Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Uh oh, 2 days until PT conferences

So PT conferences are in two days and I am trying figure out my gameplan. For DS1 age 9 (3rd grade), I already know, based on some email interaction, that the teacher is going to pull the: "he's not focused/paying attention" card on me. I am trying to figure out how to suggest that it is because he is bored and underchallenged without alienating her. And the areas of concern are reading and writing, which are usually things he is very interested in doing. He has no problems focusing in accelerated math and his gifted pull-out, so how do I convince her that it is something that needs to be changed in her classroom? Would love any advice from those of you who have had this talk before. I have done it with previous teachers, with relatively little success. So any advice from the pros on this board would be greatly appreciated!

Then there's DS2 age 6 (1st grade) who is my hider. I know he is capable of more than he is showing, but what he is showing at school is the picture of a totally average 1st grader. Now, I don't think he is way over the top gifted, but I do think he is just doing the minimum and trying not to stand out in the crowd. But again, not sure how to say this in a way that will really get heard. Plus, what I really need are strategies for getting him motivated to show his abilities and if the teacher only sees the facade, how do I convince her to look deeper and encourage him to stretch?!

Ugh, now that there are two of them in school, these conference days are getting much harder!
TIA to anyone willing to share ideas/suggestions!

This is my DS7! Our conference is in three days and I have been wondering the same thing. Will be watching this thread.

Do you have any samples of advanced work that either of them have done at home? I have only had moderate success in advocating, and it usually takes at least half the year, if not more, to get anything done. But I've found that the one thing that works really well is proving to them that he is capable of more. It's not guaranteed to work, but at least they won't be able to deny that he is capable.

Thanks everyone! MoN, that is a great plan for the conference, I am going to try that approach for DS1. The thing is, he is a pretty intense kid, when the work is engaging so if he is not focusing then that suggests to me that the work needs to be changed. However, ime these conversations tend to move toward "how can we make ds pay attention?" rather than "how can we give ds something worth paying attention to?" I still have to laugh at a discussion I had with him in 2nd grade when his teacher said that he wasn't listening in class (still breezing through all the work though). He said, "Well, I listen the FIRST time she says it but then she just keeps saying the same thing again!" I think, for him, it is a question of pace, which is tricky.

As for ds2, he is right now really into a Singapore Math workbook that I found for him, so I think maybe I will let him work his way through those for a while and then share with the teacher.

Thanks for the ideas! We'll see how things go tomorrow!

We had our P/T conference today for our second grader. I really like his teacher- she is very organized and nice. Basically, all she told us was that he is at grade level.
I finally told her, well, the book he reads outloud to me is listed at 3.5 grade level and he reads it easily! She smiled. I told her he can easily add and subtract 3-digit numbers and knows some multiplication. She looked like she didn't believe me.
I finally told her that his IQ (on the RIAS IQ test) was clocked at 160, and all she could say was that it was neat how they could test kids in first grade with their IQ!!
My husband pointed out that she has her hands full- there are 31 kids in the class: 10% speak zero english (one girl is from Nepal, another is from Oman and speaks only Arabic!), 10% have serious emotional problems (one is autistic, another has serious ADD and dyslexia; another boy supposedly tried to kill himself in first grade by deliberately trying to run in front of a car).
Sigh...

Unfortunately, this is what I expect from the world at large. It's why I don't worry about 'labeling my kid with a number' but also haven't bothered to do testing where I think the number would be accurate.

This sounds exactly like my P/T conference! I actually had 2 today (second with gifted pull-out program teacher). I was told that DD6 (second grade as well) is awesome and where she is supposed to be. I did not bring up any of her scores or achievements (that sounds exactly like your son's) but did ask how is that she scores 100% on majority of tests given by school if this class is actually at her level? Well, we agreed that her regular classroom teacher would try to get her and couple other kids to do "word problems" that supposed to be challenging for them and pull out teacher said that she will talk to regular teacher about test results. I was actually asked what I would like them to do for her... Which left me speechless for a few seconds there due to many reasons... I am still waiting for MAP testing though before bringing heavy artillery on them

I sympathize with everyone! We had to have our daughter tested to show she isn't ADD/ADHD to prove to the school that was not the problem. We have found that getting things changed takes a lot of time and our children suffer waiting for things to get better, but luckily they are very resilient. I'm learning that gifted kids do look alike in some ways - our DD8 can be focused for hours if it is something she is interested in, but if it is something "boring" to her then forget it - no amount of coaxing will get her to come around. Also like your son, she gets very frustrated when the teacher repeats things over and over or forces her to do things over and over when she has already proven she can do it. I remember one parent teacher conference we had in 1st grade where the teacher wanted to make us aware that our daughter was not performing well on the timed addition and subtraction tests they did every day. Now mind you, 1st grade was a horrible year for our daughter (she hadn't been tested yet and we were struggling to find out what was going on). The teacher told us this information with a snub in her voice implying to us she wanted to prove a point about our daughter's poor performance. She had started off getting so many problems (I can't remember how many it was)solved in the 1 min. time they gave the class, then after a couple weeks of doing the test every day she was only getting about half that amount done. I asked the teacher if it was the same problems and same numbers each time or if they had different worksheets. It was the same problems every day. I suggested they give her a different set of problems and see how she did. Well guess what, after she got new problems to solve, for several days she was getting more problems done. After a few days she again tapered off and would only get about half the amount done. I asked her why she could do so many problems one day, but then couldn't the next day. I'll never forget what she told me...as grown up sounding as a 6 year old can be she told me it made no sense to continue to solve the problems when she had already proven she could do it. We had some idea that was what was going on because at the time she was doing simple multiplication in her head, but to hear her say it about brought tears to my eyes. She had been basically suffering silently doing what she felt was boring repetition on material she already knew. She didn't refuse to do the work or cause problems while the class was all working - she just tried to manage and get by. Of course to the teacher that was just not acceptable. Good luck to all of you!

Take this with a grain of salt... but it's an idea I've played with on and off for quite a while:

Take a typical profile for a gifted kid who is a self-motivated learner, always looking for new experiences or diving deeper into old ones, is somewhat or very introspective. By age 6, they've been awake around 26,280 hours and probably are spending at least half their time learning. One definition of an expert is someone with over 10,000 hours of progressive experience. So, by age six our gifted kids are somewhat experts in their own learning.

A typical classroom teacher spending 180 days, 6 hours a day with 20 kids. Say a 5% gifted rate, will have spent about 54 hours a years directly dealing with gifted kids.

So the teacher is the new guy at work coming in telling our expert learners they are doing it all wrong.

I am wondering how it went. I have been following this thread, but did not have any advice. I am sort of in the same boat with my kindergartener. Did you take samples of work he did at home ? How did the teacher react ? Did she seem open/defensive ?

I am hoping it went well. Parent teacher conferences make me pretty nervous