Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy gifted teacher has no gifted training

Hi,

So, DS was rejected from our public school gifted program. They don't take IQ scores into account when considering an application. While talking to the gifted coordinator today about how my PG child needed the gifted program, not for the material but at minimum to give him a break from class, the coordinator told me that he actually had no gifted trainng or education! Ummm...is this normal?

I'm not surprised about this.

I don't know if it's normal, however.

I think you are going to have some very significant problems here.

Well, considering that the "gifted program" in many schools/school districts is simply a class where the kids either do slightly harder busy work, play games or do fun projects, no, I'm not surprised.

I would think that a gifted coordinator would have at least a few hours of classes to get a gifted certification, but I wouldn't be at all suprised that a gifted teacher would have no gifted education. Still, even to get a gifted certification you don't need an in-depth education in giftedness. I'm sure 99% of us here know much more and have read much more than most gifted coordinators.

Of course, my DS's gifted teacher still can't spell DS's name correctly after almost a year (sigh). So, maybe I just don't have high expectations.

Perhaps you need to take advantage of the coordinator's ignorance and attempt to educate him on your son's needs specifically and gifted needs, in general. Still, I wouldn't get your hopes up about the gifted program. If they are letting primarily high-achievers into the program, it's unlikely to meet your DS's needs, even in breaking up his day with something more pleasant.

DS homeroom teacher claims that she is a gifted teacher , but i really don't see it , just because DS has all around bad year school experience .

When I went to school to be an elementary special ed teacher (this was about the same time dinosaurs died out, I think), I received one class in dealing with "special needs students" which had maybe one day dedicated to gifted. I know that despite getting a college education in that field, I had a plethora of biases and wrong opinions about gifted education that only changed through the experiences with my own children. I left college thinking gifted classes fostered elitist thinking, tended to skew kids towards abnormal behavior because they didn't brush shoulders enough with "normal" kids ... A lot of the attitudes I still see in teachers today.

Our school's gifted program is really more of an accelerator than a differentiator, and the administrators and teachers see it as a reward for the good kids, not a solution for kids who aren't thriving in regular ed.

I second the recommendation to engage the teacher in the battles your child faces because of not having proper placement. Having someone who may be able to advocate from within the school may make a big difference in that decision.

I was recently somewhere on the internet that showed a chart of each state and what services and requirements they had for gifted education. It not only listed how a child qualifies in each state, but how much funding is allotted and what credentials teachers need to have, etc. It was a 2 year chart if I remember correctly.

I could have possibly found it when I was looking around on the Davidson site, Wright's Law, IDEA or the state education site. For the life of me, I can't remember what website it was from - maybe someone on here knows what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I found it very interesting to see how each state handles gifted education and the chart would tell you if your state requires it's gifted teachers to have some sort of gifted credentials.

FOUND IT - http://www.nagc.org/stateofthestatesreport.aspx

You can get to the by state info here: http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/

Being at a partial gifted magnet, the principal explained that not every teacher has certification because the certification program is $2500 and there is no pool of funding through the district or state to reimburse them and there is no bump in pay for being certified. But the coordinators all are certified, I believe that is a requirement here.

In mentioning DS's asynchrony in handwriting to the coordinator, she responded to not worry that is very common. Somehow that alone seemed like solid credentials for me.

I'm pretty sure our gifted teacher is gifted herself and I know her children were classified as gifted. I'm really not sure about her credentials (even though I should probably know that information) but to me,(IMHO) being gifted and having gifted children might be better for teaching the gifted than just being certified in gifted education.

In my DS8's District, they have a very robust gifted certification program that takes 3 years. From everything I've learned about it, it is quite extensive and a large percentage of the teachers in the District undertake the training. However, that does not mean that the schools are structured in such a way as to allow the GT kids to take advantage of this certification process. DS's school is anti-clustering and differentiates only if you consider differentiation to be dividing up the third grade classes into three groups of 35 for reading.
So, it is wonderful that most of the teachers undertake the training, but IMHO, the benefit gets diluted a great deal at this school and in this District. So off to the gifted magnet next year for both my kids to see if that's better.