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My daughter has just started gifted Pre-K this school year. We did her IEP, and I was happy with what we wrote on the IEP. So my problem comes in with the teacher. Here in Louisiana we have partial funding of GT, and we do have a rule stating the teacher must either be gifted certified, or working on her certification.

The problem is that her teacher is fresh out of college, and is JUST starting to work on her gifted cert this fall at the university (going to night classes). So she currently has pretty much zero knowledge about gifted children.

I have been trying to politely help by telling her things about how the gifted kids need things. But I don't think she truly "gets" gifted kids. She seems to think they are just smarted than average students. I have had to make several recommendations so far, and I just really feel like the blind is leading the blind here.

I spoke to the gifted site coordinator, the pre-k director, and the gifted district coordinator. And basically they tell me there is nothing that can be done.

So I would like to work toward getting Louisiana law to state that the gifted teachers must be certified prior to beginning to teach students. It really only makes sense, right? I wouldn't teach you math without already having taken the math class myself...

Does anyone know where you go to start this kind of massive change? Obviously I realize that it isn't something that will change quickly, and it won't help my daughter this year, but it's something I believe is right.

To work towards change you could start with the gifted organization in your state:
http://www.agtslouisiana.org/index.php

Certification may not change whether a teacher "gets it" or not. It is passing a class. Some people are great with studying and testing without retaining any understanding. You may also want to see what the content of certification looks like. It may not cover the particular points where you have concerns.

I believe the proper process here in Louisiana is "purchase one or more state legislators."

In seriousness, though, even as a parent who sent his child there, I question the value of pre-K for gifted kids. The only reason mine did it is because she was excited about the idea of school, and the only reason she stayed all year was because she had a wonderful teacher who recognized how different DD was, and provided for appropriate outlets of DD's talents. If either of those conditions had not been true, we'd have been happy to keep her home. She was MORE than well-prepared for kindergarten.

Advocating for enhanced legislation at the state level is likely to run into some severe opposition. A google search for "louisiana gifted education" turns up this fairly recent news item on the first page: Gifted, talented education programs coming under fire.


This issue seems to bubble up from time to time.

The other issue, although I don't know how much it applies in Louisiana, is that they simply may not have enough qualified teachers to fill all of the positions. For certain areas, it can be difficult to find teachers with the right certification and letting them get certified on the job is a compromise. Having all of the teachers certified first would obviously be better, but may be difficult to accomplish.

You may wish to consider mentioning the Davidson Educators Guild ... overview of free services for teachers here. There's also an archive of excellent Ed Guild newsletters.

Indeed, and I think that's where there's a high chance of push-back from the teachers and ISDs. It becomes a chicken-and-egg situation... you can't hire gifted teachers without a cert, but you can't get them to pursue a cert without offering them a job that uses it.