He’s a Dr. Philism for you “you should spend 5% thinking about your problem and 95% thinking about solutions.” I’m sorry you took offense–none was meant.

I have explained to her that different kids learn at different rates. She understands this.

“empowered to advocate for herself” If the school is willing to teach her, she would not need to be empowered to advocate for herself. She is a smart kid, she figured that one out on her own. I am not certain that advocating is effective or prudent given the district’s attitude towards bright kids (see earlier post).

The school doesn’t teach California history. Given that she has at least a decent chance of living here as an adult, I think it is important that she learn Cal history. Since the school doesn’t teach it, she has to learn it at home.

It is also important that she master multiplication facts to automaticity. This is also something we had to do at home.

I am not certain that her advocating at school would help her and might well hurt her.

By the way, WHY should she advocate for herself? The school only goes thru 6th grade, she has one year left. Once she hits 7th grade in middle school, they start to break the kids out into ability levels. If we use the school as daycare and educate at home, we can probably make it to 7th grade.

I am sorry I come across as whiney. I prefer to come across as I am, which is angry.

“I will help her with it. It is not her fault that the school isn’t interested in teaching, but it is her problem. Not the kindest message for a nine year old, but unfortunately a true one.”

Elementary students have become powerless—maybe they always were but in this time of prescripted reading programs, high stakes test prep bright kids need to step up and advocate for themselves. I think it may be more effective than a whiney “gifted” parent.

Okay, curiousity killed the cat. What does this mean?

But he does come home with papers admonishing him to “follow the directions,” when he was trying to stretch the assignment into something that would challenge him. (But Mom, that’s too easy!) And for his class, this is definitely an issue of classroom management–he’s one of the kids with the yellow and red cards. We’ve been talking about self-control, being part of a team, having respect for the people who need to learn this stuff, etc., but his dad and I are pretty sure a lot of the behavior problems come from boredom.

I want him in a heterogeneous classroom, because I want him in a class where kids learn to deal with differences in abilities (where hopefully, he’ll fit in as just another outlier). But I do think most of the problem-solving for classroom “troublemakers” tends to be geared toward the less motivated or the kids with the IEPs. I just wish there would be more of an acknowledgment among public school educators and administrators that highly gifted kids are special needs kids too.

Unfortunately, many teachers are not supported by their administration because they can’t hire enough teachers for ‘electives’ like Career and Tech. Ed. (We do tend to be the ‘bottom feeders’ in education) and you get 25 students in a Video Tech class because “there was nowhere else to put them.”

I never thought I’d put a student ‘out in the hall,’ until I had 28 students in a Web Design class (at least 10 who hadn’t chosen it as an elective and their goal was to find ways to distract and annoy).

Rather than waste time writing up referral after referral, putting them in the hall for 10-20 minutes has seemed to work because they get ‘bored’ not being part of the group.

When you have students who truly want to learn in an overcrowded lab situation, you CANNOT be looking over your shoulder as you try to help those who care. Yes, parent calls do help. . . for a few days.

I have classes that have prerequisites. When I find students are on my roll that haven’t met them, I am told, “We don’t have anywhere else to put them.”

I certainly feel that the integrity of what I teach is compromised and I have now become a baby sitter rather than a valued professional who teaches valuable skills.

BTW: I just had a student team win 1st place in SKILLS USA in Web Design. I don’t know how they learned through all the wasted discipline time in class.

As long as you choose to send you child to public school you are going to have to accept that they are going to teach to the middle. You and your daughter have the responsibility to continue to try to make a difference and not become victims. Each day is a new day.