Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy how to get permission to observe DS in class

Did you learn much or will you need a few more observations?

Rock on. Score another one for the "act like you're supposed to be there" method.

Yay!!! That's awesome Let us know how it goes!

polarbear

Oh good! I hope it was helpful.

Wow. That took guts! I can't even imagine the feeling walking in there having had no response at all.

We need to be more assertive with our DSs school and little triumphs like that are great to hear about.

Thanks everyone! I couldn't get much from the visit. I am going back on Monday and will be there much longer.

I went back for my next observation. The school asked me to come during math enrichment pull out time. I think they were thinking that they would dazzle me with what they had. At first, I wasn't pleased as I wanted to see the regular classroom environment. But now I am happy that I saw the "advanced" work of this group.

They were doing a paper airplane activity. There were 7 kids and they each took turns to fly paper airplanes across the room. They were supposed to collect their data and another day this week, they were going to graph it.

At the beginning of the year, after a big kerfuffle, (not allowing DS7 to continue to accelerate in math and go to the 5th grade classroom), I starting sending in 5th grade work with DS. DS has 2 math periods. During the first one, he does 5th grade work alone. During the second one, he works with this 2nd grade "math enrichment" group.

What I saw today: DS totally tunes out while the teacher gives directions. He starts listening once the activity starts. The children in this group could not add double digits and didn't know how to multiply. While the other kids were trying to figure out how far their airplanes had flown (using yard sticks), DS was calculating and calling out their distances. (DS is not a speedy calculator. He simply was the only one who COULD calculate in this group.)

When the other children were trying to figure out how much 36+36 is, the teacher commented, "I will teach you how to add 2 digits later."

So, the only surprise to me was the low level that this "advanced" level group is working at. I figured that the rest of the class was at this level.

DS is very well behaved and simply tunes out until there is something moderately interesting going on. He is also very sociable and enjoys talking to just about anyone. But he is so clearly an outlier in the academic realm. The problem as I see it is: either the teachers don't see how "out there" he is, or they do see it and they simply don't care. Either way - it's such an extremely poor academic environment for him.

And peeking around at the other grades (3,4, and 5)...they all seemed pretty equally poor for DS. I mean, maybe 5th grade might be a challenge for him, mainly because of the increased executive functioning demands. But I don't see a huge benefit to grade skipping at this school. I am now starting to think about seriously partially homeschooling him or private school.

YES-YES-YES.

I've learned SO much about my DD's actual needs (versus my hypotheses about them) this way.

Thank you so much for reminding me of this! DS and I are completely on the same page. It's nice to get out of class, do fun things with friends where you can move around and make noise. But it's not hard or interesting or novel and doesn't require DS to think.

And the rest of the day is academic drudgery.

For an advanced 2nd grade class that sounds like pretty basic academics. I guess the general level is awful. Let us know what you decide to do next. Good luck.