Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments teacher/student mismatch

Last school year my husband and I had a feeling that our son's teacher really didn't "get him" and really didn't take any interest in him. We tried to give her information about him and let her know what his needs were in terms of emotional intensity, learning styles and other issues but she never really seemed to do more than nod her head as we spoke. We let the principal know at our June meeting that we weren't very happy with the teacher and that she really didn't seem to be a good fit for MrWiggly. But all school year he said that he liked her fine and she was nice and he never complained or told us anything bad was going on, even when we specifically asked about the teacher.

Last night I had MrWiggly fill out a questionnaire in preparation for some testing we are having done in August. It was the Harter Social Support Scales and it asks the child to indicate feelings about people in their lives. He handed it to me when he was done and said: "All the ones about teachers are about Ms. T. Now you know what kind of a teacher she really is." It was so sad. He had marked things like "Some kids don't have teachers that care about their feelings" was "really true for me." And "some kids have teachers that treat them like a person" was only "sort of true for me." All the ones about teachers were like that.

Then he told me that when anyone had their feelings hurt Ms. T. never did a thing about it. "She just didn't care, Mom," he said. I almost cried. Not only because my son was obviously not happy or supported in his second grade class but because he is apparently sensitive enough to it to have seen that she was like that for everyone. She teaches second grade, for crying out loud. Shouldn't she be a sensitive person??

We don't have much option for this coming school year. Our school has only one classroom for my son's grade. Even going to 4th for math he only has one class to go to. Not a choice in teachers. But you can be sure that I'll be more assertive with the teachers next year and hope that someday soon he'll be matched up with that teacher who really understands and appreciates him. I have two or three that I remember as having that special connection with. I hope my son gets that same chance. It makes such a difference in a child's life.

How sad for him. Reading your post, it seems like something I could have written about my child, although, he, too, said he liked the teacher. I was in the classroom enough to wonder "what in the world is this person doing teaching FIRST grade??".

I'm sorry MrWiggly had to go through that.

DD9 is also a sensitive child and I can really identify with your post. Our 3rd grade experience was similar and her teacher didn't "get her" and I don't think she really wanted to teach. These kids know it and feel it and often internalize it.

I hope Mr. Wiggly has a better experience next year. We have experienced both and it makes such a huge difference.

I have a few random thoughts about this, none of them should be taken as the whole story.

It is always sad when people don't like us our our children, especially people in power. I still hate it when I get one of those bosses. But there is always someone, a co-worker or a boss or a person in our social circles, who we do not get or who do not get us. Learning to deal with that can be an important skill. I wouldn't want it to be the primary experience of growing up, but a few teachers here and there, especially with parental support and coaching, might be turned into a useful experience.

There is a teacher at DS's school who was having mini strokes for a year before they got diagnosed. She had been a great teacher until she started to decline. People noticed there was a problem, but it took doctors a while to find out what was really happening. Another teacher has a wife with a chronic illness, another teacher's spouse died just before school started, and another one suffered from 5 months of morning sickness. All were great teachers, but probably not all that great when their lives were so disrupted. I happened to know about these ones, but what other problems might a teacher have that would not become public? Maybe she shouldn't have been teaching, maybe she was never a good teacher, but sometimes there are good teachers who have to just keep working, no matter how hard things because they need the money or the benefits or to make it through to retirement.

I don't want to suggest that it isn't really sad that your son felt this way. It is sad. But I wonder about "the rest of the story...." Maybe seeing it that way could take a litte of the sting out of the pain. Or maybe not....

thanks so much for the supportive comments and the insight.

acs: I think you are right about seeing the whole story and what's behind the teacher, so to speak. I didn't find out until the end of the school year that this teacher had been teaching special education for 13 years before she transitioned into a regular education classroom. I'm not sure how long she's been teaching regular education. The parent of a child I know who spends the first half of his day in a self-contained classroom just raves about Ms. T and how she is such a great teacher and so wonderful for her child. But she also only worked him for half the day. She wasn't even teaching him the core subjects of math and reading/language - so I'm not sure what was so wonderful about.

I don't know if it was just a personality mismatch, perhaps she's a little burned out in teaching, perhaps she was overwhelmed with the class size (28 kids - but split for math/reading instruction) or she's just not knowledgeable about gifted kids. But she seemed to pretty much ignore my son the whole school year. My son's responses on the questionnaire taught me to trust my gut more consistently. My husband had the same gut feeling. But we let it slide. Not that there was much we could do - except maybe talk to her more or discuss it with the principal. I just know that I plan on being more proactive in the upcoming year and more involved.

And I'm even more sure that we're doing the right thing by having DS tested again and getting some help with advocacy and understanding his needs better. And I'm really glad you guys are here so I can vent and bounce ideas around!

DH and I always took the attitude that "part of life is learning to get along with bad teachers, bosses, etc., so our son will just have to deal"...until we got a doozy of a teacher. At that point, DH and I changed our tune.

Yes, we all have to learn to get along with people who aren't ideal. But as adults, we are much better able to cope with these sorts of people. We have had time to develop the skill set needed. And we can choose to leave a job with a bad boss if the situation is intolerable. Children have no such options with a bad teacher. They are so much more at the mercy of the situation than an adult would be.

Ultimately, one of the main reasons we pulled DS out of public school was because the teacher was so difficult to deal with, and we felt that given where DS was in his development, it was doing actual harm to him to stay there. She was destroying his sense of self. I believe her actions were actually interfering with his ability to develop those very coping skills we wanted him to have. An insecure, unhappy child being made to doubt himself does not cope well and does NOT learn anything useful, and we realized that we were not usng any child-rearing logic whatsoever in our buying into the expectation that this would be a learning situation for him. It was just bad.

I'm not saying that was the case for your son, doodlebug. In our case, DS at the time did NOT have anything nice to say about school or his teacher or, frankly, his life. Not even a passive "It's fine." He acted out for the first time in his life. He was angry and frustrated and sad. It was OBVIOUS that he was getting NOTHING positive out of the experience. His coping skills visibly deteriorated. No question about it for us.

Now, it doesn't sound like you were in that same situation, and I'm certainly not trying to make you second-guess your year here. But I want to give you another point of view because I'm now a much greater protectionist for my child.

Ultimately, I no longer buy into the "getting along with rotten bosses is a lesson we all must learn in school." I think there's a time when we all must learn that, but I don't think elementary school is that time. Obviously there's a spectrum of teachers running from fabulous to abusive, and we have to be reasonable about our expectations. Not all will be the best teacher ever. But I think that the classroom teacher HAS to be closer to the good end to the bad for our kids. I think that must be a requirement. I'm not a helicopter parent, but when it comes to teachers, I've come to the conclusion that even one near the middle is pretty much unacceptable to me anymore. I just saw the amount of damage done to my child in a short time, and I think no good comes of that, no lesson is actually learned from that. The child is just destroyed.

FWIW...

I'm with Kriston on this one - and we learned the hard way. DS's first school was a terrible mismatch - teacher who yelled at the kids (even our OT saw it and said how surprised she was that the school let it happen, although, quite frankly, most parents were happy with the "discipline"). We forced DS through the year and the next one with other problems, telling him to buck up and deal with it. Well, he couldn't, and in hindsight, he shouldn't have had to.

On the flip side, I'm a deal with it person and have dealt with bad bosses, bad situations, etc. Perhaps if I realized earlier on that I did not have to deal with a bad situation but could leave and look for better options, perhaps DS would have had a better start to his school career. We have to be careful of the lessons we teach on both sides of the coin. Live and learn.

I speak only for our family and our DS, when I say this, so please don't take this as judgmental if you made other choices. But for me as a child and for DS, the not great teachers have been really good learning experiences.

DS has never had a major breakdown or shown any signs of being unhappy in school, so that makes things different for us. I had bad teachers in school and DS periodically has teachers that are not great (but, I should add, never abusive or emotionally shut down). He gets frustrated with certain parts of how they teach or treats the kids. We talk about these things a lot. We look at different persectives, the teacher's style and attitude, the mood of the classroom, what he had control over, what he doesn't, different things he can experiment with to try to change the dynamic. Many times he is actually able to change the situation through changes in his own behavior or attitude. I found the same thing when I was growing up--my mom coached me a lot and I found things that helped. Occassionally, DS needs me to come in and help change things and then I do.

I am not suggesting that this approach will work with every teacher or every kid. And there are definitely situations which we would not tolerate. So I don't want to imply that there is something wrong with you if you take your kid out. I am sure we have not faced situations as bad as many of you.

I guess my point is that for someone who has not taken their kid out of a bad situation (for what ever reason!), there may still be opportunity to try to find or make some good out of it. Even if it is to model to our kids that even as parents we learn from our mistakes!

ACS, I agree with you. I think my point should be if you try all that and it doesn't work and there is emotional fall-out, you don't have to stick it out for the sake of the stick it out lesson. It's important to look at the individual situation for your child and act accordingly.

I agree Mon, you have to take into consideration the child. I have one of each.
With one you can have an emotionless discussion about the affect people's actions have.
The other one is remarkably socially astute and does internalize to a great degree.
She's also too little to separate out the logic from those emotions, so I'd be more apt to take her out of the situation until she is developmentally ready to deal with those issues.

Also, I'm a little hesitant to over condition my kids to put up with B.S.

My husband has rapidly progressed in his career because he wasn't afraid to switch companies where waranted. At one point he was with a very solid company with a promising path. Twice, he was blocked from making an upward move because it was in the boss's best interest to keep him where he was.
The second time he left. Went to another large company where he has been promoted up twice.
A few collegues/friends are still there, pretty much not happy about not having made any progress in their careers.

DS6's last year of preschool he had a personality mismatch and we required him to deal with. He was acting out with her, but not at home, he would have the occasional bad day, but was mostly excited to go to school each day. I really considered it more of a class management issue (though I never gave DS that excuse, he was told he was expected to behave even if he didn't agree with her rules). We let him vent his frustration, we tried to show him how he was contributing to the situation, but ultimately he needed to learn how to deal with someone who he might not be over-the-top in love with (which was his experience with preschool teachers up to that point). He survived it just fine.

His Kindergarten teacher was a completely different situation and she was the ultimate reason we decided to leave the school. He stopped asking questions at home (which I didn't realize just how many questions he asks until he wasn't asking *any*), he stopped caring about anything, he was dumbing himself down to fit in better. He would tell us school was "fine" but he was bored and he like his teacher "fine" but she wouldn't teach him anything. We started having more frequent tantrums and general behavior problems. Finally, he started with screaming that he didn't want to go to school, to please let him stay home or make them teach him real things. The more I tried to get the teacher to help me, the more she intensified her campaign to prove that he wasn't advanced (she had a weird obsession with his handwriting). She just refused to speak to me when she realized that I wasn't going away. I requested conferences with her and was passed off to the GT coordinator who refused to meet with me (even though he was hand-selected *by them* to be in a pilot Kindergarten 1hr/wk pull-out program) and finally the Principal who told me there would be no sit down meeting between us because there was nothing to talk about. I figured if dealing with them made me froth at the mouth, it was absolutely unfair to ask a 6 year old to deal with it.

I'm not saying the op's situation was like that and I hope that it's not a common situation at all. But, I think sometimes it just doesn't matter if the teacher is having a bad year or is just a bad teacher when the child is obviously unable to cope and being harmed by the situation. We've experienced both a personality issue and a *teacher* issue, there's a very distinct difference between them in our experience, one I would try to work through with the child, the other I wish I had listened to him sooner and taken action.

Thank you, Dottie, my friend!

Well, or if you consider going through all those "teachable moments" but don't see that there will be any benefit but DO see the harm being done in the present.

We only lasted 6 weeks, but it was plenty long enough! I wonder sometimes if we should have done more, but I really think it would have hurt DS and gotten us no benefit, no lessons, no nothing. Now, granted, I think ours was pretty nearly a worst-case scenario teacher. I don't think our situation was doodlebug's situation. But I also wouldn't want to advise anyone in a situation like ours to go through all those channels that you're talking about, acs. The right thing for us to do was to get DS out of there. I'm sure of it. There were no positive lessons to be learned in that classroom. There just weren't, and I felt like I had been sold a bill of goods that there would be if he stayed. (By whom, I'm not sure? ??? I guess from wherever I got the attitude that "just deal" is the right thing to say to a miserable 6yo in an intolerable situation he could do nothing to mediate or avoid.)

Sometimes you have to protect your child first and foremost. I just want to give people permission to do that if they need it. You have to decide where the line is for you and your child, but I do think it is okay to have a line, and I don't think the line has to be as extreme as abuse, which is pretty much where I used to draw it. Teachers have the capacity to do real psychological and emotional harm to students, whether they mean to or not, and I think we as parents have to give ourselves permission to stop that if we see it.

Lessons should be learned over time, especially lessons about the flaws and foibles of adults with power over children. I think 6 or 7 or 8 is too young for some of these lessons that we're talking about.

Sorry to take such a strong stand, but I really feel that a disservice could be done to kids here. I just don't think school should be a place for kids to learn to suffer. I think that's a lousy lesson to learn so young.

One other thought: I often hear parents of GT kids--here and IRL--saying "I wish I had taken action sooner. That situation was bad for her and I wish I had realized and done something about it." It's really common.

I have yet to hear anyone say "I wish I had left well enough alone. He was fine where he was."

I think that fact is influencing my attitude. I hate regret. I think it's a wasted emotion. And regret about what we've done for our kids is the worst. I want people to feel like they have to power to choose to act, even if they choose not to use that power, if that makes any sense.

Mamaandmore: you just described exactly what is happening with my DS8. I've continually asked myself if him not asking questions, seemingly less bright is just normal development, a phase, a direct result of being unchallenged in school etc. This summer has been soooooo nice.....no tantrums, no bursting into tears b/c his creation fell apart, not as much whining, using his manners, just plain old much nicer kid to be around. It really scares me to think about sending him back to school in a month and returning to all the stress...it really affects the entire household having to deal with him each evening. Also, I have a son going to K who is more advanced in some ways than DS8 was in K. DS's K year was miserable. I should have pulled it then.

I listened to all the people who said "he has to learn to be bored." "School isn't exciting." "He has to learn to deal with it now to prepare for adulthood." I kept thinking "He's only 5, or 6 or 7, should learning still be exciting? Shouldn't learning something new always be exciting?" "What is the real lesson he is learning?" I read a post by a mom who said that her DD finally told her "if real life is this boring and unrewarding, I'm going to commit suicide now." The mom said the DD was serious.

These topics are difficult b/c what we are all discussing are degrees along a continuum from best--->good--->ok---->do no harm---->poor----->bad---->worse---->abuse. Of course the advice will be different for each of those points AND will be different for each kid. My friend's kid has NO problem showing what she knows, reviewing stuff she already knows, no problem with not being challenge (same GAI but VCI/PRI reversed) but those things are killing my son. It's not a gifted issue but a personality issue. Well it's a gifted issue in that he's not being challenged to his ablility/pace of learning.

This year was the first time I felt the teacher really "got" my son. But still he wasn't challenged the way he needs to be. I don't have the achievement testing, which I need, to go head to head with the school and am having difficulty getting it. I wonder if I'm giving up too quickly if I decide not to send him back to school. Maybe I need to really fight this one last time......sigh.....

I think all those things that you're talking about, Dazey, are signs that harm is being done.

Now, what that means to your particular kid and what you want to do about it are the big questions. There's no one right answer.

But you are exactly the sort of person I'm talking to when I say that if you think harm is being done to your child, it's OKAY to act! Now! Preemptively! You do not have to be patient and teach coping lessons and wait for all heck to break loose before you make a change. What you see and sense is real, and it's okay to do something about it--whatever that might be!--if you you feel like you should. You don't have to listen to the common wisdom that says there are lessons to be learned. There may be lessons there. But maybe the cost of those lessons is too great for your particular child.

I hope I'm not being obnoxious about this. I just know how you feel. If I can help, I want to.

You're not being obnoxious, just passionate.

DS8 got stomach aches everymorning nearly the entire year. The only days he didn't get stomach aches were on the weekends, on a snow day, on a holiday, or when there was a school field trip for science or for field day. I kid you not. The only day I let him stay home was when he freaked out at the front door screaming, crying, blubbering how he just couldn't take it anymore. I had to keep him home. He did go to school the next day.

Now in the 3weeks since school let out no stomach aches. He did have gas one morning but it passed quickly. Now we have track and field at 8:30am. We had been waking up at 8am lol. So now that he has that *stress* he's having stomach aches. I initially thought if this negated the stomach aches being a result of not being challenged at school. But I don't think so. I think the stomach aches are his body's response to stress. This AM after a good night's sleep, he didn't say he had a stomach ache. And this week I've been having to wake him up. For school, he wakes on his own b/c he goes to bed earlier during school so I don't the aches are due to being tired during the school year. The last week of school in which he didn't eat lunch b/c it was all half-days, he still had a stomach ache so it wasn't something he was eating at school.

So after a year, he hasn't learned to cope w/ the boredom and appears to be having physiological reaction to it or at least, a pyschological reaction.

The big question is....where to go from here...that's right for my family.


Regarding DS5... I initially thought that K would be great for him b/c while advanced, he's very laid back, not as hungry for knowledge like DS8 was at 5yrs old. well, recently I've been getting "that book is too easy. I won't something harder. That math is too easy." So while I'm optimistic and positive about K on the outside, I have already decided that if K goes South like it did for DS8 (he cried nearly every night about how bad K was, how boring, how he didn't learn anything), I'll pull DS5 out since K is not required in this state. I know the Principal, acceleration is not an option. While DS8 kept saying "I'm going to learn so much in K!" we're telling DS5 that K is all about learning to still sit all day, getting along w/ others, following instructions, being independent, etc and not focusing on learning.

It sounds like you're completely on top of it. It's tough, but you're doing all you can do right now.

If we can help, say so.

I am one of those who is glad they kept their child in school. My DS's 2nd grade teacher did NOT get him at all. She even is the reason that he didn't get in the GT program at school. She didn't recommend him because she just didn't seem him as anything special. We stuck it out though and both his 3rd and 4th grade teachers were WONDERFUL and totally got him and his 4th grade teacher was even instrumental in helping figure out his visual problems. She bent over backwards to help accommodate him. They both helped pull him out of his shell and helped him be who he is. I don't believe he will ever go back into his shell. So while, 2nd grade wasn't the best of years, I am so grateful that we stuck it out.

Everyone is so right, you have to do what is best for your child in your individual situation.

Kriston, I never meant for this to be an either-or discussion. There are situations where taking a kid out is the right thing to do. You and others have describes kids shutting down as a result of the environment. If my kid shut down, then I would also take action and do it quickly. I thought I had said that pretty clearly in all my posts, but I guess I didn't say it clearly enough, so I am saying it again. If your child is being harmed, you are a doing a good thing by drastically changing that situation which includes pulling them out.

I guess I used our examples because I wanted Doodlebug to not be too hard on herself for not doing something earlier. She and her DS can still learn from this situation. For example, by encouraging her son to be more forthcoming with info in the future, letting him know what is OK to tolerate and what he needs to tell people about. Why didn't he tell her earlier? When should he come to an adult? If these things get figured out now, it can head of problems in the future. And, if, by telling her story, someone else doesn't accept their kid's "everything is OK" when it isn't, that would be a good thing too. I didn't mean to suggest that just because we can learn from something bad, we should activley subject our children to it.

Am I off your black list, yet, K

Oh, SOOOOOOO sorry! Of course you weren't going to an either-or place! I never thought you were! I wasn't going to one either. And you know you can never be on my black list, acs! You certainly weren't here. Oh no, no, no! My fault!

Ah, I knew I was putting my foot in it here... I just feel really strongly about parental empowerment on this issue.

Maybe I just take this topic to heart too much because I felt so helpless in the face of the school situation we were in. I felt highly pressured--by myself, by my values, by my family, by my community...I don't know for sure--to have my son "gut it out." I just don't think that pressure is healthy.

I didn't mean that YOU were putting that pressure on. Just that you were voicing what I felt when I was in that situation. I just wanted to open the door to people who need permission to NOT teach those lessons to their kids. Sometimes, they're not lessons worth learning. I needed that permission. Happily, I had a friend who gave it to me. That's all I was trying to do here for others.

Really, I don't think we're far apart on this at all. In your shoes, I'd have probably done the same thing you did, and I suspect that in my shoes, you'd have been with me. It's more about where our experiences led us to place our emphasis.

And I'm TOTALLY with you about not wanting doodlebug to second-guess. That's not helpful to anyone.

Are we good? I hope!

This is really well put. Thanks, MON.

yep, we're good. I always know I can argue with you and we can find that sane middle ground eventually and as a bonus hope the argument helps someone along the way!

Looking at this again:



I think maybe it all comes down to the definition of harm. I guess that's where the parental insecurity comes in. You didn't define what you saw happening to your child as harm, acs, so you felt good about using it as a teachable moment. I support that. I did define what I saw as harm to my child, and I think you support my choice. For both of us, I think the distinction between harm/not harm was pretty clear.

But not all cases are so clear-cut. Those are the ones that worry me, and those are the people I'm addressing my posts to here. I want it to be okay for people to see that "nice teachers" can still do harm. And harm can be defined more broadly than it often is defined.

Our teacher was a nice person, I think. I don't think she was a monster or evil. But her approach to DS was punitive and would have been socially and pyschologically crippling to him had it gone on. "Nice people" with bad ideas and effectively unfettered power over a child can have that sort of devistating effect on young kids. I just want it to be okay for parents to feel like they can say "no!" Even to a "nice person."

I really value that with you, too. Seriously, I have tremendous respect for your views because you are a thinker. That's so important to me.

LOL I didn't think you guys were arguing. I didn't even think you were disagreeing, just discussing points on a continuum.

I wish DS would have a mean, evil teacher b/c it would make the decision easy. BUt he's had very nice teachers. His teacher last year tried, she gave him challenge problems here and there, he did independent research projects which he loved, he shared those w/ the class and loved being the expert ... but I do think perhaps her hands are tied as far as accelerating in class so I'm dealing more a systemic problem w/ the school rather than a student/teacher mismatch.

LOL! It's funny you say that, Dazey. DH and I actually thank DS7's 1st grade teacher in private for making our decision so easy. If we hadn't had a truly lousy situation, we might have limped along as we were, never really giving DS what he needed because we weren't seeing harm done to him. Heck, the only reason I even asked what his GT ID test scores were was because we were trying to decide if we should pull him out of her class. I didn't even know he was HG+ until then!

As the situation was, it was a no-brainer, and we're grateful to her that because of her, the choice was basically made for us.

Funny!

Wow, you guys have been busy while I've been at work! What a nice conversation and so many perspectives offered on the topic.

What I think I've learned is...(oh, that sounds like Dorothy as she's getting into the balloon to head home!)...that I can't stop advocating. We thought we could "leave well enough alone" and let MrWiggly go and back off the advocacy. It felt good to coast for most of the school year with really very little in terms of conflict or upset. But I realize now that he is more a "still waters run deep" kind of kid than I realize and that just because he's not tantrumming or refusing school doesn't mean he's happy. Whoever said he was able to suck it up and get by is right. And I don't want him to do that.

I had to help my older son deal with an idiot of an english teacher senior year of HS at this same district. It was his only year here. She was held up by all as the epitomy of english teachers and this master at teaching the kids rhetoric. Well, turns out that a kid could do fine in her class as long as he wrote what she told him to. When she made notes on a rough draft it was in the form of "you should change this sentence to read...." - seriously. The kids weren't learning, they were copying her writing. And my son knew what to do to pass the class and the teacher never had his respect. Same teacher told me that my son was arrogant. I was shocked. When I asked for an example she told me that when the librarian was teaching them how to format a disk my son didn't take notes. I told her that was because he'd been formatting disks for 4-5 years and had taken college level computer programming courses at his previous HS. She didn't get it. And never got him. But at his age he could handle the situation and he got by in the class. I don't want my 7 y/o to have to deal with that crap. When he's older, yeah, he needs to learn how to deal with those people. But right now I want him excited by his teachers, not disrespectful of them.

The problem for us is that there aren't choices for teachers. So, I'm not sure what I can do other than work with the teachers and stay on top of things more. And perhaps homeschool or move if the situation becomes really bad, although those aren't very realistic options for us. I just know that my advocacy skills need to grow with my son! The year wasn't horrible but it wasn't great. Hopefully with this lesson learned we can make future years better.

I think there's a lot of wisdom in that post, Debbie. Advocacy skills certainly sound like a big key for you. I think you're on the right track, if that matters or helps or whatever.

Thanks! It definitely matters and helps. That's why I'm here

Just jumping in here having skimmed the thread - but I'll have to add that it was a really horrible teacher situation that pushed us to pull our DS8 out of the school he was in. In retrospect, it was the best possible thing for him - and for us.