Gifted kids and negative school experiences

Thursday, 12 August 2010 23:11

Sam is now in Year K.... and first year at school has been painful. Promises made by the school have not been delivered, and poor Sam sits there day in day out listening to the teacher point at a board as she teaches the kids to read: The. boy. walks. Repeat after me. The. boy. walks.

Are the teachers bad? No. They just don't appreciate the urgency of things. Teachers do an enormous amount of activities. They have to stretch, amongst others, to managing customer service (dealing with all the parents) managing teaching, managing administration, managing all the fundraising activities, etc etc. It's a demanding multi-faceted job that goes far beyond teaching in the class room. It's not an easy job being a teacher with so many demands.

No wonder, when faced with a child that is academically ahead of his peers, they think there is no urgency. But this is the big difference: the school is trying to manage a child's education; I am trying to manage my child's psychological health.

Sam is disengaging from learning. He says school is a waste other than the times he plays with friends. He says he can't and won't do things that the other children can't do - he won't write sentences because he sees his peers don't; he won't do anything that makes him any different to the other girls and boys. He says "It's all too hard for me" and flops in front of the TV. One day blurs into the next and nothing much stands out between taking himself to school in the morning and coming home in the afternoon.

The teachers have made an attempt to send him to a maths extension class for older kids, but since this is done as an "extra activity" there is no consistency to scheduling the class and no rigour.

What should we have done differently?

1. We had an agreement with the school that we would ease Sam into the routines of school and gently ease him into the higher class work. But they have not had a serious approach to this. We should have jumped on this faster.

2. Maybe we should have educated the teachers more about giftedness and provided them with more case studies, resources and contacts. But.... it's a fine line, isn't it? Had we done more of this, the teachers may have seen us as overly pushy and resisted because they (ought to) know more about teaching than we do.

3. Maybe we should have a firm program in place to provide him with some more interesting tutoring after school - whether through his family or a hired tutor. But Sam is exhausted after the long school days (physically exhausted, without having been mentally stimulated).

4. Maybe we should have more regular review periods - not just at the end of each semester.

5. Maybe all of the above.

Our plan now is to sit down with the teachers and work out a plan going forward for this semester, and to have some firm outcomes in writing.

I can't lose my son at 5.