Does anyone have a gifted kid?

[MayDay]

How is school going for them?  Does the school provide any special instruction, or pull out, or tracking, etc?  Did you have to fight for it?  Do you think your kid is challenged at school?

My first grader is pretty gifted in math, and isn't challenged at school. One math pull out a week with the gifted teacher.  I would love to see more, but I understand the school has to operate on a limited budget and do the most good for the most possible kids.  So I hesitate to fight for this kind of thing.  I don't know that my kid is genius material by any stretch, but I wish he had any sort of challenge at school. 

I feel kind of alone with it, since I can't exactly say to other moms "hey my kid is brilliant, is yours?  I want to talk about all the terrible problems in my life that having such a genius-child is causing".  I figured with the large population of other high earning engineers here, there might be some other mini math whizzes. 

[homehandymum]

Yep, but we homeschool, at least partly because I went to a Gifted and Talented conference while my eldest was 4 and +80% of the questions that parents asked were all about how to get the school to provide xyz.  I figured it was easier to do it myself :)

Check out if there is a local G and T parents' group in your locale.  Also, I've found this book to be great:  http://www.amazon.com/Parents-Guide-Gifted-Children/dp/0910707529/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415151419&sr=1-3&keywords=Parenting+gifted+kids

If she wants more extension and enrichment in maths, check out Khan Academy.

Good luck :)

[La Bibliotecaria Feroz]

I was extremely gifted in reading. My mother tried varying levels of involvement. When I was in second grade, I remember she wrote a couple of special units for me to work on independently under general supervision (she was herself a teacher at another school). Other years, she did less. There was also a kid who went to the grade above during reading time. Eventually, I skipped a whole grade (eighth).

There's really no easy answer, because every step you take for her advancement will also set her apart in her own eyes, her teachers', and her peers'.

FWIW, your first grader is not "gifted." She is ahead. Research suggests that you can't really tell if a kid is lifelong gifted or just temporarily ahead until third or fourth grade. Just saying.

[Lkxe]

Yes 2 (probably 3 but step daughter went to very small, very broke school) The nine year old (4th) has a 3 half day, one week a month pull out and a once a month collaborative "camp". His teachers work hard to keep him challenged, within their specialties, time and budget constraints. The older had a once a week, bus to another school and work with a special class pull out in Florida, we home schooled a bit ( due to moves) and took AP and junior college classes in high school. We paid for epgy from Stanford for his math education. Institutionally, the 3rd or fourth grade maybe acceptable but they test at different ages in different states. The oldest was gifted in 1st, but his teacher told me he wasn't really, he was just talented- she was wrong. Kids that read without teaching and put puzzles together upside down at 2 1/2 really are gifted- his brain works different. Teachers have been crowing about the younger since kindergarten but his is just ahead- he is no dummy but he catches on quick and that looks good. Poor boy ended up like his Mother (smart) but not like his Father (brilliant).  We have always been of the opinion that we bore the larger responsibility for their education than the schools did (fewer constraints/distractions) and did what we could to broaden their experiences- travel, museums, exposure, discussions. I believe all children can benefit from higher expectations and experiences. I wish the GT program was available to all the children in our school.

[Allie]

While I am pretty sure my kids are going to be super geniuses, they're a little young for a formal program (1 and 3). ;)

Consider checking out the John Hopkins program for some information and guidance.  Fight for testing or look into getting it done yourself if you think your child is truly gifted.  Most school districts have something available for kids who have a very high IQ, usually it really gets started in mid elementary school.  You may be able to get testing done for less through a local university that is training psychologists.  A specialized program can help ensure academic stimulation while maintaining an appropriate developmental peer group in a way that grade skipping can not, so it may be worth the effort if she gets very far ahead.

I went through a specialized gt program and it challenged me in ways that a regular classroom could not.  Did the advocacy, rigorous academics, pressure, and time translate to wealth and academic success?  Not hardly.  I ended up in non profit work with children.  :)

[MayDay]

I do know that first grade is too young to call a kid truly gifted. I would honestly guess that he is just very bright.  Either way it shakes out, he isn't challenged at all in math. 

We do have a gifted group in our district, but it tends to be families of older kids. Those families fought hard to get what we have- the once a week pull out. There used to be nothing. So I walk a fine line of not complaining to them because without them we would have nothing.  There hasn't been any forma l get togethersof that group lately, but i just saw they scheduled a meeting for next week. I hope other younger kid families come so I can see who is who.

Those of you who supplement outside of school, how does that work? DS is at school 8 hours and I hate to pile more work on him.   I want him to run around outside and play.

[Neustache]

If you want to do something on your own with him, check out The Life of Fred.  Fun little story about Fred, with loads of math vocabulary and problems in it.  Each book gets deeper and deeper into math.  You'll learn a bunch, or relearn a bunch.  Kids seem to really like it!


I was 'gifted' but didn't test into the program until 5th grade.  But I was the one that teachers always paired up with the struggling kids to help them, which kept me from being bored - that started in 2nd grade.   Maybe he can do that?  Help other kids in class that aren't getting it?  Helps the teacher and gives him some experience helping others. 

[VirginiaBob]

I was a complete academic moron in elementary school and middle school.  I didn't "bloom" until my junior year of high school.  It was like a switch, all of a sudden, I was getting better math/science test scores than the guy that was previously known as the class genius.  My combined GPA was only 3.2 though since my freshman and sophomore years were pretty bad - because of that, he went to MIT, on a full scholarship, and I went to Clown College with $30K of student loans.  I think it was a puberty thing where I must have had a lot of brain growth or something.

[Carrie]

This summer our oldest tested into the gifted program at school. (2nd grade)  He gets pulled out 10 hours per week to play chess, do extra art projects and other enrichment opportunities.  Math in the classroom is a joke right now.  He was gifted in math in preschool (montessori), and he's not challenged at all in public school.   I fear he's going to get lazy because school is too easy.  Not exactly something I can complain about to other friends. ..
Right now we're encouraging reading (he doesn't love it just yet), and we have many conversations about science/space/what ifs.  He's a cool kid who is very curious and has a great imagination.  I'm hoping his curiosity doesn't get killed by busy work at school.

[Bob W]

I consider my son gifted.  He is currently the youngest 2nd grader in a group of 200 second graders.  His birthday is mid August, so he barely made the cut off.  Most professionals suggested we wait a year as he is a boy and they are slower.   

I'll admit that we thought he was socially challenged for a couple of years but he has now blossomed on that. 

He reads at a mid 3rd grade level and is well ahead in math.   We think this is due to him being bright and his parents reading and doing math with him everyday.  His handwriting is crap and his teacher says it is with most bright kids.   

So late last year (end of first grade) the school asked if they could test him for the gifted program.  Here is the problem,  their cut off is an incredible 140 IQ.  (I think that was the number?)  Anyway, I did research on the IQ score they desired and it came out that less than 1 in 200 kids met that level.   

He did not.   

Now that he is in second grade we are seeing the dumbing down deal come into effect.  If we keep him in public school he will always be ahead of his peers but the school will not let him develop at his own faster pace.

So our options are to remove him from school and home school for 2 hours per day,  do additional work with him at home or at some point push the school to allow him to advance as he masters each task.    We could probably get the school to allow him to skip a couple of grades in the next 10 years.   

If we homeschool he could graduate high school at age 13 or 14 but he would then be socially unprepared for a college environment. 

The other option is to follow the path of this Florida girl and complete high school and college the same week at age 16.  She was home schooled prior to high school.   She also is heavily into music. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-girl-graduates-from-high-school-and-college-in-same-week/

[retired?]

I consider my son gifted.  He is currently the youngest 2nd grader in a group of 200 second graders.  His birthday is mid August, so he barely made the cut off.  Most professionals suggested we wait a year as he is a boy and they are slower.   

I'll admit that we thought he was socially challenged for a couple of years but he has now blossomed on that. 

He reads at a mid 3rd grade level and is well ahead in math.   We think this is due to him being bright and his parents reading and doing math with him everyday.  His handwriting is crap and his teacher says it is with most bright kids.   

So late last year (end of first grade) the school asked if they could test him for the gifted program.  Here is the problem,  their cut off is an incredible 140 IQ.  (I think that was the number?)  Anyway, I did research on the IQ score they desired and it came out that less than 1 in 200 kids met that level.   

He did not.   

Now that he is in second grade we are seeing the dumbing down deal come into effect.  If we keep him in public school he will always be ahead of his peers but the school will not let him develop at his own faster pace.

So our options are to remove him from school and home school for 2 hours per day,  do additional work with him at home or at some point push the school to allow him to advance as he masters each task.    We could probably get the school to allow him to skip a couple of grades in the next 10 years.   

If we homeschool he could graduate high school at age 13 or 14 but he would then be socially unprepared for a college environment. 

The other option is to follow the path of this Florida girl and complete high school and college the same week at age 16.  She was home schooled prior to high school.   She also is heavily into music. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-girl-graduates-from-high-school-and-college-in-same-week/

An IQ of 140? That's 2 and 2/3rds standard deviations above the mean. Most school programs have cutoffs well below the Mensa level, which is 130 and 2 SD above the mean. Top 5% or 10% is much more common; most school districts don't have enough students to pull the top 1/200 scorers and have a large enough cohort to make a class, or even a small group. I think there were three people in my entire elementary school grade of 250 that would have made that cutoff and the number of kids identified as gifted as more like twenty.

You might look into JHU-CTY's math tutorials and see if he qualifies. Some public schools will let kids pull out of class to work quietly on them and he'd only need a computer. They have a real teacher and everything.

I thought the scores were calibrated so that 10 points was one standard deviation, making 140 four standard deviations above the mean (so, very rare).  But, that's something I have always thought.....never looked it up.

Both my kids are in GT programs.  In my experience, 130 has been the cut-off.  To the OP, we do have to fight, especially when moving from one city to another and getting the new school to use the old's school's evaluation.  Every district seems to think they are special (i.e. oh, gifted there doesn't nec mean they are gifted here).  In Chicago burb, the elementary school had all kids take the year-end test at the beginning of the year.  Any kid that scored above X had the option of moving up a grade....in math.  Nice.

We move to a new city in a good school district.  Our daughter had to wait 6 weeks into the year before the evaluations were complete and she was allowed to move up....this is middle school.  Our son's elementary school does not have programs by subject....they are labeled GT and pulled out of class one day a week for the program.  He was incredibly bored in math last year and wants to move up like his sister.  The math coordinator was actually withholding access to online resources, i.e. he completed the 5th grade year-long program just recently and wanted to start the 6th grade one.  Had to get his actual teacher to bypass the system to get him access since the coordinator didn't want to move him up yet.

So.....we do have to fight for it, and we do fight for it.  Lots of politics and power struggles in public education.

[Allie]

I consider my son gifted.  He is currently the youngest 2nd grader in a group of 200 second graders.  His birthday is mid August, so he barely made the cut off.  Most professionals suggested we wait a year as he is a boy and they are slower.   

I'll admit that we thought he was socially challenged for a couple of years but he has now blossomed on that. 

He reads at a mid 3rd grade level and is well ahead in math.   We think this is due to him being bright and his parents reading and doing math with him everyday.  His handwriting is crap and his teacher says it is with most bright kids.   

So late last year (end of first grade) the school asked if they could test him for the gifted program.  Here is the problem,  their cut off is an incredible 140 IQ.  (I think that was the number?)  Anyway, I did research on the IQ score they desired and it came out that less than 1 in 200 kids met that level.   

He did not.   

Now that he is in second grade we are seeing the dumbing down deal come into effect.  If we keep him in public school he will always be ahead of his peers but the school will not let him develop at his own faster pace.

So our options are to remove him from school and home school for 2 hours per day,  do additional work with him at home or at some point push the school to allow him to advance as he masters each task.    We could probably get the school to allow him to skip a couple of grades in the next 10 years.   

If we homeschool he could graduate high school at age 13 or 14 but he would then be socially unprepared for a college environment. 

The other option is to follow the path of this Florida girl and complete high school and college the same week at age 16.  She was home schooled prior to high school.   She also is heavily into music. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-girl-graduates-from-high-school-and-college-in-same-week/

An IQ of 140? That's 2 and 2/3rds standard deviations above the mean. Most school programs have cutoffs well below the Mensa level, which is 130 and 2 SD above the mean. Top 5% or 10% is much more common; most school districts don't have enough students to pull the top 1/200 scorers and have a large enough cohort to make a class, or even a small group. I think there were three people in my entire elementary school grade of 250 that would have made that cutoff and the number of kids identified as gifted as more like twenty.

You might look into JHU-CTY's math tutorials and see if he qualifies. Some public schools will let kids pull out of class to work quietly on them and he'd only need a computer. They have a real teacher and everything.

Each district has different programs.  In our area, there is a pull out program for 120 plus and a full time program for 140.  I recall reading an interesting article on the effect of gt programs on performance.  A school allowed high performing but not high IQ students to enter the class to fill seats and justify a full time program.  The high performing children did better long term than the high IQ kiddos. 

Really that is neither here nor there, but interesting none the less. 

[Happy Little Chipmunk]

DD isn't highly gifted (I don't think) but she is plenty smart and in the TAG program. But TAG doesn't mean much. We feel a bit frustrated by some of our math experiences in her K-8 school (a school that we totally adore in most other ways). She just started high school and the regular coursework is easy...but we hear that that is intentional in the first year and she is being offered other interesting opportunities to build her brain.

But despite my frustrations over math, I think that the fact that she has had to hustle and self-advocate in order to expand her opportunities has been absolutely wonderful. She took a year of math over the summer with no pushing from her doting parents, so she's up two grade levels from her cohort. She reads everything and loves to write and is learning programming. She found inner strength and drive this year.

Before this year, she never really felt like she was "smart". But now in public high school, her grades and her drive are notable. It's an interesting period of adjustment and we're keeping an open mind. We'd like the public high school to work out for her; it's the most diverse population she's ever encountered and her teachers are generally excellent.

[galliver]

I used to get pulled out in elementary, and frankly I thought it was dumb. There were a few good field trips (the Exploratorium in SF) and I guess the programming class might have been good (1997-8) but I didn't really take to it at the time. I was very bored in math but I loved school anyway; the structure actually appealed to me (maybe I was weird? I dunno). In middle school there was tracking and it was a little better; I think my sisters had an even better experience (we moved and their school's tracking was more intense). And of course by high school we took full advantage of Honors/AP. Except middle sister, who went to a special magnet school. And then MIT. The showoff.

My parents tried to have us do math and Russian by the Russian curriculum, with limited success (I didn't want to suck at these things if we had to move back, but my sisters lost that motivator...). What probably helped us more was reading a LOT, math and logic puzzles (e.g. Martin Gardner), and conversations about particle physics and astronomy over dinner.  And I credit my sister's success entirely to my explaining trigonometry to her in sixth grade while walking her home from school. ;)

[Spondulix]

I was labeled highly gifted in math pre-K (all I remember is being able to add double digit numbers in my head). My parents didn't want to put me ahead a year for social reasons. I remember (even at 5-6) being bored in math class sometimes. I see now that it was good life skills - to learn patience, and to see at a young age that not everyone learns the same way. That's the concern I have in separating/isolating gifted kids too much at a young age, cause as an adult you face the same struggles you did at 5 or 10. You're very often interacting with people you own age who don't understand on the same level or can't keep up with you.

In elementary, I had gifted and talented class once a week, where we were taught communication skills (how to express "I statements"), how critical learning works (Bloom's taxonomy), public speaking, and things of that nature - no extra math or science. I didn't really get pushed til 13-14 years old, when I took extra math classes independent study. I don't think I could have handled that til that age. As a senior in high school I was taking University math classes (paid for by the school). That's where I see the true benefit - I graduated high school with a semester's worth of college credits.

Is your child involved in music? If they've got a lot of mental energy and you think they are getting the basics covered at school, I would look into extra-curricular activities that will help develop those left brain-right brain connections. Playing an instrument is great for that, and dance can be too (tap dance is actually very cerebral and mathematic).

[sol]

I was a smarty-pants child.  I was very bored in school until I started going to a special school part time towards the end of elementary school.  That school, while much more fun and interesting, was full of brand new kids and I always found it hard to fit into this existing social structure of people who already all knew each other.  And back at my regular school, me and the one other kid who was getting bused out of a school of 600 were naturally targets for ridicule and attempted bullying.

In retrospect, I probably would have been better off staying in regular school with my regular peers.  School was always boring but the really smart kids don't do any of their learning from teachers anyway, so it wouldn't have been much of a loss.  If your kid is not challenged at school, introduce him to a good librarian or your local MENSA peeps, and let him run wild.  He'll be teaching his teachers in no time.

Starting in 7th grade and on up we had a separate track inside of the regular school, rather than getting bused out to a whole different school.  That suited me much better, in part because the advanced track in every subject had at least 25 kids in it and they were all people you went to school with anyway.  The materials and lessons were much more traditional than my previous special school, though.  Like in 6th grade I got bused out to a school where we did competitive logic puzzles and learned Japanese and designed utopian economies and played with tangrams.  In 9th grade we just read Shakespeare a year or two earlier than the other kids.  Big whoop.

Being bored in grade school is not that big of a deal.  His teachers will think he's smart and he'll get put in the most advanced track available to him, which usually means he's in the advanced reader category and he gets algebra a little earlier.  If you separate him from his friends in order to offer him more stimulation, you risk interrupting his social development both at his old school and his new one.  You're probably better off finding him more stimulation in some way that doesn't involve upending his fragile little world. 

At that age you're still way smarter than he is, so maybe a little parental involvement is the answer.  My dad had me doing trig in the 4th grade as part of backyard carpentry projects, and that probably accelerated my math skills more than anything I did in school. 

If I was really worried about my genius kid not being challenged, my first reaction would be to step up as a parent instead of poking his school to do better by him.  They have enough problems with their problem children and parents, they don't need harassment from the privileged and talented crew too.

[Mrs. PoP]

No kids here and not sure our experiences from the 90's are still applicable today, but Nicole and Maggie have a gifted kid (I think 9 or 10 now) and have talked about what they do to supplement/challenge on many occasions on their blog.  I believe they opted for private school because their district didn't have much to challenge the kid. 

You could start with some of the posts that come up in this search... there are probably more, though. 
http://nicoleandmaggie.wordpress.com/?s=gifted

[Neustache]

I was labeled highly gifted in math pre-K (all I remember is being able to add double digit numbers in my head). My parents didn't want to put me ahead a year for social reasons. I remember (even at 5-6) being bored in math class sometimes. I see now that it was good life skills - to learn patience, and to see at a young age that not everyone learns the same way. That's the concern I have in separating/isolating gifted kids too much at a young age, cause as an adult you face the same struggles you did at 5 or 10. You're very often interacting with people you own age who don't understand on the same level or can't keep up with you.

In elementary, I had gifted and talented class once a week, where we were taught communication skills (how to express "I statements"), how critical learning works (Bloom's taxonomy), public speaking, and things of that nature - no extra math or science. I didn't really get pushed til 13-14 years old, when I took extra math classes independent study. I don't think I could have handled that til that age. As a senior in high school I was taking University math classes (paid for by the school). That's where I see the true benefit - I graduated high school with a semester's worth of college credits.

Is your child involved in music? If they've got a lot of mental energy and you think they are getting the basics covered at school, I would look into extra-curricular activities that will help develop those left brain-right brain connections. Playing an instrument is great for that, and dance can be too (tap dance is actually very cerebral and mathematic).

Great post!  We were pulled just for half of a day once per week, which I think was a good balance. While in the regular classroom, I was taught to teach others what I already knew, and that was a valuable life skill.  It's not about being bored and telling kids to suck it up, it's the idea of helping them work through that boredom and finding ways to NOT be bored, without needing a teacher to tell them what to do.  I guarantee there are avenues for that in the classroom without having to pull him out or develop a special curriculum for him.  He can play with math manipulatives and explore multiplication on his own.   You can give him simple logic worksheets (loved those!!) to work on if he can read.  If he can't read, he can work on reading.  If he's waiting for other kids to finish assignments, he can help the teacher with a cleaning task.  To me, school is so much more about what you learn or how fast you learn.  It's a community to help develop a kiddo in all areas.  And having a kid who is looking out for others, helping, and sorting through boredom is as important, in my view, than a first grader doing third grade math. 

As a supposedly gifted kid (sometimes I doubted I belonged there, which is silly, now that I think of it, considering I got a 30 on my first and only ACT attempt) I'm personally glad my parents didn't treat me as a special snowflake who needed to be pushed.  My husband, who tested into special programs in first grade, also wasn't treated by his parents as someone to be pushed to excel.   I don't think he at all thinks he was denied a good, solid education because of it.  The things which interested him he learned after school or during summer break.  Granted, he hated school, but that was more about being socially awkward.  I LOVED school. 

I can see why you don't want your kid to be bored.  I guess what I'm saying is, don't feel badly that your kid is bored and feel like you absolutely must do something to keep him from boredom.  My parents didn't, my husband's parents didn't, and we are perfectly acceptable people.  LOL.  And good lord, as confident as we are in our abilities to learn new things....I shudder to think how arrogant we would have been had our parents made us out to be very.big.deals.  YMMV. 

And to touch on the music suggestion...my husband's a talented musician.  I believe it's mathematical for him.  He gets excited about music theory.  I find it completely boring. But if he is at all inclined, music is a great outlet for a left-brained oriented person. 

[Happy Little Chipmunk]

After perusing this thread I'm even more grateful for our public K-8 school. There's an emphasis on working up to your ability (whatever that happens to be) and in teaching each other. Classes are mixed-grade so there's always someone more advanced or less advanced to buddy up with. It builds empathy and community, for sure.

The individualized projects and special pull-outs that I did just because I was in TAG are not available at our K-8. Instead, middle schoolers have several personal projects throughout the year. Some kids dig in and do amazing work. Others struggle to cover the basics. They also have "Field Studies" once a week; today the 6th grader is at an art gallery at a local university. Next week, an urban farm.

I value life experience and getting out of the classroom. I would have understood myself and my world so much better if I had spent less time at a desk grinding away to get my A's. I wish more kids (not just the smart ones or the ones with engaged parents) could have access to enriched curriculums.

[Christiana]

We homeschool, and I love being able to teach to their abilities, rather than to their nominal grade levels.

[Neustache]

Serpentstooth - that's....crazy making! I'm so sorry you had the experience.  That wasn't my experience at all, but then again, I feel like our school was very special - and heck, it WAS special - our principal won the national principal of the year award one year, and all my peers and I were from a lowish socioeconomic class but we have doctors, nurses, and lawyers from my 5th grade class.  Maybe my experience just wasn't the norm. 

[Spondulix]

It's not about being bored and telling kids to suck it up, it's the idea of helping them work through that boredom and finding ways to NOT be bored, without needing a teacher to tell them what to do.

I completely agree!! And once again this is a problem that goes beyond school and childhood.  I work a night job now where my co-workers aren't the smartest bunch, and working nights I don't get much time with friends/spouse, so I'm having to lean more on myself to fulfill my need for mental stimulation. Actually, that's what this site has been for me - it's sucking up information the same way I did learning math in school or a new piece of software in college. It's recognizing that you will be a lifelong learner (and not everyone is), and that you won't always have friends, parents, smartphones or jobs to stimulate you.

[CALL 911]

Boredom is a real problem in high achievers/gifted/brilliant, whatever you want to call it.

I was bored up until Calculus (as a high school sophomore - I was way outside the norm, worked out something special, etc.). Then, it wasn't hard, it was just stimulating. I rarely studied anything. Why should I? I never sat down and tried to work through something difficult, because nothing was difficult in elementary, middle or high school. Nothing changed in college either. The volume of work went up, but the difficulty didn't.

Until. Until grad school. I got my ass handed to me at first. Again, not because it was super difficult, but because the volume of material was immense. I could no longer read the chapter once and memorize every salient point.

I needed to actually study. I had no idea how to do it. Why would I? I'd never had to before!

So with my DD, her school wasn't impressive. So DW home schooled her at her pace, which was lightning quick. So then we had a problem. At her current rate, she'd graduate from HS around 11. I am not sending a 12 year old to college. Any college.

So she went to regular school (7 year old 4th grader), and was bored. Totally bored. She wants to go to school, and is involved in the one day a week pull out program. So she goes to school. Her teacher complains she is always reading in class and never pays attention, but always knows the answer when called on. Which is a mark of boredom.

I know this rambled, but at some point, everyone hits a wall. Either the work becomes too difficult to coast through, or there is too much of it. And without the skill set to study, it will be an ugly event. So in my mind, it doesn't matter if they are in school or at home, but learning skills will eventually be necessary - and nobody can/will teach it to them.

If anyone can tell me how to teach study skills to someone that can't comprehend that eventually it will be necessary, I'd love to hear it.

[domustachesgrowinhouston]

What about all the parents with non-gifted and untalented kids?  How's school working out for them?

[Louisville]

What about all the parents with non-gifted and untalented kids?  How's school working out for them?

There aren't any. Everyone is gifted. Everyone also has a disability:http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/what's-your-disability/?topicseen

[galliver]

Until. Until grad school. I got my ass handed to me at first. Again, not because it was super difficult, but because the volume of material was immense. I could no longer read the chapter once and memorize every salient point.

...

If anyone can tell me how to teach study skills to someone that can't comprehend that eventually it will be necessary, I'd love to hear it.

I had a similar experience to you in grad school. I think what saved me is that I had had a chance to struggle before...in music. It's not my forte, but all my friends were doing it and I was too stubborn to give up once I started. So I learned the hard way how to sit down and do something hard and unpleasant until it got easier. Abd learned this at 11-12 rather than 22, thank goodness.

So that's my idea...find something your kid isn't good at (even sports) because it at least teaches them what that feels like, and what working for your results feels like.

[CommonCents]

No kids, but it’s mind boggling to me that we don’t provide better support for gifted kids.  Seems a bad idea to have a brilliant kid be bored and angry about being bored perhaps, and then perhaps get into trouble as a result.  Unfortunately, it’s often not PC to talk about.

My mother just DGAF if I didn't want supplementation or extra work. =P Particularly in the summer, there was bonus schoolwork, and there was always the expectation that I'd read a lot outside of school assignments. So that's always an option.

Oh yes.  I was so pissed in 4th grade that my mom made me finish going through all of the math worksheets.  I pointed out I was already far ahead of my class to very deaf ears.  In retrospect, I’m glad she did this.  (At the time, I wanted to go outside and play.)  No need for an expectation on reading, in fact, my parents to this day are amused that the punishment for my brother would be taking away computer time, but for me it was taking away books and not letting me read home for a week once.  (Making the punishment fit crime in this case – I took a book to the dinner table one too many times and was too slow to put it away…)

To the OP, we do have to fight, especially when moving from one city to another and getting the new school to use the old's school's evaluation.  Every district seems to think they are special (i.e. oh, gifted there doesn't nec mean they are gifted here). 

Oh yes, this too.  Dad was military, so we moved a lot and every time I’d have to retest into the G&T, GATE or equivalent program.  My mom did a lot of fighting behind the scenes (secret one she tells me is to make friends with the secretaries immediately, because they sometimes could at least put you into the classroom with the more challenging teacher).  But I never understood why they can’t look at your prior grades, national standardized tests etc. and run with it.  The worst was high school – it took me until halfway through the year to get into the seminar program.  My mom was about ready to cry for joy the first day in the program and I came home babbling about the French Revolution, rather than “eh” to “how was your day?”

Like serpentstooth, I too wasn’t allowed to work ahead at times.  In 4th grade, getting into the G&T program meant I finally could for math at least, which was great.  The 4 of us would pull our desks together and work through the worksheet ourselves.  We could whatever we wanted as long as we were ahead of the class.  (We learned the lesson on our own, finished our math homework in class and worked ahead.  Probably goofed off a bit or did other homework but I don’t really remember it.)  In 7th grade, just over half of the class was in the advanced book and I remember the teacher yelling at us to be quiet (we were allowed to talk together to work it out), and getting so upset because 1) we were being quiet and 2) there were more of us than the regular class so it seemed that we should be allowed to make more noise than them anyways.  And I still remember some lessons from G&T classes we had once a week – math to logic games to dissection.  The teacher was explaining something, realized we didn’t know how to multiply decimal points and threw it in as a 2-minute side lesson.  Later (no idea how much longer) the regular teacher took several lessons to get through it.

Boredom is a real problem in high achievers/gifted/brilliant, whatever you want to call it.

I was bored up until Calculus (as a high school sophomore - I was way outside the norm, worked out something special, etc.). Then, it wasn't hard, it was just stimulating. I rarely studied anything. Why should I? I never sat down and tried to work through something difficult, because nothing was difficult in elementary, middle or high school. Nothing changed in college either. The volume of work went up, but the difficulty didn't.

Until. Until grad school. I got my ass handed to me at first. Again, not because it was super difficult, but because the volume of material was immense. I could no longer read the chapter once and memorize every salient point.

I needed to actually study. I had no idea how to do it. Why would I? I'd never had to before!
 

My parents told me sometime after I graduated from college that they were super worried I was going to do terribly in college because I never had to study much.  My sister (2 grades above, 3 years older) was pissed that the only time ever I studied for our AP Euro test was the day before the AP Exam, and we got the same grades.  (In fairness, I didn’t study for that class because 1) a 90.0 and 100 both gave the same A, and 2) I knew my older sister would be pissed if she did worse than me after she studied a lot, so I figured it didn’t matter academically if I got a 92 instead of a 96.)  I did study bit for the college classes I took in high school (at a state university my senior year in an early admission program), but not that much – and certainly not anywhere what my college eventually required.  First term/year wasn’t bad but it wasn’t the greatest.

What about all the parents with non-gifted and untalented kids?  How's school working out for them?

I don't know. Why aren't people in the active trading thread discussing index investing? Not every issue is relevant to every person.

And they’re free to start their own thread.

That said, I feel like this thread is a repeat of another from many months ago, with similar folks engaging on it.

[CALL 911]

I had a similar experience to you in grad school. I think what saved me is that I had had a chance to struggle before...in music. It's not my forte, but all my friends were doing it and I was too stubborn to give up once I started. So I learned the hard way how to sit down and do something hard and unpleasant until it got easier. Abd learned this at 11-12 rather than 22, thank goodness.

So that's my idea...find something your kid isn't good at (even sports) because it at least teaches them what that feels like, and what working for your results feels like.
[/quote]

I like this! That just may do it.

I was on the swim team once. I was laughably slow. I decided to stick it out for the season, but never did it again. Had I pressed on, and got faster, maybe it would have helped 22 yo me.

[Christiana]

Anecdote:  At one point (about 20 years ago), I heard that three of the physics professors at the University of Michigan were high-school dropouts. 

[galliver]

I had a similar experience to you in grad school. I think what saved me is that I had had a chance to struggle before...in music. It's not my forte, but all my friends were doing it and I was too stubborn to give up once I started. So I learned the hard way how to sit down and do something hard and unpleasant until it got easier. Abd learned this at 11-12 rather than 22, thank goodness.

So that's my idea...find something your kid isn't good at (even sports) because it at least teaches them what that feels like, and what working for your results feels like.

I like this! That just may do it.

I was on the swim team once. I was laughably slow. I decided to stick it out for the season, but never did it again. Had I pressed on, and got faster, maybe it would have helped 22 yo me.
[/quote]

Glad I could help! Mind you I have no idea how to keep a kid in something they find hard/uninteresting without making them hate it. And making them hate sports/exercise would be a terrible thing.  With music I wanted to be good at it or at least part of it because many of my friends were. I don't think this would have worked with a sport I was bad at (most of the ones with balls...tee-hee). I had a decent relationship with swimming and gymnastics at one time...but since I'm not a natural athlete I might have had to work harder at those than academics anyway? I've no idea. Anyway, good luck!

[mm1970]

Well, he didn't pass the test, but yeah.  He's really good at math.  In first grade, his teacher was great, sent him home with extra math.  Second grade, not so much.

Still, he's in 3rd now, and is almost done with 4th grade levels.  He does some math on-line with a program the school has.

And we are engineers, so we work with him at home, mostly just explaining/ quizzing as part of our daily day.

I dunno, I want him to be challenged, but he's a kid.

[MayDay]

I am glad to see there are others in the same boat, working through similar issues.  To the poster commenting on average and disabled kids, my son actually does have developmental delays, making the whole thing more complicated. He has gross and fine motor delays, speech delays, social delays, and is brilliant in math. So we don't want to separate him from his peer group for social reasons, and he does have to work very hard at his therapies.

We just finished the testing for a nueropsych eval and will get the results the first week of Dec. Hopefully that will shed some light.

DS has trouble with physical stuff, and he is in swim and horseback riding (therapeutic) which he works hard at. I've thought about music but it is so expensive until they get into school band in 5th grade. I can't imagine the costs of a Suzuki program!  We do lots of explaining and working through high level math problems at home. I think I will explore some of the higher level online math things and see if his teacher would let him work on them in school.

[Spondulix]

Keep di

DS has trouble with physical stuff, and he is in swim and horseback riding (therapeutic) which he works hard at. I've thought about music but it is so expensive until they get into school band in 5th grade. I can't imagine the costs of a Suzuki program!

Music doesn't have to be taught in any sort of formal program, and it sounds like your guy might do better with private lessons, anyhow. Suzuki may not be right to start either because they require group classes and performances. So it might take some creativity to find a good teacher for cheap, but they are out there. I'd try local churches, colleges... a music ed major would be great. I took piano from a retired teacher who charged $1 for a 30 min lesson in her living room! I taught beginner violin students when I was a junior in high school. For the first couple years, you just need someone patient enough to teach the basics and can make it fun.

Piano could be a good starting place. It's very visual, and not too physical (vs a string, wind or brass instrument, which can be very frustrating to start).

[rocketpj]

Speaking from personal experience, the school system is not well suited to handle kids who fall more than one standard deviation from the mean.  If you think your kids might be gifted be careful to help them find ways to fit in, while also finding ways for them to be challenged and engaged with learning.

Gifted and bored is not a healthy combination.

[Ynari]

I was a gifted kid. Top scores across the board. I thrived in gifted classrooms, as I was always teacher's favorite. I was lucky enough to have empathy enough to understand other people but independence/maturity enough not to care that I didn't make friends easily. I credit books with this - they were my friends but also taught me about people, even if they were fantasy novels and the like.

I don't think my parents did anything special for me (well, my mom would bribe us with pokemon cards over summers to do workbooks) - but I was someone who wanted to control my own education (I think, having a modicum of control gives kids a lot more motivation and ability to learn). In elementary school, I was taken out for the weekly pull out classes. We happened to be living in a place with a gifted magnet middle school, so upon teacher's recommendation, I applied for that. I went, and then my siblings were also accepted (they weren't as ideally suited to it. They are gifted, but not as academically minded. They did well in local schools with just the weekly pull out classes.)

I was pretty miserable the year we were in a place whose high school had no gifted program.

We then moved to an area with magnet schools (I tried for biotech, I think, but ended up at the language/AP school. It was a good fit.) I enjoyed the AP classes and there was a monthly seminar-style gifted class, as well as a special gifted class I could take. It was amazing, and my favorite class in school. (It was basically philosophy 101, seminar style.)  This was in Virginia, which I found (generally) to have the best education system for gifted students.

When I have kids, gifted or not, they are probably going to go to a Montessori or Sudbury style school.

[Zamboni]

Pretty much everyone thinks their kid is gifted . . . just saying.

Edited to add that I think the term "gifted" is obnoxious.    Ooooohhh you're so smart because someone gave you a present!  That poor kid over there, no gift for him!

[homehandymum]

Pretty much everyone thinks their kid is gifted . . . just saying.

I don't think that's true.  I know plenty of parents worried that their kid is behind, not talking properly, just 'not getting maths', has behavioural or temper issues...

A study that was cited at a conference I was at (yeah, sorry I can't be more specific - it was 6 years ago!) concluded that a parent's honest assessment of their child's academic giftedness was the best indicator of it being true, (as later verified by a professional evaluation).  The problem with leaving it up to the teacher is that many teachers can confuse being a 'good student' with being gifted.  Many gifted kids are not good students at all - and they do tend to share a bunch of traits that can make them a pain in the neck in the classroom (dismissal of authority figures they don't respect, goofing off in the corner 5seconds into the explanation of the topic...).  And then there's a whole possible overlap of symptoms with kids on the ASD spectrum too - like sensory oversensitivity - which can make correct 'diagnosis' of giftedness difficult to spot in the classroom. 

As parents, we all *know* that people out there think that we're deluding ourselves about our special little snowflakes.  We *know* that the teacher may well sigh and roll their eyes at our claims, given that the child consistently fails to do their homework, and if given a page of maths work will get it mostly wrong, and even if it's all correct, can't 'explain their working'.  We *know* you think we're all tiger-moms wanting to hot-house our precious Fabians and Christabelles.

If we are still saying that no, this child is BORED to freaking TEARS, and needs to be inspired and challenged well above their grade level, then maybe stop and listen?

As I said upthread.  It's this sort of constant uphill battle that parents of gifted kids face (just to even get taken seriously, let along get anything actually changed for the child) that was a big part of our decision to home educate.

[Zamboni]

The problem I have with it is the idea that some kids are "gifted" and others are not (and the associated early elementary sorting that accompanies this.)  When, to be perfectly blunt, everyone has both strengths and weaknesses.  Everyone develops at different rates.  It is nauseating to listen to certain parents of preschool and early elementary children expound upon how gifted their children are.  I'm with the OP on this one; leave the schools alone and let the teachers do their best to help the range of strengths and weaknesses that each student has that year.

It's pretty well established that intelligence is not a fixed trait.  I find the academic "tracking" that happens in schools to be problematic in many ways, especially at younger ages, and I think most of it happens as a result of parental nagging.  This is not sour grapes talking (my kids are tracked with the smarties), it's just me being tired of listening to some of my fellow parents whining that the school isn't serving their snowflake a custom menu to challenge them.  Teach them to fucking behave, learn what is on the menu that day, and then either constructively help their friends understand or read/draw/solve puzzle books they bring from home when they are bored!  I can assure you that almost no teacher has a problem with a child who is done early whipping out a book, word search, math games book, or whatever to fill their spare time.   

[Simple Abundant Living]

I think all of my kids are very smart and have the ability to ace their classes, but I do have a couple who I know are in the GT area. Ds16 was in GT classes since 5th grade, we refused earlier due to not wanting to change schools. He is one of the well-adjusted geniuses.  He loves school, will happily tutor others instead of being "bored". He wouldn't graduate early, although he could.  He usually finishes his homework in class; so he plays the piano several hours a day, (also has taught himself guitar and ukulele), he and his friends come to our house to play ping-pong and speak Mandarin, or they try to beat times on their Rubik's cube. He goes to his high schools games and screams till he doesn't have a voice left.  He's saving for a study abroad in china or Taiwan, and he's also becoming fluent in Spanish. He taking AP and concurrent enrollment courses so that he will have almost two years of college done when he graduates, at very little cost to us.  He wants to be a pediatric gastroenterologist someday and I have no doubt he will.  He sets his goals high and then is single-minded until he achieves them. 

As to the comment on disability.  We never consider him one bit disabled. But he had a liver transplant at 19mos., and is a cancer survivor.

[galliver]

The problem I have with it is the idea that some kids are "gifted" and others are not (and the associated early elementary sorting that accompanies this.)  When, to be perfectly blunt, everyone has both strengths and weaknesses.  Everyone develops at different rates.  It is nauseating to listen to certain parents of preschool and early elementary children expound upon how gifted their children are.  I'm with the OP on this one; leave the schools alone and let the teachers do their best to help the range of strengths and weaknesses that each student has that year.

It's pretty well established that intelligence is not a fixed trait.  I find the academic "tracking" that happens in schools to be problematic in many ways, especially at younger ages, and I think most of it happens as a result of parental nagging.  This is not sour grapes talking (my kids are tracked with the smarties), it's just me being tired of listening to some of my fellow parents whining that the school isn't serving their snowflake a custom menu to challenge them.  Teach them to fucking behave, learn what is on the menu that day, and then either constructively help their friends understand or read/draw/solve puzzle books they bring from home when they are bored!  I can assure you that almost no teacher has a problem with a child who is done early whipping out a book, word search, math games book, or whatever to fill their spare time.

Are you saying it's more correct to tailor curricula to the "least common denominator" or even the average? To take kids that catch on to math quickly and could do calculus by end of high school, and force them to learn fractions over and over again, to only get through algebra before college? To put kids who are capable of sitting still and having an intelligent discussion about a work of Shakespeare in 7th grade and put them in a classroom where the teacher has to enforce strict rules of order (no extraneous books! no talking!) to maintain control, and can only hold the most basic of discussions..."what do you think will happen next?" and so forth? Because that's what happens. Mind-numbing boredom. Aggravation. Condescension.

[sol]

Are you saying it's more correct to tailor curricula to the "least common denominator" or even the average?

This is the confounding dilemma at the heart of our education system.  Is the purpose of public education to ensure a minimum level of competency for all citizens, or is it to challenge and nurture our best and brightest?  You can't do both in the same classroom.

Parents of the smart kids always vote for the latter, until their kids get out of school, and then they sometimes grudgingly concede that maybe public education serves a larger social purpose than helping their particular perfect snowflake of a child reach his full potential.  We'd all rather have universal literacy and some bored smart kids who have to read books in class than have a few really wonderful science fair champions and a classroom full of future drug addicts.

If your kids are so special that they need extra stimulation, public school is not the place for them.  Be a parent for a change, stop trying to pawn off your family's problems on other people, and rise to the occasion yourself.  Find your kids a better way to learn.  But don't expect all of society to change its philosophy of education just for your benefit. 

It just seems so obvious from where I'm sitting.  If you happen to own a Porsche, do you demand that the city repave the road to your house every year at the expense of every other road?  When the Soviets were staging missiles in Cuba, did you demand that the Army set up a perimeter around your yard?  Ya'll need to get off your high horses and accept that public education is for everyone's benefit, and it has absolutely no obligation to offer your kid anything special beyond what it offers everyone else.

[sol]

to put them in a classroom where the teacher has to enforce strict rules of order (no extraneous books! no talking!) to maintain control?

Yes, this is what we all expect.  School teaches children to conform, to follow directions, to defer to authority, to behave in socially acceptable ways, and to understand the basic skills required of our economy, like reading and writing and arithmetic. 

The purpose of this process is not to enlighten your children and set them free, it is to prepare them to enter the workforce.  I've never met a 13 year old kid that I thought could hold down an office cubicle job, but damn never every college graduate can.  In those intervening years, they learn how to submit to mind numbing boredom, how to trudge through repetitive and mindless tasks, how to accept their place in the economic hierarchy that capitalism demands.

We simply cannot have every child turn into a free spirit.  What would the economy look like if everybody wanted to be an entrepreneurs instead of engineers?  Painters instead of janitors?  The wheels wouldn't turn.  We need people to take the shit jobs, and public school is the place where we teach them how to be okay with that.

Don't like this system?  Then by all means, get your kids out of it.  Cultivate their passions, help them reach their full potential, set them on a different path.  But don't expect public school to do it for you, that's barking up the wrong tree.

[galliver]

Are you saying it's more correct to tailor curricula to the "least common denominator" or even the average?

This is the confounding dilemma at the heart of our education system.  Is the purpose of public education to ensure a minimum level of competency for all citizens, or is it to challenge and nurture our best and brightest?  You can't do both in the same classroom.

Parents of the smart kids always vote for the latter, until their kids get out of school, and then they sometimes grudgingly concede that maybe public education serves a larger social purpose than helping their particular perfect snowflake of a child reach his full potential.  We'd all rather have universal literacy and some bored smart kids who have to read books in class than have a few really wonderful science fair champions and a classroom full of future drug addicts.

If your kids are so special that they need extra stimulation, public school is not the place for them.  Be a parent for a change, stop trying to pawn off your family's problems on other people, and rise to the occasion yourself.  Find your kids a better way to learn.  But don't expect all of society to change its philosophy of education just for your benefit. 

It just seems so obvious from where I'm sitting.  If you happen to own a Porsche, do you demand that the city repave the road to your house every year at the expense of every other road?  When the Soviets were staging missiles in Cuba, did you demand that the Army set up a perimeter around your yard?  Ya'll need to get off your high horses and accept that public education is for everyone's benefit, and it has absolutely no obligation to offer your kid anything special beyond what it offers everyone else.

You're setting up a false dichotomy. Does the fact that Hawaii and Florida not need snow plowing services mean they shouldn't be offered in Illinois or New York? Fair is not necessarily equal.

It behooves our society to offer all children an opportunity to become educated, INDEPENDENTLY of the skills or financial means of the parents. In the system you suggest, poor students with poorly educated parents would be at a strong DISADVANTAGE.

What's wrong with the current system? In communities with sufficiently large schools, group kids post a certain age into buckets according to their skills. It's not an individualized curriculum. But it's a hell of a lot better than one stream. In larger cities, you can even have entire magnet schools for high performing students with specific interests (math, languages, art, music, etc). You can have finer-tuned rate or depth of material introduction.

There are improvements that can be made: make classes of lower-achieving kids smaller, so they can be managed more easily and get more individual attention, and the gifted/honors/AP track larger. Redo how funding is allocated to schools (the property tax system leads to inequality of education based on income).

For smaller (e.g. rural) schools, I would advocate for the availability of self-directed and/or online education with minimal teacher or counselor guidance, for certain subjects. i.e. still make them take stuff like PE and electives with other students, for social development.

You sound like a libertarian who would advocate the demise of public education entirely. We'll probably never agree. FYI I'm 26 and don't have kids. But I am very interested in the education system.

[sol]

You sound like a libertarian who would advocate the demise of public education entirely.

Not even close.  I think libertarians are universally confused, and I think public education is one of the pillars of our modern society.

But we've decided, as a nation, that this particular pillar is for getting everyone up to minimum speed, not for nurturing the next generation of great minds.  There is certainly a good argument to be made that civilization only advances by the work of great minds so maybe we should be focusing on them instead of teaching every single kid algebra, but for now that's not how we run things around here. 

Your taxes pay for teachers and classrooms and curricula for everyone who lives near you.  Why should one kid get more benefit from your taxes than another?  Isn't it more fair to have schools offer the same services to everyone, and then let kids who want more go find it somewhere else? 

I mean it's right there in the name, PUBLIC education.  Like public works, or public buildings, or public services, or public transportation, or public art.   It's supposed to be for everyone equally.

[galliver]

You sound like a libertarian who would advocate the demise of public education entirely.

Not even close.  I think libertarians are universally confused, and I think public education is one of the pillars of our modern society.

But we've decided, as a nation, that this particular pillar is for getting everyone up to minimum speed, not for nurturing the next generation of great minds.  There is certainly a good argument to be made that civilization only advances by the work of great minds so maybe we should be focusing on them instead of teaching every single kid algebra, but for now that's not how we run things around here. 

Your taxes pay for teachers and classrooms and curricula for everyone who lives near you.  Why should one kid get more benefit from your taxes than another?  Isn't it more fair to have schools offer the same services to everyone, and then let kids who want more go find it somewhere else? 

I mean it's right there in the name, PUBLIC education.  Like public works, or public buildings, or public services, or public transportation, or public art.   It's supposed to be for everyone equally.

That depends on how you measure education. Is it equal knowledge, information, and skills, or equal time? Or, given this is MMM, maybe we can consider an "equal money" approach? Right now, I would argue that the system is set up for "equal time," and switching to "equal skills" would be a fairly radical change, as that would imply we want children to graduate that system as soon as they acquired the requisite skills.

[MayDay]

Interesting discussion. 

For starters, I think the idea that "everyone thinks their kid is gifted" is nonsense.  For sure there are is a group of parents out their that think their kid is a special snowflake.  For the most part, though, [collective] we either have a formal assessment, standardized test scores, or something else specific (language or music proficiency) at we are using as the basis for our label.  Unfortunately or fortunately, gifted is the universally used label.  Whether you like that word or not, it gets the message across without having to type out a long explanation with disclaimer. 

The long explanation with disclaimer is especially relevant with younger kids.  The research clearly shows that a "gifted" early elementary kid won't necessarily be gifted later on.  Nonetheless, that kid who knows all the K/1st material is not going to be learning much in a typical classroom.  That's not fair to either the bored kid, the teacher who has to deal with the resulting behavior problems, or he rest if the class.

My kid's school has 7 1st grade classrooms.  In his class, there are kids at fifth grade level math and kids who literally cannot add numbers to ten (ie 7+3, 4+6, 2+8).  In a school with that many sections per grade, I have no idea why they don't "track" (another dirty word that people freak out about) the kids.  It doesn't have to be a permanent thing where you get stuck in a track.  It just blows my mind how much easier it would be in teachers if they were teaching to a narrower ability group. 

I went to a couple gifted meetings this week.  In our district, they pretty much do track from 4th grade up.  So that is good.  And for 2nd and 3rd grade, they have a pull out in math and language arts that is 4 days a week for 30 minutes for each subject.  So it sounds like next year things will be in good shape. 

For the rest of this year I am volunteering in the classroom once a week during math time.  I will be pulling out the top 4 math kids and doing either math/logic games (math pentathlon I think) or teaching a specific advanced curriculum.  I'm waiting to hear back from the gifted teacher on that.  When I went in yesterday to volunteer, I also pulled out the bottom 5 kids.  I can totally understand why the teacher can't meet all my special snowflake's needs when I see where those bottom kids are.  The gifted group actually has advocated hard for math specialists (there are already reading specialists) to pull those bottom kids out for special instruction, so that the teacher can focus on the kids at grade level.  Hasn't happened yet, probably because we have a state 3rd grade reading guarantee (so lots of money gets thrown at that) but math, eh, who needs math! 

Anyway, I don't love that the solution is basically just me coming in to teach math, but since I state at home and can make the time, I figure I owe it to my kid.  And I would rather it be during the school day, rather than adding more time to his 8 hour day. 

Final thought, I don't have links, but what I've read is that mixed ability groups were kind of a failure (when tracking fell out of style, mixed ability became popular because the smart kids would supposedly develop all these great skills helping their less able peers).  Ends up mixed ability is bad for the low kids (they just feel dumb) good for the average kid, and bad for the high kids (they just do all the work and think their peers aren't very smart).  The high kids might be good in the subject, but that doesn't mean they know how to teach their peers. Apparently they typically just do the work themselves instead.  Helping your peers is obviously a good skill to have, but not reasonable to expect from a young kid.

[GizmoTX]

Tracking works. We transferred DS from mainstream school when he was diagnosed with learning differences to a private school dedicated to LD & ADD for his grades 3-8 (the school offers grades 1-12). Although a small school, subjects were each taught by a different teacher & classroom; the kids moved around to each one during the school day according to their individual schedules. This allowed for amazing individual attention while grouping kids according to what they needed. When DS started there in 3rd grade, he needed to restart math at the 1st grade level but could already read at the 7th grade level. He had daily classes in English, alphabetic phonics, math, science, history, & PE, plus art, music, & library twice a week. Then computer skills & writing were integrated starting at grade 6. We were initially concerned about such a young age changing classes & teachers, but it's all done in one hall & the kids love the variety. The school uses a binder system that each student totes from class to class & the teachers consult. I wish every student could have this organizational training, as it saves so much time & energy.

[CommonCents]

Ends up mixed ability is bad for the low kids (they just feel dumb) good for the average kid, and bad for the high kids (they just do all the work and think their peers aren't very smart).  The high kids might be good in the subject, but that doesn't mean they know how to teach their peers. Apparently they typically just do the work themselves instead.  Helping your peers is obviously a good skill to have, but not reasonable to expect from a young kid.

Guilty!  In fact, it wasn't until sophomore summer at Dartmouth that I worked with the first group that actually "worked" as intended, with everyone pulling their weight equally.  (If anything, I was the low kid in that group - one of the five went on to clerk for a Supreme Court Justice!)  It was such a revelation.

[netskyblue]

I don't know about "gifted" but I was put in my school's TAG program in elementary school, and to this day, I feel like I got a lot out of that.  Basically, they took me out of one class where I was bored out of my mind, and told me I could learn anything I wanted during that time.  I got to pick whatever thing interested me, and the TAG director would put together a little study program for me.  (Some things I remember were Spanish, meteorology, the human skeleton, rainforest ecosystems).  Anyway, *I* think that it encouraged me to be a lifelong learner.  When something interests me, to this day, I'll research it and learn what I want to about it.  I don't know whether or not I would be that way if not for being encouraged to in school. 

And I was always disappointed that the other kids didn't get that benefit.  To the point where I'd actually consider alternative school systems, rather than standard public school, if I have kids.

[bigalsmith101]

My twin brother and I, and my older sister (2 years older) were in the "gifted" program from preschool through to middle school, and had options in high school that were separate but equal. I'll explain.

I grew up with a stay at home mom. The alphabet was wall papered around the kitchen. We would practice as mom cooked. Mom would teach us basic math when we were 3-4, asking us how many ducks were left in a pond if 2 of the 5 flew away. If you had 5 apples and ate 2, how many were left, etc.

In preschool we were already ahead of our peers, who couldn't repeat the alphabet, couldn't count well or do any math at all (one or two others could). So ran around the exercise equipment, bouncing off the walls. Not much learning going on, but lots of socialization.

From Kindergarten until the end of 5th grade my mom encouraged reading and math. We went to the library all the time to get new books (every week) and we read so many damn books that we were checking out 5 books a week (150pg "Chapter books"). We once read 100 books in a single summer (age 10) at one book a day. 3hrs per book.

In elementary school, I can only remember being in the gifted program for math. 2-3 times a week we would separate ourselves to the back of the class room (this being 5th grade) and work on an advanced section of math. Also, we had exercises with the whole class such as completing our multiplication tables. So the fastest of us would race against the others. How many times could you complete the different worksheets in the time allotted, allowing us to work at our own pace.

Into middle school (6-8th grade) things changed a bit. I remember being put into Algebra (two years ahead), and being excused from the reading class in 6th grade. I read my own book instead. We took reading test and I scored at the post collegiate level as did my brother

Our middle school had a program called "Humanities", for grades 7 and 8. If you were in that program, you were considered gifted. The program was for 4 of the 6 classes of the day. Math and science were the separate 2 classes as some of the students in the humanities group different in abilities. 7th and 8th grade students were mixed.

However, I remember being absolutely bored only 3 weeks into the program and I opted to revert back to the "standard program" with the exception of the math and science. My brother stayed. My sister, two years ahead, also completed it.

In highschool we were placed in math classes appropriate to our skills set/tested capacity. I remained two years ahead, my brother was one year ahead, and my sister was average. Advanced placement (AP) classes were available at your choosing, and so I took advantage of a couple of them, particularly math. My brother opted for the science route and excelled in physics, chemistry, biology. My sister didn't take any of them.

Unfortunately our high school counselors didn't recommend the local running start program (community college classes in lieu of high school) for athletes, and my brother and I were 3 sport varsity athletes. I still wish I had done that instead. My sister did neither the running start or the sports.

Fast forward and my sister is a well rounded stay at home mother of two, and is home schooling her 5 year old daughter who's already ahead of the curve. (she must have seen this coming, as SAT's, College, etc were never on her mind). My brother went on to be an ships engineer on a 120 foot, 330 passenger catamaran out of high school. I went to college and studied international business/economics/Spanish.

I was never really aware during my education years that I was any different. My teachers just told me to do other more productive things. My peers didn't react (much) differently to me, and I just did my home work in class rather than at home most of the time. I do look back though and realize that I was very fortunate to have the opportunities that were provided to me that allowed me to excel.