We had another meeting yesterday with DS7's school - it felt like talking to a brick wall.
The classroom teacher just will not budge from the position she had at the beginning of the year - she has lots of very gifted children in her class, and they are all being appropriately extended. DS7 is not more gifted than they are, or he would be doing better work. For example...the whole class was given a wonderful open-ended creative writing exercise in which they had the opportunity to imagine what they might do if they were Jack, and the beanstalk didn't quite reach the land of the giant. And all my not-very-gifted child came up with was "wait for the beanstalk to grow". I thought this was quite a funny answer, because I wouldn't care either. (Aha!!- the bad attitude must be inherited!) BLEURRGGGH.
And then there was the guidance officer, who was just so very concerned about his emotional well-being if he was accelerated. I asked her if she'd read any of the research about this, and she hasn't read anything.
It turned out, too, that he's working three years above grade level for maths. It's the end of the year - isn't it reasonable to expect that someone would have told us before now? Perhaps they were afraid it would only encourage us.
I'm planning to send a follow-up email re statistical probability and with links to info on acceleration and gifted underachievement. I'll wait a day or two though - am sometimes less than completely tactful when I'm this frustrated.
Does anyone else relish the occasional secret vengeful fantasy?
