Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Ridiculous GT things I Heard "

i had a meeting just yesterday with DD5s principal (of our regular neighborhood non-gifted elementary school) and she actually said.."I hate the term gifted because ALL our children are gifted.".. Alert the media. Kids in my area unusually intelligent. Everyone gifted!!

irene

Here's one from the head of a pricey private school we talked with, as he explained how great the school was for G/T kids. This was his answer to our question about differentiation. "Oh, the really smart kids don't need special programs. They pretty much just teach themselves anyway." So, why would we want to pay this school $15K+ annual tuition so our kid could teach himself?

Wow....these are good.. I have so many not sure where to start.

"boredom is a choice" - school principal

"we are required to meet the needs of profoundly gifted individuals" - school principal

"whose choice was it to move him up to first grade and skip K....since he is already way above the first grade curriculum anyhow maybe he should have just stayed in K" - teacher

"he is going to grow up to be doogie howser" - many many annoying people

"maybe you should have him tested for something, because I have never seen a child that intelligent that did not have a disability" - teacher when DS was in a 3yo pre-k

"your son may be really bright, but there is something else wrong and I worry about when he gets to school because he is going to need a 1:1 aide with him all day and probably have to be in a self-contained classroom". said by director of 4yo pre-k program that was play based and director did not have any degree in education or anything. (DS acted out in their program because it was all play based, unstructured and no learning component, rules, limits, or consequences). It wasn't a good match. We took him out and put him in a Montessori program where he had no behavior issues. Imagine that.

"how did you teach him to read before he was 2?" - lots of people

"does your son ever just play?" - lots of people

"he is already doing some algebra now. We aren't really sure what to do. If we give him the 4th or 5th grade curriculum now, what will he do next year?" - teacher

Thankfully our school situation is going quite well now, but there were those early comments (some not so long ago) that really made us nervous and confused. Looking back on all that, I realize just how far we have come...even if many tears were shed along the way : )

Oh my.

I'm so glad to read another ridiculous story about a screening test. After the ESE Director spent 20 minutes screening my son for the gifted progam when he was in Kindergarten, she told me that my his Nonverbal IQ was below average and his overall IQ was "at least" average. When I had him tested by a psychologist one month later, his Nonverbal IQ was 146 and his FSIQ was 145 on the SB-V.

It's so interesting that all of these comments essentially boil down to "we have one system--everybody has to fit the system as it currently exists". Despite all of the hype about differentiation in the regular classroom, my sense is that teachers just don't receive much support for recognizing the uniqueness of each student's learning needs. The more our kids diverge from the norm, the more they threaten the school system's stance that we can treat them all the same and the kids won't rebel (with behaviour outbursts, unhappiness and anxiety, or social adjustment difficulties in the absence of true peers) or challenge the system themselves by asking to have their divergence from the norm recognized.

You mean this person has one brain cell and cannot imagine that things exist that don't fit in it.

When discussing my DS's behaviour/progress with his 1st grade teacher and trying to figure out what was going on (No idea about GT'ness at this stage).

She suggested he might be bored but determined he didn't need any advanced material because "he doesn't get everything right you know".

I'm diverting a little so hope you don't mind...

In my son's K screen that decided he was lacking in motor skills like catching a ball.

At the time, he was skiing black diamonds among his other sports and hanging with the better crowd in ability. What's with that?

All of these "if they do this now, what will they do next year" ones really crack me up. Because, you know, it's not like there's any higher level of math, or anything. Once you learn multiplication and division, that's it.

One of the reading ones had me laughing, because my mom got a line like that about one of my brothers. His kindergarten teacher told her that he was going to have to "unlearn" all the reading that he already knew and start over to learn it all "the right way". Needless to say, he wasn't in that class for long.