Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Straight from the teacher's mouth!!

Ouch.
Looking at a bell curve, it gives the impression that very few people sit at either tail, and it�s easy to think, therefore the entire tail must be made up completely of the most extraordinary examples that come to mind. However, I would submit that those who are profoundly gifted are really the �tail of the tail� (so to speak). The rest of the tail is still a tail though. It is out of synch with what is considered typical or normal, just as it is out of synch with the extreme end of the tail. Without spending a lot of money on testing, we are left to using more anecdotal tools�checklists with statements that begin, �compared to children his/her own age�.�; benchmark lists which seem unbelievably low and are maybe tailored to low average�or not; etc. Unfortunately, �compared to other children�.� Is a very relative term and many of us just aren�t sure. We have seen people respond to our children with amazement and people who respond with �oh there are lots of children who�.�. Which should we believe? There is research that shows that many gifted children do not, in fact, �do just fine on their own��and there is criticism of parents who try to make up for inadequate differentiation or acceleration in school. It is very no-win. Worse, trying to sort it out often feels like crossing a minefield. Which questions will slap a �pushy parent� label on my head? Which unasked questions will mean that my child can do fourth/fifth grade math as a seven year old�.and still be �working� on fourth and fifth grade math 2-3 years later? I have appreciated the opportunity to come here to share and question and sometimes complain�even as my confidence in my child�s giftedness ebbs and flows.

Yes�except this assumes that all gifted children know how to set an appropriate pace for themselves. I have found both in parenting and in teaching that when kids don�t feel �seen�, they sometimes assume that they are not capable of more and become afraid to move beyond the group.

Well said! This is the story of DD's school experience, and as I've watched this happen, I am shamed by the realization that there are too many times that I employed diplomacy when I really should have just moved into PITA mode.

I wouldn�t call that a bad habit
From my perspective, however, the whole attitude of the teacher�s post is problematic. As a teacher myself, I hope that the parents I work with will never find me to be judgmental of their parenting or of their attempts to advocate for their children. We should be finding ways to partner with the parents of our students�not arrogantly venting about what is �wrong with parents�.

Also well said�this is a significant problem in our area as well, and leads to distrust amongst parents, and between parents and school.

I was very sad after reading the original post. Angry. Then sad some more. It is very disappointing. Sad.


Yes, girls are forgotten.

It seems, as I've talked to a few different schools now, that as soon as I mention "advance learner" and that we have a psyc assessment ... some thing happens. I immediately get comments/push back -- oh yeah, sure... let's see.

Culturally, I think in the rest of the world, if you can afford it, you would hot house your kid. The competition is so high and the population so large. How many people would be in the 99.99 percentile for some of these countries? It is survival, yes?

Anyways, I digress.

This teacher's attitude... I mean I think being honest about how they really feel is a good step. Because, it is true. There are a lot of teachers that probably feel this way and who can blame them if there are a lot of parents out there who think their little sweetie-pie angel is perfect and awesome.

I wish every teacher did speak their mind. And then listened. Hear the 1% of parents who do have a gifted child and who are also struggling to understand what their kids are capable of and have a partnership.

I live in an ideal world and none of this is realistic. This is way too sad.

But for everyone, we all just want someone to understand and to hear and "see" us. See our children. See them for who they are and don't bring your hang-ups with the parent to your assessment/judgement.

I haven't read this whole thread, but it just occurred to me that the reason girls are overlooked may not only be because of those lovely long fuses and social skills.

It actually may be a kind of Internalized Sexism (The kind of Sexism that gets passed down from Adult Female to Young Female to 'prepare them to cope' with the most 'over the top' regular sexism)

Nowadays there are more opportunities than ever for females in the US, but all the old expectations ((Be Nice)) are still in full force. Of course, being nice is a generally good thing to be - but...I laugh at the TV sitcoms that show nakedly ambitious women, and I think I'm laughing at the comic version of poor social skills, but what am I really laughing at?

Sometimes when I hear the 'hot button' kind of 'who do these parents think that they are?' energy, I'll bet I would be better able to diffuse it if I remembered that all the Adult Female Teachers were once young girls, who were taught to hide their best abilities so that they could fit into the narrow box labeled 'correctly successful.'

Just a thought,
Grinity

I sent the article to DW. She said it fit her upbringing to a T. She won all kinds of awards up through the 8th grade, but once she got to HS, there were different expectations. No one put her on the AP track and with the exception of her Chemistry teacher, where she had a 99% average, no one took an interest in her.

She recently took an IQ test and a Pysch Profile for a management assessment and scored very high on the non-reading parts of the IQ test. She scored very high on verbal/listening/social inference skills of the profile. ( We both suspected she had reading issues. The tester pointed the reading slowness out as a oddity.) She placed within the top 10% for senior executives of mid sized firms. She tested herself right out of the job!!

She understands intellectually what this means, but feeling it is another. "That old 'be nice, don't rock the boat, dont stand out."

People think it's odd, with me being a teacher, that I plan to homeschool my future children. I just point them to teachers like this one.

Yup, me too. And way too many overheard conversations in the staff room.

Something to keep in mind in all of this:studies have shown that parents are actually very good at identifying gifted children - often actually underestimating their children's abilities. (I don't have to do the how yes, it depends, blah blah thing here do I?) I can't find the references right now (if I find it I'll post it), but it's worth keeping in mind when you doubt 'other people's children'.

I think this is what you're referring to:
Read more: Gifted and Talented Children - Identification Of Gifted Children - development http://family.jrank.org/pages/711/G...ation-Gifted-Children.html#ixzz0keXKL0If

Thank you Inky! I don't think that is identical to the page I looked at, but it says the same stuff!

See, and I take those studies to indicate that parents who judge their children to be gifted and are willing to put their money where their mouths are and have the kids IQ tested, are pretty good at identifying gifted kids. Those who go around stating that the kids are gifted but don't seek testing to support it -- it's anyone's guess as to how accurately they id their kids' abilities.

eta: I certainly won't argue with the quote from the link that states that teachers aren't particularly adept at iding gifted kids in their classrooms, though.

Okay, I'll have to backpedal a bit. I was in no way implying that those of you here who haven't had your kid's IQs tested are making up the fact that they are gifted. I, too, don't put full stock in IQ being the be-all end-all of accurate info on who a child is. Having one kid whose IQ varies from the upper 1-teens to the upper 1-40s on IQ tests, I have to admit that they can't be totally accurate at times depending on the child.

That said, I can say that I am as certain as I can be that I see a lot of parents who believe their kids to be gifted whose kids probably are not gifted. What I was getting at above, was that these studies that say that parents are good at iding their kids as gifted were done by psychologists who specialize in testing gifted kids. Sure, if you are the Gifted Development Center, probably the majority of people who are willing to bring their kids in and spend $1500+ to have them tested have accurately identified their kids as gifted. They also probably have a good reason for spending all of that $ for testing: their kids are having trouble in school due to being gifted (one of my dds was tested for that reason), their kids are being mislabeled as having other problems, etc.

If we can all agree that gifted is a person who is in the top few percentiles in terms of ability, then the schools that identify 15-25%+ of their kids as gifted (all of my local schools do this) are obviously identifying more kids as gifted than are actually gifted. Having kids who've been in these programs, I can tell you that most or all of the parents whose kids are in these TAG classes believe that their kids are very gifted. Some of the parents whose kids aren't in TAG also believe that their kids are gifted; maybe some of them are since our TAG programs seem to grab the high achievers more than the underachieving gifted kids. If 20%+ of my local parents believe that they have gifted kids, some of them are obviously not good at accurately identifying their kids as gifted, IMHO.