Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Documentary about New Yorkers & Kindergarten

What are these elite schools really doing?

What is the quality of the "eliteness" they are creating?

Sounds to me like they are taking the easiest path.

What if they had objective, "shall admit" criteria and had a truly diverse school?

To answer the question about homeschooling as a single mom: I'm not single now. I do work but I work nights, which made homeschooling even more inevitable.

If you watched that show carefully, you would notice my appearance improving suddenly about halfway through... that's when I fell in love! Ha! For me the most amusing thing about watching this now is tracking the slow and steady improvement of my hair.

As the person whose blog post started this thread :-) I just wanted to say hello to Bronxmom and to everyone who took the time to watch the documentary. What a wonderfully supportive group you are!

I love your blog, btw!

Bronxmom, I love the update! Your son is precious and you went through so much for him. I agree with the above about showing your emotions and explaining things to your child. You can't hide things from bright/gifted kids. I have friends who are shocked by how much I share with my child, nothing inappropriate of course but I do talk to her about emotional things because I know that she is fully aware and I want her to hear about situations from me and not have to interpret things on her own. She knows that she and I can talk and she feels safe and secure knowing that Mom and Dad will take care of things. I fully support you showing your child (especially a boy) that it is ok to be sad, and even ok to cry! Good for you! Congrats on the relationship, congrats on homeschooling and I wish the best for your family in the future.

Bronxmom- I just finished watching it and my heart went out to you the entire time. You genuinely seemed to want to do right by your son and find the best possible educational opportunity that met his needs. I really appreciated that you were honest on the application too!

I'm also delighted that you're in love :-)

I didn't think the parents were painted in a bad light at all. They were working with the system to get a good educational fit for their child. Everyone seemed to agree the hoops you had to jump through were ridiculous . Bronxmom - I loved your honesty about the whole process, and your son is adorable. We are homeschooling also, and it has been a great fit for my out of the box son.

We live in an urban area, so we have some of this (we probably have 50 eligible schools within 15 miles of us ranging from public school to 20K a year). There are wait lists and lotteries and some interviewing for private schools. At least the public schools don't interview I don't think! For gifted public, either you have the test scores or not and then it's by lottery. None of the HG+ schools are near us. We have probably toured or visited about 20 schools.

I'm still glad we don't live in NYC! It seems so completely wrong that so many kids that would test in the top 1 or 2% would not get the gifted services others would get based on their classroom behavior one day at the age of 4 or 5. I can tell my son would have never made this cut.

Oh man, this documentary is going to give me nightmares!!! We're NYers but we're HOPEFULLY going to be moving before DD is school aged. Honestly, I see this documentary as a critique on the system, not on the poor parents trying to do their best within it.

Bronxmom, I have to say I'm surprised you received any complaints about crying in front of your kid. I grew up in a home where my mom was very open with her feelings and I thought that was a HUGE positive. She wasn't perfect by all means but I think that's one thing that she gave me that I intend to pass on to DD. DD are both strong believers in not hiding stuff from your kids (besides,they'll probably figure it out on their own anyways!). Oh, and congrats on falling in love!

I love your response...put a big ole smile on my face. Really happy for you that you found someone and yes I did notice the improvement of the hair. Now if I could bring myself to make an appointment for mine. :P