Okay, we are attempting one last week at the public school DS6 is attending. He headed back to school this week after a week out thanks to swine flu and my stomach was just totally twisted. His school has not allowed any acceleration despite sharing all of our private testing from the summer and the psych recommendation for acceleration. The teacher is not willing to differentiate instruction and he has done several weeks of work he mastered many years ago and he is bored, bored, bored, is refusing to do work (he said it is just too easy and silly for him - one piece of work came home where he had crossed out a section that said "Brain Work" and he had written NO next to it....I asked him to explain and he said it was "ridiculous" that they thought drawing pictures of 5 things that started with the letter "r" was considered "brain work") and he is becoming a major behavior problem. He said it's not fair everyone else gets to learn new things and he can't and his whole attitude and self-esteem is going in the toilet massively!
So we have 2 back up plans....one is another public/charter school who was willing to let him work at his level but it is a 45 minute drive (if they still have a spot open) and the other is to just go back to homeschooling. The psychologist who tested him this summer said that we should be trying to find some mentors for him in the areas he loves and we have been trying so hard to figure out how to find some. He is massively into computer programming, microcontrollers, robotics, manatees/animals/nature and all things math and science. We have not been able to find a Jr. Lego league or robotics league - the other leagues, you have to be age 8 and up (even though DS would probably be just fine with that age group since his best friend is 9). We have put out feelers in the homeschool group and no one had any suggestions or had any teenagers interested in being a mentor. Has anyone on the board had any luck finding mentor(s) for your kiddos and how did you go about finding them? We thought about just going online and looking up corporations/businesses in the areas that he is interested in and contacting them to see if anyone might be intersted in being a mentor. Thanks for any insight!
