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

LOL master of none, I actually totally agree and think the same way. So I'll run defense for you.

This kind of thing runs rampant in our school district. And the vast majority of kids IDed as GT in our district are solidly working at grade level or just slightly ahead. I don't blame parents for advocating for their kids, but I can see why it can be hard for teachers to sort this out when half the parents come in with a GT labeled child they think needs more.

There are many "bright" kids in our local district's GT program and I get why the parents push. The general public school lessons are just too repetitive and lacking in depth for even the 115 IQ crowd, imho.

Maybe these parents are smart enough to know that kids should be getting something more during the school day and the only free way to do that is the enrichment classes during school?

If the school hadn't watered down their standards maybe this wouldn't be so necessary?

I'm not at the #1 program for it (turned that down because I could not do mathematics at that school), but I currently am doing an MD/PhD with a concentration in mathematics and epidemiology. My family mostly consists of people with high school degrees or less (minus my dad with a community college degree), and all of the schools that I attended before college were considered economically and academically disadvantaged.

This being said, I would strongly push for following a different path than mainstream school without acceleration or enrichment opportunities. I did not have an easy time getting to where I am now and spent a long time resenting authority and dealing with depression...

It's possible to get there, but it is not a pleasant road to travel in the least.

I have a similar experience. I "only" have undergrad degrees, but graduated w/honors from a competitive tech program that prided itself on failing out a good portion of every freshman class. I could have easily gone on to a bigger name grad program without a problem. I actually had enough credits for a grad degree with the double major.

I was never IDed as gifted and my parents were involved in my education at a pretty minimal level. They very much encouraged me to buck up and blend, and I was so intense and sensitive. I was the only person at my house who read for pleasure growing up. My parents are GT, but were encouraged even less than I was growing up. I would agree with not being pleasant in the least!

I look at my kids and don't think about big name schools. I mostly want them to have happy, well adjusted childhoods where they can be challenged and engaged appropriately. Where they can just be who they are. And hopefully they'll come out on the other end with a good sense of self and a strong work ethic.

Well...this idea really gets at the heart of the teacher's mistaken assumptions. She complains that it's important to let kids be kids, but fails to recognize that some kids just like science, or math or whatever.


It bothers me when teachers decide that there's a certain way of being a kid, and all other ways are somehow incorrect or due to parental pushing or whatever.

It bothers me even more that "learns faster" is being equated with "better." I don't even know that means, but I'm definitely tired of it. Sometimes I wonder if there's some resentment going on (?). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

FWIW, I spent a lot of time wanting to be "normal" when I was a kid and not understanding why I couldn't be. I hated being different, and looking back on it, I understand that part of the problem was that being different (in my case, thinking differently) just wasn't allowed.

It seems to me that this person's wants to to force highly gifted kids to be people they aren't --- which sounds a lot more damaging than watching Nova.

Schools of education put a lot of emphasis on "diversity" and accepting (even celebrating) differences between, say, ethnically diverse kids. This is nice, but does anyone find it interesting that the idea doesn't seem to extend to gifted kids?

I have to add that I completely understand complaints about parental pushiness. I've seen it (mostly in athletics, though many parents in New York hire coaches to boost standardized test scores for their toddlers). But a responsible teacher should be able to use her diversity training to recognize another type of difference.

Val

Hope the gifted girls in this teacher's class who hide their abilities and learn to blend in have PITA parents. This teacher's attitude seems to foster learned underachievement - no need to do anything unless the child is causing trouble. And when the parents pay for outside testing to show the children need something more, the psychologists are dismissed as "money grabbing professionals."
http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/gifted_girls_many_gifted_girls_few_eminent_women_why

My Uncle and maternal Aunt both have PHDs, the latter in Chemical Engineering. My Grandmother ran a business and had little time for them.

My story is pretty much the same as theirs. I was accepted at two Tier 1 colleges but went to a Tier 1 State U for financial reasons. I figured out what I needed to get into college by myself and did all the work including the money side. This pretty much sums up all of my activities. From my elementary years, I worked to get the money I needed to buy the things I wanted to play with or for books. I also figured out the public transit system when I was 12 and used it a lot or I walked.

And my best friend from college is from Mexico and he had even less than I. He made full professor in his 30s at a Tier 1 university.

Autodidacts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism

I've read (sorry, can recall the source) that some people learn better when they teach themselves. For some, a classroom environment just doesn't work.

This attribute could influence underachievement in some gifted students (and others?).

Val

After spending much of the past 6 years advocating for our gifted kids needs (3 boys, 10, 8 and 6) we have slowly come to a viewpoint that is not too far from what this teacher is (hopefully) trying to say. Our boys were born with an intellectual gift. It will never leave them. They can choose to tap into, exploit it, enjoy it, do whatever with it, anytime they choose. They may want to go down the academic path, but at the moment one wants to rescue wildlife, one wants to be a fireman and one wants to gets married and stay at home and look after the babies while his wife works (his words not ours!). These are all kids with 140 + IQ.

However, other life skills are learnt skills, including how to catch a ball and how to get along with people. Two of my kids have dyspraxia and one has borderline aspergers. The priority for us has been, in these younger years, to help them develop friendships and to help them develop motor skills so they can at least join in during lunchtime ball games with the other kids. This isn't to say that we ignore the academics, but we are now taking the approach that this isn't a race, and just because their intellectual gifts are not extended daily, doesn't mean that they will lose these gifts or lose interest in learning. We see the pain on their faces when they don't feel confident enough to join in a conversation with other kids, don't understand the subtle cues of "kid conversation" and become anxious about recess and lunchtime because they are excluded from joining in ball games. Their school results are just fine, they are working at their grade level with extension in subject (such as spelling and maths, as an example, DS who is 8 has a spelling age of 16 so has a different spelling list to other students). Sometimes they refuse to do their assignments because they are bored, and yes, my default response was to run to the school and say "this is an unfair expectation, he needs different work, of course he won't do this, it is far beneath his ability level". And then, after many years of the teacher rolling her eyes at me, I began to change my viewpoint. I now say to the kids "you know what, life can be boring and sometimes you have to do stuff that you don't particularly want to do but the trick is to just get it over with and move on." I also point out that many of the tasks that I have to do at work are really boring (like marking first year essays) but I will lose my job if I don't do it. Accepting that you will be bored sometimes is a lifeskill.

To be fair though, I think we live in a fair less pressured academic environment in Australia. We don't have private universities / colleges, they are all state run and 99% of students go to their local university. To comment on the PhD thing. Both my husband and I were labelled as gifted, we both went to very socio-economically disadvantaged schools, never had any extension but the innate ability was always there and we excelled at year 12 exams (which are used to gain entrance to university). We both gained PhDs without too much trouble and now have have very enjoyable academic careers.