Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Middle school choices

Tutors had athority and and outside perspective. They can be good had explaining 'why' it has to be done a certian way. Ours was anyway.

Have you gone the medication route? I'm not a big fan, but my ADD son sure is. He hated missing all the little details, and it fueled his anxiety to be 'always one step behind no matter how hard I try.'

What about bringing your DD to your workplace for homeschooling? Is she too young to get a volunteer job there? Builds self esteem to help others. I'll be she'd be a great tutor to kids who are stuck in a hospital because divergent thinkers can sometimes be great at finding explainations that make sense to other people.

Maybe you DD could learn some relaxation techniques, and teach them to people in the hospital. (I'm thinking HeartMath)

Best Wishes,
Grinity

To answer a few questions:

No, dd can't come to work with me. On an occassional emergency basis (as long as it isn't flu season), I can bring her in but not daily and she is too young to volunteer there. Last winter all children under age 12 were banned from setting foot in the hospital if they were not patients due to concerns about flu.

I am already helping her out at home with trying to see the more typical approach and paying attention to the details in the directions.

Where she is really running into trouble in math in particular is the tests. They have moved toward standards based grading which apparently means that the 2-3 tests/quarter count for 80% of your grade. Even if she gets As on everything else, a bad test scores means that your class grade isn't going to be good. As I said, she isn't getting Ds or Fs by a long shot, but she regularly misses a lot of points on tests due to simple errors. She missed 1/2 of the points on an entire section of one test b/c she overlooked the part of the directions that said to show your units of measure. She calculated everything correctly but didn't write in any units (cm, etc.). Another instance had her doing the calculations correctly but transferring the wrong answers to the answer line. She got zero points on those questions b/c the answers on the line were incorrect.

I'm not yet sure how to help her with that. She does need to work on the relaxation techniques, though!

eta: We haven't tried meds, The psych didn't seem to optimistic that they'd be very effective for inattentive type ADD, worried about stimulant meds increasing anxiety, and worried about dd's size (she's very small -- like 5th percentile). She felt that the non-stim meds might be a possibility but said that you had to take them consistently for months before you'd start to see a benefit. Dd didn't sound too sold on the idea after hearing all of that.

Hate to say it but my mom had to stay home with us a few times when we were kids (premie sis w/health problems). And when she did she had to babysit a dozen kid's daily. Still the most stable home-based business I've heard of, but I think the limit's six. But my sister's watching Kids at home (she plans on homeschooling my nephew). She gets something like $110/week, I think. If you could get one or two infants or a toddler that would be a full-time job at home that might equal your part-time pay. If you put an ad in the paper "stay-at home mom looking to provide childcare in my home.". It wouldn't be that bad for a year. Might get old after too long. Friends and neighbors say I should start a preschool when they see what Wyatt's learning. I'm like, "Shoot. I barely got enough patience for my own kid's and my husband."
I'm going to do the daytrading, but first we just got a new place, then we got another baby, need home improvements. Got a bigger car. It'll be a while before I get the extra money for my daytrading ambitions. But that's my plans for my own future working at home. The hubby believes in me to do it too, we just got expenses first.
I also do like the idea of a tutor, everyone's telling you. And I plan to use the idea that I read here of hiring a college student. They're cheap, fun, and smart. Oh yeah, I don't know the details. But my dad's done freelance writing on and off for years. Never published a novel, few magazine articles. But he told me one time he was actually covering the bills writing greeting cards. Who knew they paid that well?

I'm going to quote myself here . We went to the open house for this school last night and would appreciate any feedback. The commute wasn't as bad as I thought (about 25 mins barring bad weather). Dd really liked it.

The things she liked:

* Very hands on with "fieldwork" and a lot of getting out to do things in the environment;
* Allows for academic diversions. One of the kids gave an example of bringing in a petrified toad she found and the teacher changing her science lesson plans to be about toads and frogs and how this one could have come to be petrified (this became science for the next month);
* Relaxed -- they call teachers by their first names, some of the classes have yoga balls in lieu of desks, etc.
* Small and electives are mixed age with 6th-8th grade together.

My concerns, other than the commute & dd12 being at a school on the other side of town, include:

* The math test scores, in particular, are very poor. Our part of the state has above state avg scores on achievement tests. If the state avg is 60% of the kids proficient, many local schools will have 75-95% proficient+. Their math scores for grade 7+ run around 25% proficient+.

The principal attributes this to turn-over in math teachers and some of these teachers having not been the best fit and to the expedentiary learning model where they focus more on conceptual understanding than "drill and kill." He did say that they were working to add in more memorization of basic facts to bring those scores up.

* Only one elective/semester and fewer choices in the electives (they focus on depth over breadth);

* 6th grade is run more like an elementary classroom with one teacher. Save for math, in which she could still subject accelerate if it was the right fit, she would be in the regular classroom with no tracking for literacy or anything else beyond whatever differentiation the classroom teacher provides. While language arts isn't her strongest area (although she does have an A- in the GT reading class), she has spent this year and last in GT reading studying Latin roots, character motivation, and doing more intellectually deep work than what it looked like they did (book reports, std fare).

Thoughts?

I'm glad dd liked it. I'm glad the commute isn't as bad as you thought. Small class size with flexible teachers sounds good. You can always afterschool Math if you don't think she is learning enough.

The main, main, main thing is to get into that school and observe the recieving teacher. What books are availible in the classroom? Would it start to feel like your DD is in the 'non-gifted' track at her old school? You have to see it in action to even guess. If you think it's ok, try and have your DD shadow for a few days before you make any decisions.

If your main concern is getting her to high school with more of a sense of who she is and liking it - this school sounds good.

If your main concern is getting a good education, maybe keep her where she is with the high achievers and a tutor (really, it's worth a try!) and a trial of meds. I've heard that about Stimulents being better for Hyperactive and not so good for paying attention, but that isn't our personal experience.

Health Insurance and family income are really important - can you find some 'adopt a grandma' type to cover for you while you work so you can homeschool?

I wish I had more ideas.
Love and More Love,
Grinity

FWIW, I have talked to a few families with gifted kids who have really thrived in the expeditionary learning model. In these families, the kids struggled to fit in the traditional school model and their kids seemed to be divergent thinkers.

From what you have said, your dd has struggled on the traditional path. I would let her try the alternative school. You always can supplement math at home using something like ALEKS. I think that its worth a try before resorting to homeschooling an extrovert.

I'd need to look into that further, but honestly the literacy end of this has me as worried as math b/c reading is the one area where dd has had a really good education for the past two years with a teacher who is very bright herself. Her confidence in that area is pretty intact even if she doesn't love to read.

The book reports I saw on the walls were on Diary of a Wimpy Kid and similar books but that's all I know.

Can't I have them both -- lol!?

Thank you both for your thoughts. We're going to open houses for the other two closer higher achieving schools next week so we'll see what we think after that as well.

We've now had a chance to visit the other two schools and dd's preference list and mine are pretty much the complete opposite. Here are the schools:

School A:
* Very high performing (one of the top few middle schools in the state)

* Choice only (not assigned to anyone, so all parents are committed to transporting their kids)

* Has more flexibility in math than any of the other schools in that they offer both the std 6th grade math and accelerated 7th grade math like everyone else does for 6th graders, but they also have an intermediary class that uses 7th grade curriculum at a slower pace for kids who are in btwn the two. In 7th grade the kids who did that intermediary choice can move on to subject acceleration or there is another intermediary class if they aren't ready to do so.

* Nearly 50% of their kids are subject accelerating in math, which could be high stress for dd.

* Has a smaller school feel although it has about 250 kids/grade.

* Offers all of the typical electives: art, orchestra, French & Spanish, etc. plus a drama club (dd10 is very into theatre).

* Conveniently located across the street from the high school dd12 will be attending.

* I liked the teachers a lot especially the math head who told the entire group that although the district tells us we know who is gifted and who isn't in 3rd grade that gifted isn't about who is achieving highly enough to be accelerated early on -- our kids are all special regardless of what they're labeled and only time will tell where everyone belongs and wants to be.

* While there is, again, no accelerated literacy in 6th grade, the 6th grade classes are reading intellectually challening fare like The Iliad and the Odyssey.

* Core knowledge

This is my first choice school and dd's last choice school.

School B:
* High performing, but not as much so as school A. For instance, about 25% of the 6th graders are subject accelerating in math.

* Dd thought that the science program looked fairly so-so like elementary science.

* Pretty std middle school for our area.

* STEM focus so it has a lot of interesting science electives in addition to the std electives: art, music, foreign language (French, Spanish, and German).

* They have a final period of the day that is used for extra support (a lot of kids get that for the final period) or enrichment if you aren't needing extra help. Dd would wind up in enrichment b/c she is generally ahead in math and reading.

* Also very close to the high school dd12 will be attending.

* I really didn't care for the GT approach. There are elective/enrichment classes that are only available to GT ided kids including an art enrichment for which the class description states that they will be learning about how being gifted impacts them personally and interacting with like-minded peers. Dd doesn't tend to find like minds in most of the GT classes as they tend to have about 25% of the kids in them and I didn't like the elitist feel of it. They seemed to misunderstand my dd's experience of giftedness in that they had an "8 gripes of the gifted" sign that had a list which talked solely about how hard it was to be smart b/c people teased them and how boring and easy school was. That isn't dd's problem. She isn't garden level high achiever who finds school easy and boring and feels smarter than everyone.

This is dd's and my 2nd choice.

School C:
* This is the expedentiary learning school.

They cannot get her in to shadow until after we have decided it is the school she wants to attend which would force us to turn down spots @ the other two schools first. I don't see any point in shadowing at that point.

I remain concerned enough about the low academic performance and what I've heard from others locally (it is really a school for kids who weren't making it in the other schools and there can be some "wrong crowd" issues) that I just don't know that I can be comfortable with it.

This is dd's first choice and my last choice.

To add to my long post -- lol! -- I know from past experience that dd will want to do the opposite of whatever I want. If I tell her what I want her to do, she'll acquiesce but then blame me and others for whatever she doesn't like if it isn't perfect.

She really needs to step up to the plate and stop making excuses rather than buckling down if she finds something hard. Dh and I are also concerned that she will coast academically at school C and therefore not learn how to deal with something that isn't a cake walk.

All opinions are welcome . I do feel like we, as the parents, have to have a big piece in the decision but I also don't want to cut dd out of giving her input both b/c it is her education and b/c I don't want to encourage her tendency to feel like things are being forced on her and she can then fault others if they don't work out.