Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments teacher/student mismatch

DS6's last year of preschool he had a personality mismatch and we required him to deal with. He was acting out with her, but not at home, he would have the occasional bad day, but was mostly excited to go to school each day. I really considered it more of a class management issue (though I never gave DS that excuse, he was told he was expected to behave even if he didn't agree with her rules). We let him vent his frustration, we tried to show him how he was contributing to the situation, but ultimately he needed to learn how to deal with someone who he might not be over-the-top in love with (which was his experience with preschool teachers up to that point). He survived it just fine.

His Kindergarten teacher was a completely different situation and she was the ultimate reason we decided to leave the school. He stopped asking questions at home (which I didn't realize just how many questions he asks until he wasn't asking *any*), he stopped caring about anything, he was dumbing himself down to fit in better. He would tell us school was "fine" but he was bored and he like his teacher "fine" but she wouldn't teach him anything. We started having more frequent tantrums and general behavior problems. Finally, he started with screaming that he didn't want to go to school, to please let him stay home or make them teach him real things. The more I tried to get the teacher to help me, the more she intensified her campaign to prove that he wasn't advanced (she had a weird obsession with his handwriting). She just refused to speak to me when she realized that I wasn't going away. I requested conferences with her and was passed off to the GT coordinator who refused to meet with me (even though he was hand-selected *by them* to be in a pilot Kindergarten 1hr/wk pull-out program) and finally the Principal who told me there would be no sit down meeting between us because there was nothing to talk about. I figured if dealing with them made me froth at the mouth, it was absolutely unfair to ask a 6 year old to deal with it.

I'm not saying the op's situation was like that and I hope that it's not a common situation at all. But, I think sometimes it just doesn't matter if the teacher is having a bad year or is just a bad teacher when the child is obviously unable to cope and being harmed by the situation. We've experienced both a personality issue and a *teacher* issue, there's a very distinct difference between them in our experience, one I would try to work through with the child, the other I wish I had listened to him sooner and taken action.