School-parent meeting coming up. Where to start?

[Seie]

I will try to keep this breif and to the point, or I will end up with a novel so here goes.

Im a single mother of three kids. My oldest is a boy age 7. He is in the first grade and while I never had him tested, I am pretty sure he is gifted. Not that a number really matters to me. What matters is that he finds school boooooring and he fits most of the points on the "how to recognize gifted children-list". Especially the parts about underachieving :(

Its all too easy for him and while his teachers actually want to help out, they seem like they have no special knowledge of how to handle high-iq kids. They do give him extra assignments but only when he is done doing the boring ones. Recently they gave him a book with assigments for the second grade. He thought that was fun and worked through it in a couple of weeks, hardly getting any assistence or help from me or anyone else. He read the assignment descriptions himself and just worked till he was done. Now they dont know what to do.

I am not on the best of terms with his main (language teacher). I find her prejudice and I dont trust her good judgement. She is not a bad person or a bad teacher really - I just really dont agree with her on so many levels. Including the one where she obviuosly thinks, that because I am disorganized and sometimes mess up practical stuff then I must also be in need of special support, well meant but patronising parenting advice and her interfering in stuff she shouldnt. I could make this longer but it would be boring. Lets just say our most recent conflict was about her trying to force my kid to perform at a spring concert even though he told her several times he has stage fright. And I mean he seriously fears it, so its not just about not wanting to. Anyway she kept pushing him so he started provoking her by refusing to stand up - stuff like that.

Anyway the meeting with his teachers is coming up. I want to take this opportunity to educate them abit about how giftedness affects him in school and socially.

So I need to educate these people about how to do their job - or at least inspire them to learn more about giftedness and resulting problems. Where do I start? They are so busy already with 26 kids in a classroom, and they have to make sure everyone lears stuff at his or her level. No wonder its difficult, but that wont help my son like school more or learn to work to achieve goals.

Its a public school with no special program for talented or gifted children. I can't afford private schools so basically I have to work with what I've got.

SO this ended up long anyway. Didn't mean it to, but if you got this far, then please help me plan my case.

TIA..

ETA: A short disclaimer :) 

I am NOT in the US, and our first language is not english, Advice involving legal rights or options that are specific to the US system wont be very useful to me. Thanks.

[Linda on the move]

Can you request that your son's IQ be tested? You may not care about the score, but it is a way of *proving* that your son is bright. Otherwise, you've just got your word.

You say IQ doesn't matter, but it does. If you want something different for your child, I think the first step is proving that your child is different.

I'd also drop the attitude that you have to teach them to do their jobs. It's really a put down. You don't need to teach them, just like they don't need to teach you how to be a parent. You all have different strengths and different roles to play in your child's life. The goal is figure out how to work as a team.

[Amatullah0]

Originally Posted by Linda on the move 

Can you request that your son's IQ be tested? You may not care about the score, but it is a way of *proving* that your son is bright. Otherwise, you've just got your word.

You say IQ doesn't matter, but it does. If you want something different for your child, I think the first step is proving that your child is different.

I'd also drop the attitude that you have to teach them to do their jobs. It's really a put down. You don't need to teach them, just like they don't need to teach you how to be a parent. You all have different strengths and different roles to play in your child's life. The goal is figure out how to work as a team.

This. what about skipping a grade? is homeschool an option for you?

[Seie]

Thanks. True I dont need to teach them about how to do their job, what I mean is it doesn't seem they have any special knowledge about bright kids and so far it is my impression that they have been bad at picking up on all the obvious signs. SO I guess what I mean is I want to present them to resources about gifted children so I will know they know what I am talking about. If that makes any sense..

Recently the kids in his class all filled out a form/test that is supposed to document their reading and writing skills. We were told that by the 3rd or 4th grade the goal is to have all kids able to answer "yes" to most of the descripted lvls of reading, understanding, spelling etc. My son already answers yes to almost all of those questions. The only area where he is behind is "motivation". So I do have that test to use as a reference when we talk about how to meet his educational needs.

About having him tested then the whole IQ discussion and the issue of gifted children is really not discussed much here. So even if I have a number I doubt it would make much of a difference, since there are no special offers at his school for gifted children anyway. The law states that all kids here should be taught at their individual level, but it's just words. Reality is that the teachers already have to deal with 26 kids at the time, some of them having the complete opposite problem. So their time and energy is already stretched out pretty thin :(

I dont have the option to homeschool. I am a single mom and depending on my income, so that is not an option.

As for skipping a grade then I think it would be helpful for him in some ways, but he is also dealing with the problem of still being just 7 years old and he is emotionally very sensitive and doesn't deal well with the sometimes rough fun among the other boys or with criticism of any kind. Im not sure he is emotionally ready to deal with even older kids.

I hope that answered some of the questions above?