Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Article: US Schools Fail to Serve Best, Brightest

Great analogy Taminy! I don't know how many times I questioned myself "Who am I to question the teacher? After all, she's the one trained in teaching? Who am I to ask for more for my child or to have his educational needs met?" That's why I pulled my kids out of school. How can I ask for more for advanced reader when Johnny can't read? But then at times I get resentful b/c I pay school taxes just like everyone else and now in addition, I have to foot that bill and a HSing bill as well.


Belle - I can only imagine how difficult it is to teach in such an environment. Here with 24kids, the teacher has a full-time aide and I know it's still difficult for her to meet all the kids' needs. And the kids aren't even as challenging as what you had.

I know the year has been tough for you Belle. You can always vent to me, just send me a PM. 8-) But I do feel this board is the place to vent, and ask for support and ideas on how to move forward. As well as discussing more global issues which face education.

Just something to think about:

The ongoing debate in this country about schools has accumulated some troubling phrases that have been picked up as "truisms". These phrases/ideas are used so reflexively now that I think we often don't even realize how presumptive they are.

I would like to gently suggest that we be very careful/thoughtful in the way in which we speak about the impact of poverty on our public schools. Yes, it is true that poverty has had a significant impact on public education. However, it does not follow that families living in poverty don't care about their childrens' education. Disinterested/neglectful parents can be found across our socio-economic spectrum. Although it is easy to think that dininterest in education goes hand in glove with poverty, in my experience the truth is something quite different. I respectfully suggest we consider that:

*having time to volunteer in school or to come to programs during the school day (or even in the evening)requires some combination of the following: the ability to take unpaid time off; a job with flexible hours; a parent who does not have to work full time in order to keep food on the table; a way to get to and from school quickly and efficiently so as not to double/triple the time needed to visit the classroom (big difference in travel time if you don't have private transportation). When we don't see certain parents in our school buildings it is easy to think they don't care, when in fact there may simply be too many barriers to their being there.

*Allotting time for visiting the school outside of work hours is much easier if you have a neighborhood grocery store and/or onsite laundry (so that you can cook, sleep or clean while it is being accomplished).

*The collective cultural beliefs about race, ethnicity and poverty impact the interactions between staff and families. As has been shared so many times on this forum, it can be difficult to find a receptive audience for our concerns about our children. That is multiplied ten times over when you introduce language barriers, cultural barriers and educational barriers. Many of us hate being treated like "those parents", so we can perhaps easily understand the way in which feeling judged decreases a willingness/desire to be involved. Being considered one of "those parents" means something different when applied to parents who come from impoverished urban neighborhoods. Yet the impact is similar. It is unquestionably a deterrant to school involvement.

Collectively speaking, this isn't a case of good guys/bad guys. There are individuals "proving" and "disproving" the common assumptions on both sides of the system.

Sorry for the long post and please know that this is not a response to any individual comments. I have great faith in the positive intentions of everyone here. I just wanted to offer some thoughts about the way in which the language of the national discussion impacts our understandings of what is happening "on the ground" in our public schools.

Taminy-
I do understand your point. However, I have heard way too many parents who believe that educating kids is "not their job". They pay their tax dollars and hand them over and forget about it. This goes across the spectrum rich to poor.

All of our charter schools REQUIRE 30 hours of volunteer time. No matter what, no exceptions. If you don't do it, your kid can be removed at the end of the year. However, they do make and grant exceptions for cases of extreme hardship. Anyone in the child's family can do the volunteer hours. When I was at the high school, many times the kids did their own hours. At that school in particular, more than 50% of my kids lived in foster care and nearly all of them had been in juvenile hall. They were committed to making a change in their lives.

When held to the fire, so to speak, parents find ways. They cut out butterflies at home, make flash cards, sharpen pencils, come to board meetings- they find ways to make it work. 30% of my son's school is on the free lunch program and I'd make an educated guess that 30-40% do not speak English at home. But the major difference is that ALL the parents are committed to their child's education no matter what happens.

I'd also just like to add that "parental involvement" does not have to include volunteer hours only. When I was teaching in Title I schools, I would have been THRILLED to find out that a parent sat down with his or her child and looked at homework. It would have been great to know that parents asked their children about what was going on at school each day. However, I know it rarely happened, because when I spoke with parents at conferences (those who showed up), I was often met with blank stares when discussing major projects, labs in which we blew stuff up, or even who their children were currently dating.

When I was a kid, my parents both worked full time and never set foot in the school as a volunteer. However, every night around the dinner table (yes, it was a family rule that we all eat together), my brother and I had to describe something new that we learned that day. It didn't necessarily have to be academic - it could've have been as simple as "I learned I can't trust Angela with a secret, because she....." This facilitated all sorts of discussion, and it allowed my parents to be involved without leading a reading group, cutting out paper letters, or taking time off work. I never missed them at school, but I sure would have missed the bonding that came with sharing ideas, trials, and the day-to-day issues that arise when families spend 8 hours apart. It's so simple, and yet in my experience, not enough parents do it.

I don't disagree with either of the above posts. I agree that there are many ways to be involved and that it is important. My point was regarding the assumptions implicit in high poverty=neglectful/disinterested parenting. These are two different states of existence that are often reflexively paired as if they go hand in hand. My point about the barriers to school based involvement was speaking to the fact that when parents are not visible in the schools, it is easy to assume a lack of involvement/interest.

In my own school our parent involvement has increased significantly over the course of the past 10-15 years, even as our poverty rate has continued to grow. Of course, if you measured it by PTO membership, it would be easy to miss. So how has it grown? It has grown in responsiveness to notes home, availability for phone calls, participation in parent teacher conferences. Why has it grown? Honestly I think it is the result of a lot of frank conversations in staff meetings about our assumptions, and about how those assumptions were discouraging involvement. We had to take a look at ourselves and our practice in order to change the response we recieved from parents. It was uncomfortable, but it was also enlightening. Yes, we continue to have some uninvolved and/or neglectful parents. We have some parents who behave like five year olds and some parents who believe it is the school's job to provide the education. However, changing our assumptions subtly shifted the way in which we communicated and responded to families. It made all the difference.

Thank you SkydiveMom for the posting!

I am one of those who felt frustration abt how things are going lately. I agree that timing and a change of environment resulted in this. I may have inevidently be frustrated myself of having to move. I apologise for the negativities.

Except when it comes to athletics. Kids with athletic talent are fawned over by just about everyone in our society, while kids with academic talent are ignored or hidden.

You're right though, a lot of the fault does lie with the Equality Police. Every year they're out in force to beat teachers (of which I am also one) into submission with a new law about mainstreaming kids whose education would be better served by full-time special ed placement, and while they're at it, they remind us that even if little Janey can work four-dimensional equations at the age of eight, we can't give her any special treatment.

I also fault the culture common to many educators that considers classroom management a more important and prestigious skill than teaching. Gifted educators are scoffed at for wanting to teach "the easy kids" - and reminding the ignorami who say this that those "easy kids" can devour the complete works of Shakespeare in the time it takes an average child to make it through Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone never seems to help.

I've known plenty of teachers who, like SkydiveMom, really do care about gifted kids' education but have enough trouble reaching the end of the day without a kid receiving a serious head injury. Heck, during my substitute days, I WAS that teacher more than once. But I also agree with everyone here who's saying that nothing is going to change until those teachers start demanding the same framework, assistance, and training for GT that they get for special ed.