Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Looking for advice on when to give up on advocacy

This is a fair point and for those of us that went through/benefitted from gifted programs and tracking as children ourselves it is especially bewildering, loathsome and exasperating.

Agreed. Individuals have different strengths, and each individual should be encouraged to flourish... gifted, advanced, and/or high-achieving individuals should not be held back to create an artifice of equal academic/intellectual/educational outcomes.

Ignoring individual strengths and cutting tall poppies to create equal outcomes is bewildering, loathsome, and exasperating.

By contrast, excellence in sports is encouraged, and varsity athletes are not told to warm the bench until junior varsity or intramural athletes catch up.

This is a fair point and for those of us that went through/benefitted from gifted programs and tracking as children ourselves it is especially bewildering, loathsome and exasperating.

My philosophy has been exactly this with regards to math. I am yet to see a GT specialist who can provide more challenging content for math than AOPs and Beast Academy (we have moved 4 schools already).

I chose to reserve my energy for High School when the stakes are high.

I stopped advocating when I realized that my child had a few things he enjoyed about the math curriculum (word problems and hands-on math) and that he was not bored all day long. I still bring it up in teacher meetings but I put more effort into enrichment at home these days.

This. So much this.

My kid thinks of school as the place he wastes 7 hours of his day and constantly asks why it's so boring. He gives up on things that he doesn't understand instantly because he's never had to struggle.

I'm struggling with this right now myself. I'm going to pull him from the charter school he's in and I have to figure out where to send him. I guess that means I'm at the "give up" phase myself with his current school.

Can you move to be in the neighboring district? One of the options I'm looking at is a private school I really can't afford that it also far away. Good thing is it goes until 12th grade. If we go there and it works, I'm going to have to move to make the logistics more manageable. I love my house and my neighborhood, but I don't see any other option.

This is precisely the reason that I got my DD doing AoPS - some of their questions make you 'hit the Wall' on a regular basis so my DD has learned to persist beyond the first attempt as opposed to feeling stupid because the answer is not immediately obvious for the first time. Importantly, AoPS teach by discovery and stress the concepts over the methods which personally I feel is critical.

I don't want my DD to see school as the ONLY place where she will learn because the World is the place to learn in - 24x7xa long and healthy lifespan (God willing).

This is such an individual decision. Our DD is not challenged at all at her small private school. There is no gifted program etc and they really do not have the resources to do a lot. She does online courses through CTY and she works with a math professor a few hours a week for math enrichment (all extras that we pay for). However, she is so happy socially that it makes up for it. She has wonderful friends, she is loved and accepted quirks and all and really gets to be a leader. Those things are as important, if not more so, than academics in our family. I think it is always a juggle and you have to decide what to let go.

Davidson Academy is free (relocating to Reno is not free, but once you get there Davidson Academy is a public school). If we didn't have a good local gifted private school I would seriously consider moving to Reno if my kids qualified (we are too young right now anyway).

Agreed.

Even when advocacy appears to be successful (and especially when it isn't), parents may wish to seek other options, including afterschooling and enrichment... to help a child begin exploring the value of being lifelong learners.

The concept of being life-long learners... developing internal locus of control... owning one's education... embracing a no-ceilings approach... making connections to slices of information in other classes, or (better yet) connections to news, history, current events, displays at local museums, topics coming up in conversations, lived experiences, etc... helps develop a well-rounded person.

We hit the wall end of 3rd going into 4th. DS was accelerated 2 yrs in math and LA (pull out to another class) the HA class 2 grades up. This school only went through 5th grade so we were out of curriculum.

We met in the summer with his new to be 4th grade teacher and the HA (High Ability) curriculum director and they agreed we could supplement with AoPS pre algebra for 4th. We bought a tablet and the book and solutions manual and gave them to the teacher. They would also challenge him in other areas, LA and reading. It really never took off at school (an extra work sheet here and there for homework) but we had a plan B for after school and a tutor once a week. Later that year at a parent teacher meeting which included the HA curriculum director again, we were told we had misunderstood the plan. We had an IEP but this was not in it. Not sure it would have made any difference. We were beginning to not trust anything they said.

End of 4th we met with all his teachers (current and previous), curriculum director, HA curriculum director, middle school math teacher and middle and high school principals. They had a plan, it was to create a HA classroom at another school and put all the HA kids in 5th in this room (the principal of that school was there too, a wonderful lady). Transportation was on us to this school. They said they would drive my ds to middle school to take Algebra 1. Sounds like they are working with us but we had a feeling something might not pan out and we didn’t want to waste another year. Our ds was doing great and dealing with the work fine but the gap was widening. This is when opted for a Local private school which has been great.

The public school teachers did what they could for 3 years, they just ran out of resources and were already stretched. Some seemed very sad in these meetings because they really like our ds and he really liked them.

Down deep we knew this would be the case but we had to try.