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.