Originally Posted by indigo
In general, parents may wish to document each encounter. This may be in an advocacy notebook, and contain date, person(s) present (by name and/or tile, role, etc). Much of your documentation you may wish to keep for yourself at home. It is a ready resource to pull facts and information from when needed. You may wish to keep your documentation statements short, factual, unemotional. The teachers' inconsistencies and contradictions are, I think, quite important to document.

From the documentation you prepare, you may choose to send a summary of the meeting or phone call (teleconference). At the end of the summary you may wish to list next steps (as you understand them to be from the encounter). You may also wish to list questions. Sometimes enumerating the items helps ensure each one is answered/addressed.

There is a lot of advocacy information on the forums. The website wrightslaw and the book From Emotions to Advocacy are often helpful.

Does anyone manage to work full-time while raising one of these children? :P I feel like I need to hire a full-time assistant to help manage all the paperwork and another one to follow my child around so he doesn't lose his shoes!

I will read the Emotions book, immediately. That has probably been the biggest problem. I am more interested in the emotional life of gifted students, generally, than the academic side--which is why I left the program to get counseling master's.

DeeDee: as for your question re: The Principal. There is a building principal at the high school, but the principal over the gifted teachers is in another building. And she is unethical, generally, and was a driving force behind my leaving the program, as well. There was a mass exodus of teachers the year I left. That is one reason my son's three core subject teachers are all brand-new, inexperienced, and under-qualified (provisional gifted certificates). The one who has been there longest is in her third year of teaching. UGH.

Honestly--the entire program is very dysfunctional. OTOH--there is no better option at the moment, particularly since my son feels the social interactions are "worth it" and he loves going to see his friends and playing in the band.