BellaOnline Forums Education Gifted Education does it ever "balance out"?

Excuse me for getting into a bit of a different tangent, but Ms A is right about the "created equal" thing getting misinterpreted. The founding fathers, being a religious lot, were referring to how God views his "children" when they said, "All men are created equal." In other words, they meant we are all equal in God's sight whether or not we all possess the same "gifts." Basically, they were trying to say that God loves us all equally and does not see any of us as less entitled to basic human rights. It's a statement about our rights rather than our capabilities. Lucky they did this--it eventually led the nation to examine its attitude toward slavery and civil rights. It took forever, but it did happen.

Also, grammatically speaking, "men," in this context, meant men and women. In those days, if you were trying to allude to all humankind, it was common to revert to the masculine to do so.

We were told this a lot with our son, too. By the end of last year -- he was in 1st grade but it was his actually Kindergarten year -- he was reading and comprehending at a 4th grade level. So what do they expect in the 3rd grade? He's now in 2nd grade and inching close to 5th grade reading and comprehension. He has only been in "the system" for 1 year and already developing a coasting attitude about some things and frustration about others because he's so advanced. His "higher order thinking" (one of the school's terms) isn't going to turn off in 3rd grade. What would really happen is that they snuff out his flame and he would *appear* to be leveled off.

Thankfully he has an awesome teacher this year who has parented a highly gifted child so she understands a lot from our perspective, and she truly wants to see my son succeed.

Typical schools, with typical classrooms and typical teachers, teach to the middle of the group, ie: the bell curve. This means the lower end and the upper end get left out of the planning. This occurs for many reasons, but mostly because it is just too much work in a traditional school system for most teachers to set up different educational tracks if you will for every student.

Private schools are much better at accommodating everyone's needs, but even they aren't typically geared for the very low or very high students. However, there are a handful around the country and they are outstanding when they narrowly focus on one group or the other.

Homeschooling combined with a private tutor that understands the child's needs and where they currently are academically seems to be the second best option for most people if a private school is out of reach or not available.

Not challenging a child, no matter where they are academically, should not be an option. A child who is not challenged loses self-esteem, the love of learning, and can pickup behavior problems just to pass the time (if the work is too easy) or to get out of doing something they think is too hard for them.

If all schools could find a way to individualize learning and capitalize on students' passions, the future would be so much brighter for everyone! My personal opinion is technology can help accomplish this, but attitudes and systems have to change.

Sorry for the long post, but individualized learning is my passion!

>Not challenging a child, no matter where they are academically, should not be an option. A child who is not challenged loses self-esteem, the love of learning, and can pickup behavior problems just to pass the time (if the work is too easy) or to get out of doing something they think is too hard for them.

Yup, I can vouch for that! My ds managed to learn to not focus, which was a major problem for years (after we started homeschooling) as well as developed great avoidance behaviors for things he perceived as too hard. (And so often, that is a matter of overthinking the matter, imagining that what is expected is so much more than what really IS expected.)

Don't you think it depends on the particular child's drive, curiosity, and special interests? I've seen kids who definitely challenge themselves--so much so that you have to remind them not to pressure themselves too much. To me, it helps with this type of child to remind them that everything does not have to be perfect and that you can learn from your mistakes.

From what I've observed, most children (gifted or not) focus more on some things than on others. It's the rare child who truly focuses on absolutely anything he/she tries. Sometimes you can go through the "back door" to cover the things that make their minds wander. One of our kids "officially" wanted to ignore grammar lessons, but she was pretty regular about writing to Zoos and horse trainers. I got her to let me proofread this correspondence with her by my side. We would go over the grammar issues as the proofreading took place. I never told her that these were grammar lessons. She appreciated being able to send polished letters, and she went on to qualify to skip freshman English in college.

But focusing on things in school can be shut down. My son DOES focus on some things, of his choosing. However, he stopped focusing on anything school-related.

Granted, some children will find other things (other than what the teachers sets out for them) to keep themselves occupied, some will take an assignment and turn it into something more interesting, but that may be more a personality thing than level of giftedness.

My son had a tendency to go into lala land. The principal didn't worry about it -- she said, "Oh, well, he is finding his own thoughts more rewarding than the activity at hand." (This was, essentially, all school stuff, subjects he liked more as well as ones he was less interested in.) At the time, I was grateful that no one was trying to slap a label of ADD on him (which, with someone less knowledgeable, might have been tried), but retrospectively, I wonder why we didn't try to make more interesting/appropriate activities.

Cela-

I love the undercover grammar lessons! Tee hee!

As with anything else, personality certainly factors into the equation. There are no absolutes when it comes to gifted children.

mine hates to write and draw. so we have penpals and story writing and painting days. amazing how much he seems to like those...

gifteds protest the repetition and need a secondary challenge or goal. mine is like this with math facts as well. internet math games are my friend (secondary challenge of points, avoiding things trying to eat you, or rescuing a character by finding the math solutions). we're sneaky learners at my house, too. lol

he then prompts conversations and does math quizzes with me in the car. he won't tell me 7+4, but he'll give me 700+400 or 70+40 from the 7+4 online game. go figure.

my personal proud mommy blurt:
he tells me that he doesn't like "school". his concept of school is all repetitive dittos and staying on topics way after he "gets it". we began homeschooling earlier this year. ask him if he likes homeschool and he says "well, yeah, of course I like THAT kind of school". it's the match that we found for him. yay! he has never asked me to go back. i asked him if he wanted to go back to the school and visit miss debbie (last year's teacher, who was wonderful) and he told me "no", because he thought that meant i was enrolling him! lol

Sneaky math game -- 24. Only needs a regular deck of cards, with the face cards and jokers removed. Everyone gets 5 cards dealt to them, and the first one to use all 5 cards to make 24 (you can add, subtract, multiply, divide and use parenthesis) wins that round.

My ds has been a reluctant writer, with occasional writing spurts on his own. I think one of his major roadblocks, though, has been overthinking assignments, building them up too big in his mind, and being totally overwhelmed by what he THINKS he needs to do.

One thing that helped was to have him verbally tell us his response to an assignment, then simply say, "Okay, now write that down." That's it? Totally incredulous. Yup.

Recently, we had been prepping for the SAT (he took it Saturday), having him write practice essays from prompts. Most of the time (once he got guided into doing it better) he wrote decent essays, but a couple times, he just mentally shut down. Couldn't write a thing. Again, overthinking it, not being sure how to approach it. (Fortunately, on the real thing, the prompt was one he had no trouble with, and sounds, from what he said, like he did a decent job. Time will tell, of course!)

This has been an interesting thread. Something I just thought of about teaching kids to write: I had an English teacher in junior high who advised us to try to write as though we were talking. She specifically said that this can help jump-start things when you're "shut down." She described it as just trying to think what you would say in a "live" conversation and then writing it down.

I still use that technique when I get stumped in writing. It can really get you started. Once you get started, you can always refine your writing. Somehow, doing this simplifies the process for me. (Of course, this assumes you know what your topic will be!) That same teacher also stressed using plain language as much as possible--to make your writing clearer and more to the point. Thanks, at least in part to her training, I made high marks in composition.

I wish I could remember that teacher's name. She was one of the "stand-outs" in teaching. I hear a lot about how many women have been diverted from teaching now that higher-paying, private sector jobs are more available to women. I wouldn't want to limit these new opportunities for women, but it might help the educational system in the U.S. if teachers received salaries (and respect) that match the private sector. Ironically, growing up in the 50's and 60's, I had a bunch of really gifted women teachers because other jobs were off-limits to women.

From our experience raising kids, it just did not seem that the same level of intellect was common in our kids' teachers. Of course, there were notable exceptions. Our state has never really paid teachers like it should either--a definite problem. (I grew up in a very large city in another state.)