Probably not
, but she's on board with GT kids & what they're like! We had a very good conference last night. She's already given a lot of thought about who GS's teacher should be next year. She has a short list of boys who should
not be in the same class, for their benefit as well as the teacher's benefit!
GS wasn't in the language arts pullout gifted class the first semester because by the time she realized GS's abilities, he wouldn't have been able to be tested and put in the class until it was midway through the semester. She is recommending him to be tested for language arts gifted class this spring, so he can go right into it in the fall.
She has no problem with GS doing afterschooling with math. She doesn't think it will present a problem with him getting ahead in math. Right now, he's about 2 years ahead in math. But he takes a lot of pleasure in being the first to finish the worksheets in class & timed tests, and he's not complaining about busy work(other than the one week he had a sub at the gifted class).
I wish more teachers were like this one. She appreciates how GS just
has to share new information; she's working on getting him to curb the impulse to just blurt it out without killing his enthusiasm. When selecting books for his reading goals, he's allowed to pick out most of them but I will get about one nonfiction book/week that has the same topic the teacher will be covering in their class that week. So he always has plenty of information to add to the classroom discussions.
I plan on having GS take the Explore next January. We had some other scheduling conflicts this year. GS is dead set against a skip at this point, he's finally being accepted socially and that's very important to him. He's doing well with afterschooling, so I don't think acceleration would gain us anything at this time. I'm looking at acceleration as being more important when he hits middle school. By that time we'll have 2 years of Explore test results to guide us on that path.
