Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Has anyone used/found mentors for their children?

Okay, we are attempting one last week at the public school DS6 is attending. He headed back to school this week after a week out thanks to swine flu and my stomach was just totally twisted. His school has not allowed any acceleration despite sharing all of our private testing from the summer and the psych recommendation for acceleration. The teacher is not willing to differentiate instruction and he has done several weeks of work he mastered many years ago and he is bored, bored, bored, is refusing to do work (he said it is just too easy and silly for him - one piece of work came home where he had crossed out a section that said "Brain Work" and he had written NO next to it....I asked him to explain and he said it was "ridiculous" that they thought drawing pictures of 5 things that started with the letter "r" was considered "brain work") and he is becoming a major behavior problem. He said it's not fair everyone else gets to learn new things and he can't and his whole attitude and self-esteem is going in the toilet massively!
So we have 2 back up plans....one is another public/charter school who was willing to let him work at his level but it is a 45 minute drive (if they still have a spot open) and the other is to just go back to homeschooling. The psychologist who tested him this summer said that we should be trying to find some mentors for him in the areas he loves and we have been trying so hard to figure out how to find some. He is massively into computer programming, microcontrollers, robotics, manatees/animals/nature and all things math and science. We have not been able to find a Jr. Lego league or robotics league - the other leagues, you have to be age 8 and up (even though DS would probably be just fine with that age group since his best friend is 9). We have put out feelers in the homeschool group and no one had any suggestions or had any teenagers interested in being a mentor. Has anyone on the board had any luck finding mentor(s) for your kiddos and how did you go about finding them? We thought about just going online and looking up corporations/businesses in the areas that he is interested in and contacting them to see if anyone might be intersted in being a mentor. Thanks for any insight!

on the links to left from Davidson there is a guide book to Mentoring. I hope this helps. I have no experience with this.

I wonder if a neighborhood website request in their classified would be helpful, or your church newsletter, or newspaper classified, or talk to people at the library, talk to local gifted instructors at schools near by. look to see if your state has a organization with gifted support, I hope this doesn't just spin your wheels. the guide is probally a best place to start. also look at hoagies website.

Belle we had a similar situation when my ds7 was in public K. He told the teacher he wasn't going to do that work b/c he did that when he was 2 years old. Well, that didn't go over well with the teacher and he couldn't go to lunch until he had finished it. Well, he sat in the vice principals office and was slowly doing it until the last lunch period. She allowed him to go to lunch but not reses and then had to go back to her office to finish the work. His behavior got so bad that he hit his teacher and then as soon as he did it he started crying and appologized. He started having bad behavior at church and at home. Once we started homeschooling the behavior slowly went away and now he is a good boy again.

The mentor would be an interesting idea.

Perhaps contact the professors at a local community college. I've heard that they are often accommodating or can recommend students who may be willing to do so. (Don't know this from personal experience though)

what happened with the sub teacher?

they hired her and we asked for a transfer to her room and we were denied. The principal said that he refuses to move students that have IEP's. The big joke is that they are not even close in following the guidelines in his IEP so why does it matter...DH and I have made the decision that unless things improve in the next 2 days we are pulling him out. While he was out for the week sick, today a stack of over 28 worksheets came home for him to complete - all the work he missed -we sat and completed almost 3/4 of them in less than half an hour - they consisted of...plants and animals are a. living things b. nonliving things. True or False...Animals grow and change. Color, cut and glue the pictures that start with the letter P. I mean really- I am convinced this teacher lives for her worksheets! No wonder why he is a mess when he comes home. I wrote her a note explaining that DH and I are concerned and asked if we could have a meeting with her to discuss some ways to help him be successful and sent it in today.....she emailed me later and said that the principal, guidance counselor and herself would be willing to meet next week. I don't want to meet with a giant team - I was already intimidated by the massive group that showed up at his IEP meeting...I had hoped to just meet with her to have a good discussion - oh well.

Thanks guys so much for the ideas/information! We have an institute of technology near us and i will contact them to see how to place an ad on campus. I will also sit down and read through the whole mentors section on the davidson board - thanks a ton!

Belle- Is there any way you can bring up the school's failure to administer the IEP correctly to the district or state? Frankly if you are willing to pull him out anyway, it's not like burning the bridge will hurt you too much and then, maybe, other IEP students will receive better instruction/care. Just a thought . . . I also understand just wanting to be done with the entire situation.

Nevertheless, good luck with all of your decisions! I hope you can get some relief and peace once all of this is behind you (at least temporarily!). Your DS is fortunate to have someone fighting for him!!

Maybe you need to bring your own team to the meeting. An advocate or lawyer for starters. I think one of these people would convince them to follow his IEP. I think they get the team together in part to intimidate you.

Where's the special ed teacher? He/she should be on your side.

sittin pretty DH and I have actually thought about that course of action - I have found out in the last 2 weeks that there are quite a few other parents with 2e children that pulled out from this school for the same reasons we are about to. All children must work on the same level, how dare you be different, they are one of the top "performering" schools on the FCAT in the county
(gee, wow, woopie)...is the basic premise for the upper management. We did have an advocate come with us to our giant IEP meeting 2 weeks ago and she was blindsided with the fact that they just did massive changes to how an IEP is written up - the meeting turned into a waste of time and as we were walking out together she told me that there was no way he was going to get anything out of this school and that if we were going to get any kind of help it would be through kicking and screaming all the way and did we really want to deal with that. The speech teacher tried really hard to speak up for him, the OT is very wishy washy and we asked for the gifted teacher to attend the IEP meeting but she was no where to be found and we have asked 2 different times now about please consulting with the gifted teacher on how to help meet his needs and they still have yet to....so in my mind we are done- having to differentiate and actually stray from the liteny of workbooks and canned lectures is just too much to ask of them. We are just now trying to move onto the next step to try and build our little guy back up and keep him excited about learning! It's amazing how much damage can occur in just 2 weeks of school to a very over-sensitive kid.