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

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!

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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.