Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion 2nd quarter status and reality check

I know that we are all on different schedules so that some of our students finished first quarter a few week ago while some other students are only about to conclude first quarter within the next week or so. Anyhow, how is this school year shaping up? How are your kids doing academically, behaviorally, emotionally, etc?

I guess I should start. DS/DD had a wonderful start to middle school and the hope is that smooth sailing continues. It was initially somewhat stressful due to a completely new environment with none of their elementary friends as well as an explosion in demand of executive functioning skills. However, they rose to the challenge and made new friends and joined activities/clubs and couldn't do better academically.

dd13 is doing well in her first year of high school. She loves the orchestra director. AP Human Geography is a highlight--she has a really exceptional teacher and he makes the class extremely interesting and challenging. She could do without bio. Math she is working hard to maintain an A and is stressed out by the sophomore baseball players who talk too much during class. She is enjoying the Spanish academy, but it is frustrating to have the discussion in her English lit. class be in Spanish, when they are only taking spanish II and she so the depth is limited. I think in the following yrs. it will be a better fit for her. Overall she is happy and handling the transition well. Oh, I almost forgot--she joined the debate team and came in 2nd in the first competition and 5th in the 2nd. She was very excited!

dd7 in 2nd is more of a puzzle. We are finally going to do private testing in the spring. Hopefully that will give us some more answers. Her report card was great and behavior at school is great but we see very different things at home.

Congrats to your DD13! That is exciting, especially for a freshman, no less. I think that 2nd grade can be challenging for a high ability kid unless they have a resourceful teacher and open-ended curriculum. 1st grade is so focused on getting all the kids reading well that often 2nd grade is treated as a consolidation year and hence more boring to many high ability kids.

DD9 started the year by determining to do what we thought would be too many extracurricular activities: gymnastics, soccer, choir, band, and robotics. We gave her some space to see how it would go, expecting we'd be reigning her back at some point very early. Surprisingly, she's handling it all like a champ. She finds time during her school day to get a jump on her homework in order to make more time. Academics are not suffering, as she brought home a perfect 4.0 report card. We expected to see meltdowns when she didn't have enough time for play, but those situations have been quite rare, and far less severe than we anticipated.

This is her second year of public school following a grade skip we imposed upon them over their objections. DD's performance last year was outstanding, so we expected that to be the end of any objections. DD's classmates in her GT pull-outs are noticing that she's outscoring them despite being the youngest in the class, and she's earned their respect as a result. Nevertheless, DD is still putting tremendous pressure on herself, having recently told DW, "I still need to prove that I belong there. Every. Single. Day." DD reports that she has a homeroom teacher (the vampire) who constantly asks the gifted kids in her classroom "Are you sure you're gifted?" when they make an ordinary mistake. DD also still remembers the one gifted teacher (no longer there) who CONSTANTLY told DD last year that she was too slow, she was holding up the class, and it's because she was skipped... all while the rest of the gifted class was struggling with the same things DD was.

One perspective is that this is a good thing, because it pushes her to do her very best, and one noticeable benefit is that her organizational and executive skills have seen a tremendous jump in the last year. Another perspective is that this feeds socially-prescribed perfectionism, and is ultimately unhealthy psychologically. I ascribe to the second one.

Ds 9 is officially failing language arts, math and writing. He either didn't turn in the classwork or he didn't follow full directions such as show your work or more details :-( this year is shaping up to be horrible!

I'm so glad that you're aware of this dichotomy, Dude. Your DD reminds me so much of our DD at that age.

SUCH internal pressure on themselves.

I'm sad to report that DD15 is continuing to do this to herself in college, no less. Her classmates have no idea how young she is*, her professors like her and find her bright and engaging, and yet she is STILL struggling with the emotional side of feeling insecure and that every day is a test of her legitimacy.

Chemistry has been a struggle for her-- but she has connected with the professor, who clearly sees precisely what she is, and is avidly engaging with her at this point as a result, reassuring her that, um-- NOoooooo, she is not "struggling" with the material-- at all-- and that once the computational side "clicks" she's going to be at the top of the class (all honors college students who already have a year or more of chemistry to DD's lack thereof). He has quite clearly told her that her conceptual understanding is stellar-- and that she really ought to stick with it at least long enough to try some computational chemistry, since she seems to be so well-suited to P-chem.

Calculus and computer science have been comfortable and emotionally speaking they are the definite bright spots. I don't think either one of them is doing her a lot of favors in terms of pushing her development (though her calc prof likes to talk math with her after class and in his office hours). Computer science has been good since it's a large class experience for her, ALTHOUGH...

* her CS prof apparently dressed down this (DD's largest class at >>100 students) lecture section by pointing out that if the one young teen in that room could manage to interact civilly and respectfully and... responsibly with both faculty and TA's for the course, well, then SURELY the rest of them, at 19yo plus, could manage it at least most of the time. At that point, her lab partner figured it out, since he noted "Heyyyyyyyy....you live at home. That's YOU, isn't it?? Cool! You must be SUPER smart. That explains why you're always the first one done."

Probably a bit unfair, but she definitely didn't call my DD out specifically.

DD has also noted that being obviously female and neutral or passive toward statements such as; "Let me tell you about my Magic: The Gathering collection" is apparently the most potent aphrodisiac ever devised for engineering majors.


Quarter won't end until after Thanksgiving here. All seems reasonably well at the moment, though, and college has been LIGHT YEARS better than secondary ever was.

Hard to say. First quarter is over... I think things are looking up from a month ago when I had the SST meeting with my son. DS's grades are slowly improving and he is not failing Chemistry. But Chemistry is a class he should have Aced, so "not failing" isn't really good enough.(The material isn't hard this is a executive function problem.) He has already done enough damage to keep him out of AP Chemistry next year. Math/Pre-Calculus is going well this year, good teacher and he likes the subject. It's one of his favorite classes.

We have only had one true meltdown (so anxious he can't finish homework) so far this year about an English informal essay. It's too early to see much help from the writing tutor but I think we made a good choice, my son is connecting with her and she seems knowledgeable. DS is very bored in English as they are taking forever to get through a few chapters of the Crucible.

Marching Band season finished last Saturday so he will have a LOT more time on his hands. This will make life less stressful but it's also a bit of a emotional letdown and in someways it was good to see him so engaged with other students. Socially he is making big strides, hard to believe it's the same kid that wouldn't take to any of the other kids back in 7th grade.

My son's teacher was new to his GT school this year and gave one of the worst presentations at curriculum night that I have ever seen. The parents at the school were not thrilled and the teacher ended up leaving for health reasons before the first month of school ended. After doing very little academic work with a long-term sub, he finally has a new teacher. My fellow parents seem excited about the new teacher...who has never had his own classroom before and who used to work as a special ed aide. We'll have to see what happens!

Conferences were today and it was pretty much as I expected. DS15 is generally acknowledged as one who catches on very quickly and likes to explore. Good, right? No. Because he spends AP chem class trying to figure out new calculations to work the lab, but then doesn't finish the lab. This is probably why his lab write-ups started out so sketchy, consisting mainly of the calculations. They are improving, but he needs to provide more observations. He is also missing a lab write-up.

In pre-calc/calc he engages the teacher in math discussions, then goes off on his own to prove his point, and doesn't work on the topic everyone else is doing. The teachers love that he has this attitude and joy, but at the same time he needs to focus on the task at hand.

In both classes, when it comes to the tests, he is FINALLY, under strict orders from home, NOT experimenting with the math ON THE TEST (much) but saving his research for later. The math teacher agrees that if DS joins the math team, it will help with his speed which will improve his test performance. The teacher tells the class and me that his tests are designed to prepare them for the AP Calc exam they will take in 2016. Yikes!

Suggestions for practicing pre-calc problems to work on speed?

In English class, DS' issues are lack of confidence and still not turning things in. We are not talking about grunt-work grammar worksheets, we are talking about analysis, reflection, etc essays in a high school honors Englsh course. And I believe he is lying about it to me, and in a way to himself. This is bad. He'd have an A if he only consistently turned things in; as it is, he has a C+. Part of the problem is this: he thinks they have high expectations of him, and he's afraid his writing won't meet them. He does participate in a very meaningful way to class discussions; the teacher says he shows great insight and knowledge. He's actually a good writer, but he says "it's HONORS, my paper has to be better" when his paper is FINE. I tell him it's honors because it meets his level as he is, they aren't expecting a dissertation. But he truly believes they are. He also has a problem writing reflection-type essays (wait till he tries to write his college apps!) because he is an introvert; the teacher suggests that he take a step back and write such things from another perspective, and that would be fine. Part of the problem from my end is that the teacher doesn't update the online grade book frequently, so I may not see the missing assignments until a few weeks later. I am going to start asking the teacher to confirm when assignments have been turned in.

(I actually started writing this last week as a vent to myself. An update: he has spent the last week working on 7 missing assignments, and every day I tape a note to his lunch to remind him to turn something in. Apparently this ridiculous practice will have to continue because I just got an email from the English teacher, bless her heart, that he did not hand her the paper he was supposed to today and the version he saved to GoogleDocs was not in the class folder.)

Football band might be over (depends on this weekend's playoff game), but jazz and holiday bands have started up. He spends his half-a-free period eating lunch and composing on Sibelius with his friends.

They took the ACT at school for "practice". In a nutshell: 99th %ile (like his NUMATS ACT scores), D in classes.

What words of advice and comfort can I give my son to boost his confidence in writing, and to get him to turn his work in? We watched "the impact of a 0" video, but this kid is not motivated by grades...Perhaps embarrassment? I could go viral as the "bad parent" who walks their kid to class to hand in work.

DS is enjoying sophomore year, feels challenged and has fun and is learning, but I am about to tear my hair out.

Ds9 did well last quarter in 5th grade. He is doing the activities he likes and a lot of them. Anything that has had selection he has wanted to do he has been selected for.

Ds14 finished first quarter with straight As and only used his 504 plan for extended time for one essay in English. He was asked to take the PSAT as a ninth grader (they paid for it). Can't wait to see those scores in December. He was on a high school sport team and did well. That season is over. He acts like he is happy. After AP exam in May he wants to sign up for an online Latin class to take over the summer just for fun...he still wants to continue in Spanish all through high school.

Sorry to hear that. We have that sort of problem with DS. It can be very frustrating and lonely, particularly when it feels like it's only your child. Have you been able to have a meeting with the teacher, administrators? Good Luck, I hope other threads on this board are helping you.

I think honeymoon is over for DD at her nature-based play school. She still enjoys it and seems to be happy overall but she has been pushing for math and writing at home. She even made up imaginary friends from other planets who love math. She's been asking to be homeschooled almost daily and wants to come home early.

DS4 is very happy at his new GT school - he loves the class and his new friends. This was after an unhappy few months at his daycare (he got bored and really could not related to his classmates until he moved to pre-k at 3.6 years, and then all his friends were in K, and left at the end of the summer, sending him into a short period of very unhappy few weeks despite moving to K to be with the older kids until his new school started). He loves it so much - especially that no one is telling him he should not be reading or whatever because of his age. We have had to carry him out a few times because he did not want to leave the school at the end of the day. Legos are his passion there, and he even talked the after care teachers to take him to the lego league before we had signed him up. Best part - instead of a wide awake kid who is trying to cram all kinds of stuff and books before bedtime at 10PM from lack of stimulation all day, he now goes down at a normal time, and content to go to bed after a few stories.

now, we just need his younger sister to go to bed at a normal time (she is in daycare, and I am feeling like they let her nap too long, but at the same time, all the other kids are sound asleep during the whole nap time so we can not justify them waking her up if they are all asleep - at home, she does not always nap that long but if we do too much physical activity and not enough nap, she crashes too early and then is up at 5AM, so we have not found that balance).

NotherBen, as your son seems to be a strategist at heart, investing time in seeking alternate methods to achieve things, the books of Elizabeth Wissner Gross come to mind. Two for parents, one for kids but you may want to read it first
What High Schools Don't Tell You and Other Parents Don't Want You to Know, What Colleges Don't Tell You, and Other Parents Don't Want You to Know, and Write Your College Essay in Less Than a Day. These books help parents and kids see that there are many activities helpful to kids when looking forward to college, and many approaches to essay about them.

In addition to being an author, Elizabeth Wissner Gross is an educational strategist coaching for college admissions.

Thanks, indigo! DS' English teacher suggested that for reflective-type writing, he remove himself somehow, such as writing from a character's perspective (which was in fact last night's assignment, and he seemed to do it a bit more comfortably).

His older brother whipped out good college essays in various styles in no time. But they are so different, I don't think he'd be able to coach the younger one. The books should be helpful, as will all the sophomore year writing assignments...if he can do them.

Things are going well here for both dd9 and ds7.

We just had conferences for dd, she is learning well, leading the younger students, and having fun at school. We are grateful each day for the TAG school where she is just one of the kids.

DS just brought home a progress report and his MAP scores. He is two grade levels ahead in reading and math. He said that he didn't try very hard on the MAP testing. Stinker! We have him at a project based charter school near our home.

It is shaping up to be a great year. I am thankful for two separate schools for my two very different children. Everyone is getting what they need.

So far, not too bad, teachers love DS8 and he is in a group that he clicks with. The home room teacher had them do numerical self-assessments of their strengths and weaknesses; his was very detailed, realistic, and well though out and the teacher agreed completely (check-> one key life skill looking good.)

However, he has had a marked decline in doing his own math at home. Which could be anything, from school working well, tired of waiting for algebra to start (should be next semester,) or who knows, in any case it is a bit disconcerting compared to his typical math moonlighting for the last few years.

A recent emotional meltdown with a floating teacher when she said she couldn't read his writing at all when he turned in an assignment has upped the stakes and may be moving us towards a 504 or at least some direct assistance.

Last night we had DD5's kindergarten parent/teacher interview. She is continuing to exceed all of their expectations - it's a two year program in Ontario and she is in the second year.

DH and I feel very positive about the meeting we had last night. Her teachers recognize that she is well ahead of the curriculum and are offering her a lot of enrichment/level appropriate work.

This may seem like a small victory but her teacher told us that we should be discussing giftedness and started talking about the IEP's and In School review committees...which is something I wanted to broach with them tonight anyway. It was such a relief to see that her teachers get it; even though, as I've read on this forum, it may be a totally different story next year when she gets a new teacher.

I feel like at least I've got a foot hold to allow me to advocate and it's nice to finally see an educator acknowledge her abilities. Up until now, we've only had weird looks out in public and doting grandmother, "don't push her!" comments. Right now she's at a second grade reading level and working on multiple digit addition. She is chomping at the bit to get to multiplication.

I have to thank all of the posters on this board for their input whenever I've asked a question and for the useful commentary and dialogue that occurs in this forum. It has helped us tremendously. Hopefully our year continues in this positive vein.

Have you seen SchoolYourself.org?

Thanks, hadn't seen that. We do have some great digital resources available, but for formal instruction we are working towards getting HS credit through a state program which takes time to undot all the i's and uncross all the t's and timing-wise it maps to standard semesters.

That is cool. I am working through alcamus prealgebra at AOPS. The videos are really good.

Edited because my stupid phone stuffed up what I wrote again.

This weekend provided some new insights into how it's going for DD9.

She had a robotics meet. We spent the whole afternoon there, mingling amongst the teacher, parent advisers, other parents, and the students themselves. We found DD9 to be positively bubbly, and the other kids in good spirits, but the main parent adviser seemed to be rather stressed out.

I asked him if he was getting nervous, and he talked about how the kids were getting tense, but the adults were helping them cope and try to keep it about having fun. I thought that was odd. So I mentioned how my DD was in a great mood, and he responded with, "Well, DD is the youngest by far in the team, but she's hanging in there."

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

No wonder DD feels like she has to prove herself every day. Apparently they've even communicated ageism to the adviser.

For the record, DD did not just "hang in there" during the competition. She was paired with an older teammate for a particular task, and she found him very valuable and good to work with. I'm sure what they did probably came organically through an exchange of ideas. However...

DD wrote the program.

DD designed and built the extension arm.

The partner's sole operational contribution was a rather clever tool to measure and place the robot in the precise starting location.

This particular operation was so consistently successful that, after the first run, when the team saw that they were in trouble, this same parent adviser came up with another way that DD's program could be used to gather them more points.

Now, Parent Adviser's son's program failed on all but one run. Immaturity? No. One kid was found crying his eyes out because another kid had been mean. Immaturity? No. One other kid was still trying to write her program during the meet, and it never got finished in time to test, nevermind run, because she'd missed most of the team meetings. Immaturity? No. Because all three of these kids were among the oldest on the team.

Yet any time my DD does something they don't like... IMMATURITY!

*******************************************

I rather expect it was the events of the day before that triggered DD to begin expressing a lot of complaints about school yesterday afternoon.

- They're doing a lot of things they did last year.
- Her classmates are not doing their homework, which is often the basis for the next day's lesson. As a result, no lesson.
- One GT teacher is preoccupied with the 6th graders, because they have a number of problem children, and the 5th graders are getting little instruction.
- DD is finished with a whole week's worth of ELA work on Tuesday, and has little to occupy herself with the rest of the week.

DD summarizes with, "They killed my love of learning."

This has raised concerns on our part of whether the class she's in is truly a gifted class, or whether it's full of hothoused high achievers. We did hear Parent Adviser say, "How do these kids have time for all these activities? DS is up doing homework until 8."

Sorry to hear this Dude, that must be a real pain. Anyone you can talk to about this adviser? Seems like he may be playing favorites.

Myst be frustrating that school and the gifted program isn't going well for your daughter either.
But as for this, keep in mind that not ALL gifted students move at the same speed. My son spend a few years in upper elementary in a gifted program where he was drowning in homework. (I laughed at the doing homework till 8pm quote, my son was doing homework easily till 11pm. He had more homework then than his sister had in H.S., and that he now has in H.S. And he was by far not the only one. In fact it was the gifted kids, that were having more problems with the homework load than the 'highly motivated' kids. Looking back on it now I suspect it had to do with two things his executive functioning skills and processing speed. Plus my son problems have always been a odd form of 'perfectionism' that means that he can't/won't write something quickly that will 'please' the teacher. Means he agonizes over writing answers to the simplest questions sometimes.

Just wanting to give you another perspective to the situation.

Yeah-- if my DD isn't motivated, her "homework" can still expand like a gas until it fills every available opening in space and time....


maybe that is like a poison gas, actually. And like chemical warfare agents I really think that there ought to be some kind of international oversight of this problem.

But yes, also, to 11PM, not any measly 8pm. And it's not that she CANNOT do it... just that a union dockworker in a work slowdown has nothing on an unmotivated DD.

We know that this is a particular quirk produced by her personality, her perfectionism, and her PG-ness because when you make her MORE busy with additional activities, it goes away, and her performance often improves, even. Less time to sulk and fester over it, I suspect, and more "just do it" with a need for speed and efficiency.

Do we have almost the same kid? I am right there with wanting to tear my hair out. OK, my DS15's challenges are not quite the same. But this years subject to almost fail is Chemistry. (AP would be next year, but he has to get an A in this class first and that isn't happening this semester.) It's a class I figured DS should be able to get a A in but he got a teacher who is more disorganized as he is. (Yes, I have complained & his counselor & school psychologist know about the situation.) DS's problem is turning in ALL the homework, in ALL of his classes. And he blocks on a lot of writing assignments including the written part of Chemistry labs.

Bluemagic, I think we do, right down to the clarinet!

Funny you should mention disorganized teachers. I don't know if these are disorganized, but the two classes with the most difficulty getting work in are the classes where they don't update the online grade book frequently. The APChem teacher is almost 4 weeks behind, the English teacher about a week behind. Some teachers have most of the upcoming homework slots already in the grade book, some just add them in as they grade.

We had a very frazzled conference with the English teacher. The school schedules only 5 minutes with 5 minutes between for parents but 0 minutes between for teachers, so you can imagine how THAT goes as the day progresses, especially when there are issues. I am going to schedule a private conference with DS and M. English to discuss things calmly.

Like yours, DS is really working on the written part of labs. The first one had only data and calculations, half a page. He has improved greatly after he conferred with the teacher, still has a way to go but on his way.

In better news, while he wouldn't audition for the state MEA, he was happy to be nominated for the area honor band. The bad news is, that takes place the weekend before finals.

NotherBen, yes the big problem with the disorganized teacher is that this teacher is usually at least 3+ weeks behind on updating anything to the online grade book. Out of 3 tests so far this year, only one grade has been updated online and there is a midterm tomorrow. I didn't know till 1/2 through the first quarter than he had gotten no credit for any of the homework. She is really inconsistent with how she announces homework, sometimes it's on the board and other times she just mentions it at the end of class. But what frustrates me the most is that the counselor KNEW this teacher was going to be a problem, but because of band couldn't give him the other teacher. And if he had gotten a top grade on the first test, then I might have been able to argue he was in the wrong class.

Cheers for all the happy stories! Sorry to hear that some of our kids are struggling this year. Hopefully, with parental intervention/pressure the situation will improve by next quarter.

DS is in second grade "officially" but in third grade LA and fourth grade Math.

His report card had one area of concern. Apparently, he is not up-to-par in the
"organization" department. What that means exactly, we have no IDEA.

He's not yet eight and is interested in the show "Hoarders" on TV...his desk at school is meticulous. So what they mean is yet to be explained in the p-t conference.

Other than that, he's in E's and B+'s.

Ds11 is in 6th grade, in a brand new gifted program at his Middle School. The core classes are Honors classes, then they mingle with the rest of the school for the other classes. He's also in 8th grade accelerated math. Apart from a misunderstanding at the beginning of the year, when they thought he was struggling in math and had been placed wrong, all is going great. (one week into the school year, he was struggling with a 7th grade concept that they were reviewing - they assumed he should have already done that work, and if he was struggling with something that he should already know, then he was obviously in the wrong class. Until I pointed out that last year he did 6th grade math, not 7th grade, and they realised it was all new to him. Now, all is well, and he got an A in 1st quarter math, and is maintaining an A again in 2nd quarter). The one surprise has been ELA - he has always hated to write, so I had assumed it would be a struggle. However, he's doing great ! When asked, he said "Just because I don't like it, doesn't mean I'm not good at it". I've also been impressed with his organisation 9well, after the first few weeks, when it was all new). I leave for work before he gets up in the morning - but he gets up, gets his breakfast, calls me to let me know he's up, and bikes to school through rain or snow, getting to school on time. He then gets himself home, and does his homework (if he hasn't already done it at school), all before I get home. Love it

Decided this was the better place for this than the brag or quirky thread.

Today DS15 (H.S. sophomore) came home today and said he and a friends friends are planning to go to a movie next week. (He has a whole week off for Thanksgiving & we aren't traveling anywhere.) I am THRILLED. And two weeks ago he went to a birthday party.

Doesn't seems like a big deal right. NOPE, this was my kid that had NO friends in junior high. (His choice in 7th grade, and he burned a few bridges.) Last year he seemed to make friends at the end of the year, but never did anything with them outside of school. My son tells me I 'shouldn't get excited about this', but he really has been making HUGE strides in his social life recently. I suspect some of this is just age/maturity. But I'm now comfortable with my decision to listen to him and not to push the social skills class.