Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Middle school choice - WWYD?

My 3 kids have all attended the gifted magnet school in our district. I was a little concerned about the 45 minutes-1 hour on the bus each way, but my kids have loved the social aspect of the bus ride. For example, the kids on last year's bus had certain things that they called out on different parts of the ride and ran a fake news broadcast once per week on the bus that included a stock report. Our set-up was a bit different in that we have dedicated yellow bus service that only transports kids from the gifted school. My point is that long bus rides can be fun, as long as you have some peers making the same ride.

Unfortunately, it will have to be the city bus, but he may meet schoolmates at the central station.
I mentioned our concerns to the program coordinator and he assured me that it's always the parents who are super apprehensive - the kids don't mind, after two weeks it's as if they've never done anything else.

We may not have to bother choosing - I was early to pick DS9 up and while they had put up a nice little sign on the door "exam in progress quiet please" no one cared that recess was in full swing in front LOL! DS thought that he might have messed up a lot of questions during all that racket but who knows. At least they're quick, I get the results on Thursday.

I'd like to add that it is SO rare for our anxious neophobia DS9 to say of something that involves new people, new places, real challenges and some discomfort to say "I want this."

It will be hard to say no, if no it is.

So we did the screening and the consultation and, somewhat disconcertingly, DS score is supposed to be one of the highest this year, with a FSIQ of 138.

I say disconcertingly because not only did he complain about the noise from recess but also from a stomachache he said he'd had all morning - I thought it was just nerves but it only got worse and was so bad the next morning he couldn't go to school! (There's this odd stomach bug going around that only does aches and nothing else, but comes and goes, his siblings and friends have all had it so. It's legit - he did enjoy the testing and complained he really wanted to go back to school the following day!)
He ceilinged on the verbal part that came first at 145, did still well on the quantitative part at 132 and then you can see the raw scores going down in the marking sheet as recess started, with nonverbal bottoming at 120....nice to know he can still hack it even so but I told them it was really unfair for borderline kids and they needed to change testing conditions.

Oh, and this test apparently not only uses outdated norms but is also grade normed - and DS is accelerated LOL!

Interview with parents and kid on Monday. The class may still not fill up and be cancelled.

DH said: "yeah, it's all well and good, but they're still out there in the boonies!"

Had the interview, wasn't much of a one, but gifted coordinator said the class is filling up well and as far as he can tell with very socially balanced and pleasant kids, and probably a third of them girls (the unbalanced gender distribution a perpetual problem due to their heavy stem component and GT girls often preferring the bilingual or music magnet schools or the catholic girls school in town) - "it will be a super class".
DS9 had a screaming fit when we made him go, who knows why, but was pleasant and coherent enough during the interview and afterwards he was skipping out of the building, talking about how much he loves his new school.
DH, off work sick, was the one behaving badly, dumping all his reservations about the program (most of which are problems created due to outer factors and not due to the school) on the poor man.
Naively, I'd thought that they might bond about the pleasures of teaching talented and motivated students. But DH just isn't sold, and I realize it's not so much the location but the idea of segregation and non-conformity inherent in congregated gifted programming, also reservations whether schools can really be just as good across the state line.
In some ways he doesn't get it - he has no traumas left over from his own education or none due specifically to being gifted, the way I have, due to his gifts not being so obviously academic and in your face the way mine were, and due to simply having better schools available, and he has always been able to create his own intellectual stimulation without being dependent on school or on other people, the way I have never been. I think that while the regular schooling options DS has are good enough, he is dependent on stimulation by teachers and other kids in ways I was and am, not independent like DH was and is, who will just do stuff on his own level on his own, period.
Sample discussion in your lives: "so if that is the choir you're looking for and can't find it in this town, why don't you start one like it?" - "because am just a very good singer, not a conductor, and anything I conducted would never be good enough for me!"

DS9 is enrolled in the gifted program now, simply because across the state line, the dead line for enrolment is this week so he had to be to keep the option open. We'd have to remove him and reenrol him in the regular school in May. DH was really mad on leaving the school because he realizes just how unrealistic this is - and realized that I have now come down firmly on the side of the gifted program, but we couldn't really discuss it because he was so sick!

If he just drives a few blocks on past his own and and past DDs future school, he can drop DS off at a bus stop where the bus would take him to the gifted magnet within 11 minutes, no changing. We will just all have to get up earlier and it will be hardest on me and DS.

Happy kids make happy parents. Unhappy gifted kids make parents life hell!

You have my sympathies Tigerle. When we started this whole adventure DH and I had different views. DH really wanted the kids in the neighborhood school, having friends that they could walk or ride their bike to on weekends and being more a part of our community. I was on board with that until it became obvious to me that DS was shutting down and hating it.

We quickly realized that we each came into this with completely different sets of baggage. We had VERY different school experiences and ways of coping with being gifted. The things that he looks back on and thinks - I wish that this would have been different are very different than what my wish list is/was. I also found it very hard to separate my own baggage and issues from what is actually going on in the moment with our kids. There were a few long nights and bottles of wine that went into the many discussions on this topic.

DH eventually came around and DS now goes across town to a congregated class. We're in the process of applying to move DD there next year. DS has absolutely thrived there and any reservations that DH had have completely gone away. Even with all of that behind us there was still much debate about what to do with DD but we're going to try it and see (hopefully she gets accepted...).

I will also say that the first couple months were rough. DS doesn't like change and this was a biggie. Eventually he settled in and now he loves it and would never go back.

Good luck!

You have my sympathies. How much reading/learning has your DH done about the benefits of congregated gifted education vs. alternatives? I get the impression, which could be wrong, that he is perhaps overweighting his own personal experience in education and his teaching experiences vs. research findings.

Have the scores for gifted education significantly changed?

I remember years ago that the minimum was a 135 for the in-school pull-out program.

Where I am the term gifted is used a bit loosely and every school board defines their own cut off for a gifted label and whatever gifted programming they have.

My kids can go to one of 4 public school boards all with completely different gifted criteria. The lowest local cut off for a gifted label is is 96%ile (~127), the highest is 98%ile (~130). In one board you can get a gifted label at 98%ile but the bar for congregated classes is at 99.6%ile (~140). You end up with kids gifted in one school but not in the one across the street or the one down the road. Some of the boards are very specific and want VCI's above the cut off while others accept GAI or FSIQ so it isn't even just that some boards are easier than others.

That is a lovely way to put it! I usually put it "you just always think you know so much better than every one else, including me!"

Seriously, he doesn't read and research. That's my job. His job then is to question the decisions I make after the fact and throw wrenches into the processes I've started, which drives me nuts.

No, I'm being unfair, he usually trusts me and supports my choices. It's only that telling him to read up on stuff doesn't help at all. This is resistance at a a visceral level, the way chay has described it, too. He teaches high ability kids himself, has taught gifted ed (until they cut the program at his school, he was actually the coordinator but they weren't happy with the way he did things, advocating actual gifted testing for gifted ed as opposed to teacher recs being one of the things the powers that be found unpalatable) and prides himself on the fact that gifted kids thrive in his classes. Which I am sure they do - in his classes, on their own. He does admit they are mostly on their own for the rest of the time.

He has always found peers, kindred spirits, outside of formal education. His best friend growing up didn't go to school with him but did votech high school, trained as a mechanic, before going back to school. He helped him in math so he could go to college. But they both share an ability to build absolutely everything they want to without needing anyone else to tell them how. They used to communicate silently when they worked together, handing one another tools without asking etc,. It was uncanny.

DS went to a European public university for a STEM degree, doing research. Im sure that at a certain level of advancement in a physics degree, everyone you meet will be at least MG anyway, even at European open enrolment universities. That was NOT true for a social science and languages student like me! I had to go to an elite school in the UK to find people who thought and felt like me, who crave the same level of intellectual stimulation in their discourse. This makes me want congregated gifted ed for my kid. For my DH, it is a kind of special ed that may make his kid unfit for the real world.