with similar interests. We live in a very "sporty" area. My family is not "sporty" in the least. I still need to get him registered, but he's excited about a comic book art class and a robotics class we've found.

I think my concern with DS is more his social skills than his maturity. My thoughts are to decrease his stress by getting him into a better academic fit (hopefully we're moving in that direction) and see if his social skills improve. He is one of the youngest in his class already, and is totally clueless where all the other kids are now starting to act "cool." He still likes to be what I call little-kid-excited about things. We really haven't found many older kids he can relate to. He is in Boy Scouts and is respected by the other boys, especially since he recently helped teach the chess merit badge, but doesn't have any great friendships there. His closest peer is his 9 year-old brother who is finishing 3rd grade. (I do wonder how this affects his maturity level.) He does have a couple of pretty good friends, but something hasn't been clicking with either of them lately.

We only have 2 weeks of school left, so we're in the home stretch for this year now!