Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Other drawbacks to being gifted in regular classes

I don't have an education background and I'm not very good at teaching things (also, my kids are not PG). I don't really think I could teach them as much "in an hour" as they learn at school all day. Okay, maybe in K and 1.

I haven't given up on the idea that my children should actually be taught things at school. I don't consider it a daily social skills class that they attend for 12 years. I'm not sure that I learned how to be a functional, social human being at school, anyway. Junior high?

--ouch.

My kids have all been in schools where social awareness, being a good citizen, team building and cooperation are emphasized and I really appreciate it (and I've seen it impact them *very* positively). While I think that learning (academics) benefit highly gifted kids by pooling them together with other peers, I think it's also important (for at least my kids) to have the social experiences, team building, cooperation, etc - through working with and playing with kids of *all* ability levels. Our community, our world, is not a homogeneous society made up of high-IQ folks. There is also a lot to be learned from children who are naturally leaders when it comes to social skills - and those kids aren't always going to be automatically high-IQ kids.

So - no, I don't mind my children being asked to help other children with their schoolwork in the classroom.

OTOH, I also think that it's important to add that it's not fair to *always* ask a child to help their classmates as a way of filling up the extra time that child has in class because they finished their work early and already understand it in place of giving the child more challenging work. That happened in a big way to my youngest dd in her first grade class and she was miserable. It probably had the opposite effect of improving her social skills and empathy - she became very mad and resentful over it. What I've seen work well for my kids when they were in mixed-ability classrooms are teachers who switch seats for all the kids frequently - this allows the teachers to specifically pair students for strong/weak in whatever area, but doesn't keep the children in the same place with the same child more than a few weeks at a time, plus it forced socialization among some of the children who wouldn't otherwise have ever chosen to sit next to each other.

polarbear

I definitely agree with this. It's also not appropriate to have a child help out classmates if they're not socially or emotionally ready for it. Reasonable and appropriate is definitely the key. As with anything.

chris1234--I am not totally sure what your "ouch" comment meant, but what I meant by mine was that I didn't find junior high to be a period during which I was being taught how to be a socially functional person by my peer learning experiences at school. Obviously, it COULD happen. It didn't happen to me, though (and my jr. high experience was actually not too bad).

FWIW, my child is at a gifted magnet. So...I have obviously made the ideological decision to school her only with kids in her general ability range for the time being. I did give this quite a lot of thought before I did it, but we were in an unsatisfactory school and this was pretty much our only other option. I don't feel that she's being warped by it in any way or that she can no longer relate to nongifted kids or any such thing. I don't see any budding exceptionalism (if anything, her self esteem is low; no idea what, if anything, this has to do with school).

I believe school has something to offer my kid, that's why I'm sending him. Maybe I've just been reading too many of the gifted summer camp advertisements and testimonials. My son has come home from school, glowing, singing about "five little monkeys swinging from a tree, saying Mr. alligator you can't catch me.". Right now it's pure bliss and this is precious and beautiful.

I would say this. I absolutely value cooperation, team building, social skills, and all of those things. I do agree that these are part of school. But if a child were being used DAILY and explicitly as "social helper teacher's aides" as some bright children are used daily as academic helpers, I would find that objectionable and sad. These children are all there for their own academic gain. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

You can call me old-fashioned and conservative if you like. (It would be a somewhat new sensation for me!)


FTR, this was what was being tried with my DD in K. "Oh, she finishes early and she always knows everything, so we have her help the other children, but it isn't going very well."

Looking back, I think that the happiest times of my life were in junior high, with high school being second best.

I was much more functional, socially, in junior high than I was later in life, say college.

The best part of junior high was that your grades didn't count yet.

I was called on regularly to tutor others in elementary. I loved being asked and truly did my best but it was just a time filler. I learned so intuitively from reading that I really couldn't directly teach another kid in most instances. Other kids, in my experience, really don't WANT to be taught by a classmate. Some of them can be quite resentful.

I wouldn't say I learned to communicate better with others or learned anything in particular during my "tutoring," and the kids I "taught" learned not much more. It was simply a busywork task for bright kids. I could have more productively stapled papers or made copies. All the real lessons in communication and socializing happen at during unstructured time, at lunch and recess.

I agree with ultramarina that the principal goal for school should be to advance everyone academically. If some kids are not getting a chance to move forward regularly then they are not receiving an appropriate education.

I was sent to tune the school guitars. I enjoyed it because it was an escape from the torturous classroom full of the typical kids who were cruel to me... (ah, memories ) It always went too fast, though, even when I tried to tune them as slooooowly as I could... lol