Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Peer mentoring successes

DS's preschool teacher pulled me aside this morning to ask me about our plans for K. She expressed her opinion that K was not likely to be a great fit and that homeschooling would be better, but we're going to leave that aside for now. She told me that she has been having DS help other children with their reading, writing, counting, etc and that he is patient, kind, and helpful. I absolutely believe this. I think DS is probably the kind of GT kid who is a good fit for peer mentoring (as opposed to my DD, for whom it was a disaster). I asked him about it today and he says he likes it.

Next year he will likely be in a K/1 split with a very wide range of abilities, including kids who are unlikely to even know letters. What are your thoughts on him helping other kids in this environment? How can we make sure that he is not doing too much of this instead of learning anything himself? I'd like guidance from other parents whose kids did this with success.

So you don't feel that this is giving him overinflated self-importance, confusion about his role, anything like that? Are any other children doing this?

My DS is not shy, nor has he had any behavior problems. He is well-liked, though I think sometimes the other kids are not sure what he is going on about. However, he actively dislikes preschool and it is a struggle to get him there in the morning, despite his teachers working to accommodate him.

I remember helping out other kids in my class. I never felt like I was more than them or had any other negative feelings. What I do remember is being really happy that I didn't have to just sit being bored waiting for other to do their thing. I loved it as a way to kill time. There was no such thing as reading books when you were done. In fact being caught while reading book in class, even when you had everything finished resulted in a major disciplinary actions! So anything that would let me not be bored always waiting for something was HUGE for me. I also still remember how frustrated I was when they'd not let me get ahead in the book / work sheets. Oh, all these memories that are coming back to me seeing my kids turning out to be just like their mommy, or even "worse", they are taking it all one step ! lol

DS4.5 is only in pre-K but his teacher did mention that he helps a lot too.

Helping/teaching others, beyond the social skills aspect can also help your kid improve their meta cognitive skills, theory of mind and such. Because when you understand it automatically, it is hard to slow yourself down to understand how you got there without such an avenue or a real savvy teacher.

This is complicated somewhat by the fact that I live in a universal preschool state. By law, all children in free preschool (which he is) must receive a certain curriculum, so he has to do all this stuff--letters, counting, writing his name. This doesn't take the whole day, but it takes some time every day.

But preschool is almost over anyway. What I'm wondering is whether or not to point next year's K teacher in this direction.

Definitely didn't work for my DS - not only did it involve dreaded unnecessary revisions and repetitions, he had to revise and repeat with, to and for other kids that didn't quite get it. Uber frustrating.
I think there's a difference between being in a leadership role such as being in charge of the library books or recycling bin for a day (which every kid in DDs class has a chance to do anyway) and actually trying to *teach*. Not even every adult teacher can teach effectively, let alone trying to get a kid to do it.
Either way, neither of those things is what I'd accept as educating my kid appropriately.

This was a lovely opportunity to develop leadership and mentorship skills outside a school setting as a child, and I remember enjoying teaching several friends to read, but I resented being made to be an unpaid staff member in school. In school, I knew that other children were learning, but that it was at the expense of *my* foregone opportunity to learn. Contrary to your concern that it causes arrogance, being a peer mentor made me feel ignored and unappreciated because my needs weren't being met.

I hope the contrast between those two scenarios was helpful.

I was the teaching assistant for 4 years (1st-4th) until I moved to a larger school with gifted curriculum. I loved helping people and still do BUT.. I think this was exceptionally unfair to me. It spotlighted me as different, it gave me work that I was untrained for (although had natural talent for), and as Aquinas stated it cost me what I was supposed to receive which was the opportunity to learn something. From my experience, if my child were to be "used" or kept busy in that capacity I would be strongly advocating against it. I personally find it incredibly unfair and inappropriate.

I appreciate the input. This was such an obvious failure when it was tried with my DD that everyone knew not to continue with it. In this case, where the teacher reports that he is good at it and he seems to like it, I find myself uncertain. He is the youngest, and we are not having more children, so I like the idea of him having an opportunity to guide and he a leader sometimes.

I probably sound very defeatist, but I don't expect him to be instructed at his level in K and 1 anyway. He reads around the 4th grade level, maybe above, and math is easily 2nd grade (could be higher with instruction, but he doesn't know things like time, measurement, etc.) He will move to his sister's GT magnet in grade 2. Basically, we need to keep him from completely dying on the vine for a couple of years.

I am not sure if any of you have ever faced this argument, but I regularly told that "the evidence shows that when mixed ability readers are paired for reading that they both improve more than in like pairs - but it's the stronger reader that improves the most". This is used as an argument for mixed ability everything, and how good it is for stronger/brighter students to be paired with weaker kids - that they will learn so much more by having to teach their peers. I think there are important lessons to be learned from helping others, both in terms of being able to explain/teach what you may have learned automagically and "just know", to say nothing of increasing patience, kindness, tolerance, etc. But I am pretty certain this research is based on children that are within a stones throw of each other (say 5-10 reader levels apart, not 3-5 years reading ability apart). I would not be happy (and am not happy right now) with my child to be getting no real instruction at her level and spending all her time in mixed ability groups because it's supposedly teaching her something. Some of the time absolutely, but not all of it. And I am not convinced that it is that great for a child who is struggling with basic concepts of reading or math to regularly have the youngest kid in the class as their teacher/reading pair because it's supposedly good for both of them? My Dd is skipped, so she's not just the youngest, she's far and away the youngest.