I'm reading this thread with a lot of interest. I have been struggling to explain my DD to her teachers, to TAG staff, to principals.... She is a well behaved, "absent minded professor" type who's learning style is completely non-linear. She leaves a trail of belongings behind her wherever she goes, and has a desk stuffed with papers and important notes from 3 months ago. Thank goodness my DS is at the same school and carries all the school notes home in his Friday Folder
! In an educational climate that seems to "doubt" giftedness in the first place, advocating for a child like this is a challenge. I won't list all the reasons that I'm confident in my assessment of her. Let's just say she has been clearly showing us who she is ever since she began to use speech (and in some ways, before that....). As to getting her needs met in school: Well, I'm told that she has "plenty of learning peers", but then I listen to her talk about how slowly everyone reads and how no one wants to "go deep" in books. Typically she finishes an assigned book on day one, then loses interest in it while waiting for everyone else to finish it (by which time she's moved on to other books). She is easily bored and distracted by math workbooks, so is slow to complete work--and some of the computation errors she makes: yikes! Give her the opportunity to solve it in her head or talk about it though, and she shines! Show her the problem she missed and she will quickly (and independently) catch the mistake and probably laugh at it. But next to organized, linear, outspoken achievers she often feels invisible.
For me, one of the hardest parts is the way in which the response I get in school makes me question what I know to be true about my DD. Thank goodness that she has learned to focus in controlled testing situations, and is finally beginning to accumulate some hard data to back up what I've been saying. I wanted to pass along links for a couple of articles I found awhile back. They didn't necessarily help me get what I needed for her, but they helped me to frame my arguments to the school and provided corroboration for my perceptions--something we all need now and again! Yes?
One of them is on the Davidson site, so maybe everyone's already read it.
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10171.aspxhttp://www.sengifted.org/articles_social/Reis_SocialAndEmotionalIssuesFacedByGiftedGirls.shtmlhttp://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/newsletter/spring00/sprng005.htmlTaminy
