If they are truly different from the rest of their school children, the teachers can see that more from the classroom time than a test, anyhow.
I wish this were true - but I come from one of those school districts that said - "Oh, we have bunches of kids like him at the middle school"
The best I can figure out is not that they were deliberately trying to say anything that would make us go away - rather that they really didn't see abstract thinking as a strength in an elementary school aged person.
I wrote this up for Hoagies
Spread His Wings and Fly!
My son was "invisible" to the School Folks at his old school. I made up a story in my mind that his giftedness was like a pair of huge, heavy, invisible wings, that most teachers couldn't see. These wings were filled with light, and sparkled so brightly that looking directly at them could be painful.
Most people only saw the way those invisible wings knocked things over and made my son wobble when he walked. Everyone could tell he was different, and most thought he was just clumsy and awkward, and he was clumsy at walking, flying and sitting at a desk. His flying was clumsy because he was young and inexperienced, but I did sometimes observe tremendous grace. But didn't every mother find her own child to be miraculous at times?
There was almost no place to practice flying during the school day. We were concerned that he hold his wings politely in and not knock over the other children. It was sad that he came home so tired and worn out from holding those wings tightly against his body, but we didn't know what else to do. The wings would take care of themselves until the wonderful day when he could use them, wouldn't they?
It doesn't work quite that way, and we got quite an education. I'm grateful to my son for opening my eyes. It is sad as it is when a teacher doesn't see a child's wings. But there isn't anything sadder than a winged person who can't see his own wings, but only feels a vague heavy weight, and sees people around him get mysteriously knocked down.
The number one reason for educating ourselves about gifted issues, and unraveling our own pasts, is to be able to hold a mirror up to our children so they can see and understand themselves better, strengths and challenges both. -- Grinity
