Gifted children and schooling

It just occured to me that we could get some interesting input from some of the brilliant minds of SL.

Question: U have a 7 year old daughter who has been identified as gifted and talented in a number of areas. Once a week she sees her GT teacher in her school for about 45 mins where they work on specific projects for her.

She adores school and fits in well. 'Occasionally' she remarks that the work is too easy. But she's still only in first grade.

She is invited to now attend a 'special' school geared towards GT kids. It's a regular school across town, but the GT kids of ALL ages from K-8 take all their core acedemic classes together. Other times are spent with the rest of the schools population ie: gym, art, music, lunch and so forth.

The teacher to student ratio is awesome so some serious individual attention is gonna happen.

Attending this school would seperate her from her brother who is 2 years ahead of her in school.

We see both pros and cons to sending her across town. Maybe it'll become TOO challenging. Maybe she will be set apart from her peers in some manner.

However this could be a chance to REALLY give her an exceptional educational experience and yes we could always change our minds after a year or so.

Ok open for opinions.......what would U do?

A genuine program for gifted kids won't involve just piling on more and harder work. It should be geared toward the um....different way gifted kids learn and behave. Having been in this situation when I was a kid (riding the "little yellow school bus" from grade 3 onward), I can say that the benefits of being in a program like that far outweigh any drawbacks like bussing, etc. And, incidentally, will being separated from her brother really be an issue at all? I mean, do they actually hang out in school?

My advice is to look into the school and how they approach gifted education. The program I was in was very unstructured and allowed the kids to learn in their own way and focus on what was interesting to *them*.

Just don't leave them alone with a lab full of chemicals and any reading materials remotely related to explosives. I know of what I speak.

I second Ricky's suggestion. Investigate!

I was in a public school until 5th grade and being held back (not to mention picked on lots) even though they had a "Gifted and Talented" "program" there. I finally went "on strike" and my parents found a good Montessori school to send me to instead. While not specifically for the "G&T" it prevented me from stagnating intellectually, as the teaching methodology was so much better suited to someone who explored so much on her own; I'm sure I'm much the better off for the move.

But, don't forget another important thing: listen to your daughter! If she visits the school and says she doesn't want to move, it may be better to respect that than incur what could feel like "punishment" for being smart. If they have a summer program maybe she can try that. I insisted on change, and my parents listened... the result was good.

Caveat: I'm not a child psychologist or an educator by any means. But I think I was parented well, as were my siblings. We all have unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and the common thread my parents used for all of us was to let us lead wherever possible.

I'd stop using aimspeak, personally.

Take her to the school. I have a G&T child myself. Public school did not want to put her in the gifted classes because she had behavior problems. I put her in private school and she blossomed. Straight A's, good friends, and very few behavior problems. Then I married and moved to a very small town with only one jr. high and one high school. She stayed on the AB Honors list, but every year her SAT scores fell. She started having behavior problems again. I finally took her out of public school and homeschooled her. She got her GED a year earlier than she would have graduated and will be starting college this fall at 17. Getting her out of the public school system and challenging her really made a difference. Oh, and her behavior problems did not start until 2nd grade. Her first grade teacher would give her sheets out of a second grade workbook to help keep her challenged. She was the only public school teacher that worked her within her abilities.

Being an elementary teacher, I believe that if you think she may be G&T you can get her evaluated. G&T is a form of special education and therefore is mandated by federal educational law, if you have her evaluated and she is deemed to be G&T then your school will work up an IEP (individualized education plan) with you for her and if the district can't meet the terms of the IEP then they will have to pay to send her somewhere that can. (could save you the tuition) Even if you don't want the district to pick up the tab and just want to make sure that she is indeed G&T, the evaluation is there for you ask for.

Good Luck!

Ursula - your public schools were stupid! pardon my anger, but behavior problems are a sign of a G&T student. They act out and have behavior problems because they are bored with their work any good special ed. teacher should recognize that.

You are no angrier than I was. Yes the public school sytems here stink. Homeschooling is growing tremendously in this area and the school is whining about losing money because student enrollment is down. I guess I am still angry.

"Homeschooling -- not just for religous zealots anymore!"

Yeah she was tested and evaluated last year (kindergarten) and is now in the GT program, ie: 45 mins a week w/ a GT teacher(who is great BTW, as is her regular class teacher) Funny enuf there is no IEP for her. Her brother had an IEP 'cuz he was in speech so i know what UR talking about. As for cost for the other school, I am quite sure there is none.....it is a 'public school' but w/ hopes of drawing GT students to the ALPs program. (Alternative Learning sumthin or other).

Meilian Shang U mentioned a Montessori school...we also have Sylvan Learning Centers here. Both sound great but I'm pretty sure would break our piggy banks.

Hey I appreciate UR input U guys, thanks. I'm gonna try to schedule some time w/ her GT teacher the pricipal of the 'other' school to find out more about the ALP's program at the school across town. And I'd love to get in contact w/ some parents who already have their chidren there and get their input.

It depends. I don't think that advanced schooling is necessary if a child is just 'smart.' However, if it was a behavioural issue and a public school education would become a serious road-block to the intellectual/social development of the child -- then gung-ho all the way.

For example, when I was a young kid my teachers noticed I had strong behavioural issues -- I would beat the other kids up, had trouble communicating, and got really frustrated in general. They took me to the side, made me go through a whole bunch of testing, and came out saying I had an unclassifiable autism.

Now it was strongly urged that I was put in a special school where facilitators would be trained to handle and care for children such as I. However, my parents didn't end up making the financial sacrifice to do so and left me in public school.

To this day, I think I would've achieved more academically than I have had I grown up in a specialized educational institution. I also probably would've gotten beat up less when the other kids grew up to be bigger than I.. and I probably wouldn't have developed many of the afflictions I'd went through in my teenage years.

However, the rough road did make me adapt to social behaviours a little -- though even in my twenties I'm still not as fully capable as many of my peers in that regard.

In the end though, I'm rather glad I didn't go to university or anything like that. Boorish institutional thinking and statistical markers of intellectual achievement would've become frustrating. I find many people who do go to university don't come out "better educated" really -- they just learn to jump through hoops really well.

So if she's just smart, she'll learn on her own and will succeed any way she chooses to. The best education is encouragement and support.

I had to ponder this question as well when my daughter "graduated" from her montessori pre-school and had to consider whether private schooling or public was to be most advantageous. After much deliberation, I concluded that for at least first grade, the academic content was secondary to the social learning to be had at a public school where the students were likely more evenly distributed across the bell curve. I thought this valuable as her peers previously had been "self selected" by parents who cared enough about their child's education and development to send them to a relatively pricey pre-K private school. Moreover, I was concerned about fostering the intellectual elitism that many private schools can't avoid.

And indeed, one of the first things that she did notice was that there was a much broader diversity of abilities than she had previously been exposed to; this was the basis for much fruitful conversation between us on the nature of inherent differences and the desire to be tolerant of those who were not on her side of the curve.

In all fairness, I have to note that I had chosen a district that has extremely high per capita spending, but this is only a portion of why it has been a success for her. The elementary school she attends has a census of ~450 (K-5) and when given a tour of the school, the school's guidance counselor addressed two dozen children that we met by name; I asked her if she knew all the children's names: "yep, pretty much all of them". The principal has shown the same familiarity with the student body. The point of this is that regardless of spending, the staff of her school truly cares about their organization. As with restaurants, mechanics, dentists, bookstores, and virtual world creators, having people who genuinely care about what they are doing makes the difference between mediocre and excellent.

Further bolstering my decision was that school had never been the source of my primary academic learning, and such is the case with my daughter. It may be that someday I may choose a more academically agressive school for her (although, pre-algebra in second grade is pretty pedagocially ambitious - and successful - in her case). But as Ricky noted above, "homeschooling" or more properly that which I teach her at home - is not strictly the provenance of the religiously inclined.

I would prefer that they didn't have state mandated "drug awareness" programs in first grade, but my child thinks them as silly as I do.