Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Ideas? Improving the elementary education setting

Wonder why we keep reinventing the wheel...o wait, was anyone actually listening to us last time?

For the gifted children, it is great if you can use the gifted individualized educational plan, because you can tailor the plan to the specific special needs of that particular gifted child.

Hire a math/science/engineering specialist, or bring in experts from outside the school to teach interesting STEM topics.

Every few months, a new group of students graduate as teachers... and nearly every day more parents are learning their children are "gifted" (for lack of a better word) or asynchronous. So it can be fruitful to have these conversations from time to time.

I did not get a chance to check back on that other thread that you mentioned. I am so sorry that your area has experienced student suicide. I do not have any experiences to compare that to or share with you. But, I can tell you, sometimes, I worry about the children ( in the type of area you allude to ) who might be caught in a dicey situation, in that one parent might be gifted (and, somehow, that led the family to an area where academics are more emphasized), yet the other biological parent is not gifted. If the child takes after the latter, then the family might not understand that this particular child cannot keep up with the legacy of the gifted parent; that could feel / be devastating. Imagine having every advantage, but the academics do not come easily to the student; that could make the child feel awful. Hopefully, everyone's input all together will help somehow. All the best.

There are also gifted students to whom academics do not come easily, children without advantages who are gifted but lack opportunity, and many kids who are given impossible expectations to live up to rather than being accepted for who they are and/or who they wish to become. Everyone is different and all need some mix of support, affirmation, challenge.

I can't really add to the list already provided, other then.

Starting in K-12 have some of type stress management identification and coping system in place for the kids. It would have to be age appropriate and you do not have to dig deep into specifics until they are older.

We are wishing, aren't we.

I don't know; have most of the children who committed suicide left notes actually saying the reason was the pressure of school? Perhaps that is the case for some, but it strikes me as assumptive without actual confirmation.

What I'm trying to say is a child's day is more than just what goes on during school, of course. I think it's commendable the school is looking for ways to address this "epidemic" within their school, so I would suggest they could hire a psychiatrist/psychologist to formulate a survey of sorts to be given to all students and their families to determine what is going on throughout the entire day of each child; not "just" during school. That survey could then be used to identify at-risk children within the school and perhaps remedy any specific problems that are identified before they become so overwhelming to the child as to cause them to think the only way out is if they no longer had to live their lives.

In other words, the survey would be customized to each family's child and not be a blanket solution that may not actually even be identifying the individual situation that is leading to these suicides. It's assumptive, imo, to believe that even most of the children are committing suicide because school and/or their parents are pressuring them.

Things like the several of seats that are the balance balls/fitness balls available in all classrooms to use on a rotating basis...Standing desks to be used on a rotating basis. Enough room and storage in classrooms.

My son has a classroom in a brand new building to the school specifically built for 4th and 5th graders...so they knew how big the kids are. The classrooms are soooooo tiny. There isn't enough storage and the kids move between two teachers. The kids have to keep all their stuff (heavy books, composition books, folders, everything) in their backpacks because there isn't any storage. So he has to use an expensive rolling backpack because I refuse to let him carry that load on his back.

I also think his elementary school is way too big. I think it all boils down to money but I think there is an optimal size of an elementary school where you can get everyone in and out of the cafeteria, everyone has access to time in the library on a regular basis, you can schedule math and reading to be held at the same time so that you can allow multi-age grouping based on needs. You get to the size of my son's school (1100 plus students) and scheduling is a complete nightmare. So in my ideal setting a school would not be allowed to get that big.

I would also give giant dollar amounts to have some sort of team of experts (including parents, principals, traffic/road designers) design the parking lots, parent pick up car line, bus/day care van loop, way the walkers exit the school. And there should never be a school that has 1100 students that doesn't have a light at the entrance (and where the tiny road meets the main road)...it is just nuts. There was a teacher killed in our area (not our school) being squashed by two cars in parent pick up line. The whole thing is just so scarey and unsafe.

I wonder the same thing. I also wonder - were these elementary school children who committed suicide or teens in high school?

I think it's really wonderful to look at how to improve the school experience for all students, whatever the reason - but I also think it's important to consider that it's most likely not *just* things not going well at school that lead a student to commit suicide. Home life, peer pressure, drugs/alcohol, mental health issues.

So.. coming from that perspective, I think that it's important (when trying to prevent future suicides) to include some way of recognizing children who are at risk. I don't think you could go through any one crowd of students and say that child is more likely to commit suicide than another, but you can identify portions of students who are at risk of having things not go well for the above reasons, and give them support. Just a few examples (none of which have anything to do with your school situation) - after school homework help or having the library open for kids to study who don't have a good place to study at home, programs to share information and discourage use of drugs/alcohol, teachers being trained to recognize signs of depression in a child, offering breakfast at school so kids from households that are struggling don't go through the day hungry, etc.

In any event, I think that in order to put in place change that will matter, you'll need to look closely at what seemed to be the cause of the specific suicides in your area as well as looking at what are considered to be risk factors in general.

polarbear