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Joined: Aug 2008
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Gratified- I'd totally agree except... it's still bothering me that they are selling themselves as a private school for the gifted and academically advanced... if they've never seen an HG+ kid and don't know what to do with him. I would expect a teacher in a regular public school to be totally stumped. Supposedly these teachers have received special training in dealing with gifted kids.
Granted, that might be MG kids... but still it doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch that they might have had a kid like him before. I know there's another in the glass who is probably PG+. But it seems to be complete news to Ds' teacher that he's not just happy doing green color collages.
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First of all -- hi, CAMom. <waves> I think a lot of teachers/principals get dazed and confused regarding HG+ kids (honestly, probably even MG kids). The impression I have is that being able to learn that much, that fast, is, well, kind of...I don't know, surprising/shocking? Sense-defying? Does anyone have a better word? I'm wondering if the teachers don't know what to do, and maybe if they even shut down a bit.
From our perspective, what these kids do is normal. We learned fast it as parents, just as our kids do. It's normal. We post on this board and hear other people talk about their kids doing the same kind of stuff. It's normal --- for US. Val I completely agree and think this perspective helps enormously when dealing with schools. Once I realized that in 25 years of teaching, most teachers encounter something like 20 kids/year x 25 years = 500 kids. That means most will never encounter a kid with an IQ in the >1/1000 range. And if that's true, then I can read their actions as oblivious rather than hostile. There's lots of room to maneuver (or ?educate . . . or share some useful info with . . .) with oblivious but much less ability to negotiate with hostile. When one teacher who'd just seen HG IQ scores said she had 25% of her class just like my kid, I could see that comment as coming from a place of not understanding what a standard deviation means. While I was angry and annoyed at the time, once I got a little distance, I could see that she just didn't believe kids like mine existed. But that makes sense too -- if you've seen 500 kids and none of them were like my kid -- it's not an unreasonable place for her to be. She also kept asking me what method I'd used to teach reading and I could never convince her that it just appeared one day. Again, in her world, reading doesn't just appear . . . . so that doesn't make her mean or nasty, just learning from her own experience. Along the same lines, school policies are usually for what schools encounter most, which is MG and/or bright but not gifted with parents who want their kids to be gifted. I agree that you need never take a policy as fact because your kid may require breaking the policy. We lived in a district that did *no* acceleration of any kind and no testing unless some pushy parent required it. When we became the pushy parent and got testing, we got a pull-out solution. When we said that would never work, we got quoted policy that it was the only thing available. And when we finally met with the principal over the heads of the obstructionists, we got quoted a bunch of stuff about how differentiation would happen (instead of adding 2+5, my kid could do 20+50). When I told the principal that my kid would have found that interesting 3 years ago but now it was way too late, we *finally* got someone who listened and actually decided to see what my kids knew. That led to many accommodations that are *not* done in my district and even a rapprochement that involved the major obstructionist agreeing with us that regular accommodations would never have worked. It can happen -- but it takes a lot of work and willingness to negotiate. I think realizing that the school had likely never seen this situation, let alone any individual teacher, allowed us to take a more charitable and less hostile approach to the school. And that helped us believe they might be willing to change when they had the right data and more time to figure out that these kids were really different. One last example of being confused by "normal" -- one of my kids read just after his 2nd birthday and I can honestly say, I just never thought anything about it. Until it was time for K, it never occurred to me that we had any issues or that early reading indicated anything other than a kid who liked books. I never thought about the "g" word until I saw a K curriculum and realized my kids did that stuff at 2. In retrospect, and with reading these boards as well as seeing ND classmates and friends of my kids, I realize how totally warped I am. If I can have no sense of normal, it's hardly fair to blame a teacher who sees normal all day long for having no sense of HG+. What a great discussion! Gratified, that about sums up everything I *should* have done with ds6's public K last year, and what I didn't do ... I think I made a lot of mistakes in the way I approached them. If I could start the whole process over, I think I may be more successful! It also explains their attitude -- they just don't get kids like KG. But I didn't get that, because I'm so used to him. I think I may be starting to get that now. We took the "easy" way and went to private gifted. But even this school, I'm coming to realize, is unusual in its degree of differentiation even among gifted schools. There is a little girl in ds's class who is a DYS, and she started at this school after a year in the other local private gifted school; her mother said the other school wasn't differentiating to her dd's level; her dd isn't working any higher than my ds. I've heard the same about several gifted schools in my area. And given your experience, CAMom, it seems like it's not uncommon for a school to cater to the most common identified gifted students: the high achiever/MG child. And, let's be honest -- the parent of that child who has money to spare on private school. I would talk to the principal about going to first grade for morning before doing anything else. There should be no objection whatsoever to have him go up in the mornings, unless they think he can't handle the coursework -- which we both know isn't true. And if that is successful, I really feel you should think about advocating for a full skip, maybe even mid-semester in the spring. I'm frustrated for you and your ds!
Last edited by Mia; 09/19/08 09:03 PM. Reason: Edited to correct capitalization of "CAMom." :D
Mia
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Mia- Good to see you- thanks for the rec to start reading over here. Everyone is very knowledgeable!
My entire family (including DH) is against DS going to 1st at all. This just came out this weekend at dinner. My parents still think that somehow, DS will lose out on playing sports in high school because he'll be smaller. I think they're nuts. According to our pediatrician, DS will be within 2 inches of 6 foot 5. He's already 2 inches taller than most of his class despite being one of the youngest. Plus his school has an everybody plays policy so it's just absurd.
DH doesn't want DS to be weird. He is also a PG adult who spent his entire elementary school life hiding. He sees DS as way more socially adept and therefore more "normal" than he was. He doesn't want to mess that up.
DS? He asked how much longer he has to be in the baby class before he can do real math with real numbers. Funny how they have a good sense of what they need even when they're young.
I'll let you all know on Monday what happens!
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CAMom -- Don't know if your dh is swayed by research: http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10017.aspxIf your ds is making friends now, he'll likely be just as socially adept and make friends among the kids who are a year older. And I don't see how he's going to be held back in playing sports. If he's pretty good, he'll play all 4 years anyway ... I don't understand that. Boys mature at such different rates. What a frustrating situation for you guys. :-/
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Joined: May 2007
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The thing that helped me overcome my doubts about skipping my DS from K to 2nd was my own experience. I was also one of those kids who spent my elementary life hiding. I didn't feel accepted until I skipped 7th grade and started attending a GT school. Suddenly, I had friends! I am not athletically inclined, but I still managed to letter in swimming.
Your DS is who he is. Skipping would not make him different, he is already different.
Have your DH read A Nation Deceived and Genius Denied. Give him some time to think about it.
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Joined: Oct 2007
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Sounds great, Gratified. I say take what you can get when you can get it! I try not to look too far down the road. So far it seems that when one good educational resource dries up, another one becomes available.
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Our DD8 has IQ and out of level achievement testing, plus her own work that demonstrates a two year grade skip would be appropriate and a reasonable place to start.
However, she doesn't want to. She does pretty well socially and is happy where she is. She told me kids who go up or down a year lose all their friends. She told me this at the beginning of second.
I spent most of last year trying to figure out the best situation for both daughters. Currently, we take DD8 out of school for one hour and homeschool for math. It's working extrememly well, she's happy.
Over the summer DH and I decided that both girls would be leaving school for 1 1/2 hours each day in order to learn at their own learning pace during school hours, not after school.
We made minor changes based on the situation as it presented itself when school started. For example, DD6 isn't being pulled out at all right now. It was evident within the first week of school that her new teacher was a perfect fit and she was blissfully happy. We decided not to mess with it. We will regroup in the future if and when that changes.
For me it was hard to grow into that place, you know, take is as it comes. I'm a big time planner. But that's the way it goes with kids sometimes. I'm growing more comfortable with the very flexible education plan we have now and I think it works out best for the girls.
Good luck with whatever decisions you make.
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I find it very interesting how people react to sports/social issues. I didn't want grade skips for many reasons, but those are certainly in the mix.
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I spend a lot of time wondering if I'm trying to protect something that's just not possible to protect with way out there kids and if, no matter what I do, DS will be ready for college at 11. It's hard to protect "normal" in that situation. But I'm sympathetic to people like your DH who want that for their kids. My kids aren't old enough to know how this will work out -- I can see us managing in an age-grade curriculum all the way through (in an HG school), or managing until 9 or 10 and then homeschooling a year or two and doing online college and high school things quite young, or just getting radical acceleration in one or two subjects and holding the rest at age-grade. I don't know how it will turn out or what's best for my kids, but I do think that things like sports and social fit can matter a lot for specific kids. I agree completely, gratified, and have many of the same concerns, priorities, etc. for our kids that you have for yours. Sports and other competitions that require effort and practice matter to me. In fact, one of the biggest reasons we chose to homeschool was because we wanted to preserve the possibility of DS7's later returning to school at age level. Maybe in high school, where there are more options for accelerated learning, more access to college courses, etc. Now that I know what I know about DS7, I'm also not sure that's possible or even reasonable. But my thought at the time was that if we homeschooled, we could go deeper into things and could maybe study things that weren't on the standard curriculum as a way to, well, really to *distract* DS7, and thus keep him fairly close to where his agemates are on the standard curriculum track, but without boring him. The more I see, the less realistic that notion seems. I wish schools would go by age instead of by grade for some of those non-academic things, like sports. Or something more balanced. I don't expect my child to be a great athlete, but I do value the lessons that sports and other such competitive situations can teach a kid. I'd like him to get the chance to experience those things. *sigh*
Kriston
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You guys have all highlighted some of the concerns that my family has about advocating for a grade skip or even subject acceleration. I'm not willing to rule it out yet and DS has asked in his own way about it. I can see both sides but I often wonder if my parents aren't looking at him and wishing how he "could" be instead of how he really is. We literally *made* him play t-ball this year because it seemed important to have that "team experience". And every single day, it was a fight to get him in the car, get him on the field. He hated it. He loves sports he can do on his own like swimming but he's already figured out that he will not be the fastest or the best on the team. He prefers to compete against his own best rather than someone else.
We'll see how it goes on Monday. At a very minimum, I want the 1st grade teacher to be able to work with the K teacher to provide DS with something useful to do. I know that he's comfortably doing 2nd grade work but I can't see him being successful in that grade right now. He would stand out too much and it would be frustrating for him in areas where he's not advanced- like motor skills.
However, wasting two hours a day being bored and trying desperately not to get in trouble is not really what I want to be paying money for.
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It sounds like you are on the right track for what fits for your son. I'd just say, try and pace yourself and don't put pressure on yourself to come up with the perfect scenario immediately. Maybe I'm only posting that because I kind of felt that pressure myself a year ago. Good luck on Monday.
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