... he was allowed to pretest in math and he had a packet of more advanced material to work on whenever the teacher was covering something he had already mastered - but he hated it.
I was talking to my sister (one of those crazy-smart types) about our son's "challenges" and she relayed a story similar to yours.
When she was in her sr. year of HS, the school had pretty much run out of math -- not curriculum, just teachers. So she and her group of peers were given their high-level text book and stuck in the back of the class, expected to learn all this stuff on their own.
The frustration she felt was that because of her abilities, people assumed that she didn't need formal instruction; that she could just look at something and "get it." Meanwhile all the other students received all the live instructional time they needed.
If she had had a teacher to teach -- yeah, she would have probably whizzed through it like everything else. But she still needed someone to explain the stuff. She didn't wake up in the morning knowing how to do things -- she just learned 10x's faster than anyone else.
I see something similar with my son, who as I described earlier, has used ALEKS. After I showed ALEKS to his teachers, they were considering having him use that in the classroom to allow him to work at his own pace. But our son is in much the same boat as my sister. It frustrates him too much having to "teach himself." He's much happier when a human can explain things and respond one-on-one to questions.
Maybe some GT kids are autodidacts, but not my son -- at least not in every subject.
Just my two cents -- and it's worth every penny!
