DS, six-turning-seven and HG+, is complaining again of boredom, with tears and (this morning) howls that he doesn't learn ANYTHING at school. He is a dramatic kid and young for his age emotionally and my husband feels this is normal. I'm less sure.
Last year in K was a yearlong struggle with a teacher who did not understand him, finally bringing his case to the school "solutions committee" for daily offenses like wriggling, dawdling, and losing his pencil. We suggested he was bored, supplied private test results, and they reined her in. He finished the year fairly happily, with some differentiation, and I made a strong request for a teacher who would challenge him this year.
This year's first-grade teacher is kind and solid and has always been sincerely upset by the idea that he might be unhappy. She says he's never unhappy in the classroom. But she seems focused on small points. At our December conference she was calling him an "emergent reader" (he reads at a fifth-grade level now, probably third-grade then) because he doesn't slow down for punctuation. She was concerned that his Thanksgiving "personal essay," which included the personal experience of seeing a wild turkey in the back yard, evolved into a comparison of turkeys with turkey vultures. (Not personal enough.)
(On the other hand, when I asked about differentiating math she said he had a challenge pack to work on whenever he finishes the classwork. She showed me that day's sheet and he had skipped three out of four questions, including "circle the crayon that is longer." So, I can sympathize somewhat: the regular work should take him under five minutes to do and if he dawdles and daydreams through that, no challenge pack.)
While free reading seems to be at a reasonable level, phonics, spelling, and math instruction are very slow and there is little science for my science-mad kid. The district (which includes a superzip) is well-resourced but has no official gifted program. As far as I can tell, the elementary levels are painfully gentle and slow, many parents supplement aggressively, and in middle school the pace picks up substantially. I just joined a strategic planning committee working on instructional issues - of course that won't help immediately, but I am hoping to make contacts above the school level and also learn from some of the parents of older kids.
We supplement math, vocabulary, and some science at home and he attends a weekend science class for gifted kids. I plan to do more with math and science over the summer and maybe start piano. So he does have intellectual stimulation. We have a lot going on right now and I've been willing to let him coast at school as long as he's happy.
But now he's not happy.
Not sure where to take hold. I feel like I walk away from every encounter with the school thinking that every point they raise sounds eminently reasonable but once again, we've gotten nowhere.
