Yes! I can totally see that a teacher might not even have opportunity to notice. We ran into that to a lesser extent with preschool. Our first parent-teacher conference 2 years ago went along these lines: the teacher said happily "your daughter can count to ten and knows the letters 's', 'm', 't', 'd' and 'a' (or whatever the first 5 letters taught by montessori classes are)". And I responded "Um, she is reading 3 letter words and can count to a hundred". To which I heard "she shouldn't be reading so soon. She needs to go through all the steps first to learn." Ha ha! How am I supposed to stop her, even assuming I would want to? Fortunately we had a more understanding teacher last year, though she was still teaching my DD far behind where she actually was.
I can't believe that there were kids in your DS's class that didn't even speak English! God, how could the teacher even get all the kids doing the right thing at the right time if they don't understand him or her? I'm really still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that they are teaching basic numbers, colors and shapes...
I'm trying to stop stressing about this ('trying' being the operative word) and console myself that if K doesn't work out at this school, we can always homeschool. We could even homeschool outside of school and she could still go and socialize...
My in-laws are coming to visit next month, and while they are here my DH and I are going to go visit all the gifted schooling options in our area. We can get a better picture of what is available and once school starts we can see how good a fit it is compared to the available options. Hopefully something will be great!
