The Education Question

[eilonwy]

I'm kind of curious about this, and I haven't started a poll in a while.

How are you educating/planning to educate your gifted child/ren? Are you likely to change your mind in the future? Why did you choose this path?

My answers: I'm planning to enroll my kids in Agora Cyber Charter School, a K12 school. I had originally intended to homeschool but we're poor, and through Agora I can receive materials free of charge (in fact, they have an internet subsidy-- it's like they're actually paying us to keep our kids at home!). Many of my concerns about the public school system, in particular those relating to giftedness, have been addressed by Agora. They're very open to accomodating special needs, and all children work at their own pace to complete the mastery-based program.

In my dream world, the expense of materials is not an issue for me and we'd simply remove our kids from the system entirely. I'm unlikely to change my mind about the cyberschool unless there's a dramatic change in our family finances, in which case I'd likely pull the kids from Agora and use the K12 program independantly (and thus entirely discard the parts which were uninteresting or inappropriate for my children). I can't think of any situation which would cause me to voluntarily enroll my children in public school; the schools around here, while they receive high marks from outside observers, get some of the worst comments from parents. I spoke briefly with the principal of our local elementary school, and asked her what sort of accomodations they made for gifted students. She said that they had no gifted program whatsoever. I don't believe that my kids are profoundly gifted, but I'm confident that BeanBean and BooBah, at least, are bright enough that they will require special accomodations when it comes to education. If they were/are profoundly gifted, they'd never set foot in that school; it is my personal opinion that profoundly gifted students should not go to public school unless they are very lucky, and live in a district which is willing to radically accelerate students according to their needs.

[LauraLoo]

Wow! What a timely post for me. I can't vote yet, but I can tell you this -- my ds is NOT staying at the PS school that he's in. I'm trying to research other options here -- and we have our home on the market, so we'll be moving to the midwest in the near future (I hope!) I'd have ripped him out of PS by now, except that he has an IEP for speech services and he is being "tracked" for continuity of services (btw - if anyone has any experience with this - I'd love to find out more on how I can get him out and appease the school at the same time. Please PM me.)

In the PS school district to where we intend to move, they have a GT program that goes from K - 12. Their website says: (School district) is committed to providing the opportunity for all students to learn and advance as quickly and as far as their interests and talents allow by providing differentiated instruction for academically able students." I haven't checked it out - so I'll have to see if it's for real or not. Frankly, I don't even know what questions I'll need to ask, so I might be posting for help with this in the near future.

I NEVER thought I'd be the type of person to homeschool - or even think that might be an option, but ANYTHING would be better than where he is now. I think PS does a good job reaching most students - and some school districts are better than others. Even though the school ds is in now is an Excelling school by our state standards, they are falling way behind in so many other aspects IMO.

But -- if the new school district falls short of my expectations, I have NO idea what I'll do with ds. I've contemplated Montessori, but unfortunately there's only 1 good Montessori school in the town where we'll be moving, and I don't know if they'll take DS at age 5 or not.

Looking forward to reading all the responses to this -- I definitely need to learn a lot in a short amount of time.

[Roar]

We homeschool. It has been in most ways perfect and I'm really glad we made the choice. I don't think I had it in me to struggle for years with a school which would never have been a good fit and I'm glad we skipped the hassle.

[mommaduck]

We homeschool. Though there is an excellent private school nearby, we can't afford it.

[Cate]

We're trying to make that decision now. I always planned to homeschool, but dd has been begging to go to school, and I found what looks like an amazing private school that's walking distance from where we'll be living if we ever sell our current home. If she hates it, or it just doesn't fit, then we'll pull her out and home school, but I have a good feeling about it.

[teachma]

We will be sending both of our children to our local public school. I am doing this by choice, both because my local school is excellent (thus the reason we've paid this astronomical cost to live in our community) and because my children are moderately gifted and have needs I feel will be met when good teachers differentiate according to the Board's directives. This year, unfortunately, ds does have the "one bad teacher" out of 30 at that school, so I look forward to what the future will bring. Also...as a public school teacher myself, I have access to many materials and do supplement their school learning at home when I feel it is necessary.

[LeftField]

We homeschool. We unschool right now but I'm not sure how long we'll do that. I'm open to changing things as they need changing. But I'd like to homeschool in some fashion for the long term.

We're only in our Kindergarten year so we're rookies. But I love it so far! Ds1 loves it. Ds2 is just his happy little 3 year old self. With ds1, he has always been very motivated and desperate to understand how things work. So, he develops a topic interest or obsession and we spend a lot of time trying to feed his interest. He's learned so many academic things with the unschooling method. He's not interested in phonics right now but he loves DNA and evolution, for example. Unschooling allows us to move all over the place. It can be a wild ride sometimes. He's missing out on the calendar activities that our local K does, but he's learning about plate tectonics. So, there you go. It's unconventional but lots of fun. It works well for him. I'm not sure what ds2 will want or need yet.

I don't think my oldest would do well in school. He is a visual-spatial learner to a tee. He doesn't like trial-and-error. He has to amass a pile of information in his head, at which point he makes big connections. But I don't think he'd thrive in a piece-meal sequential format. He tends to appear distant, because he has a very daydreamy nature and he's working out things in his own head in his own way. I worry that he'd appear "slow" to the teacher because he's not eager to perform or verbally participate in groups. And he's meticulously detail-oriented (read: slow). I worry that they wouldn't understand him and since he's so quiet and easy-going, he may not show what he actually can do. We did a multi-aged science club for a while. He already knew most of the information in the few sessions he did (e.g. molecules) but he never volunteered any information or showed that he knew this stuff. He just sat in the back and daydreamed. Also, he's very creative which means he heavily resists doing things by instructions; he likes to do his own thing. I just don't think it would be a good fit...maybe when he's older...I hope he wants to stick with homeschooling and then just go straight to community college classes.

[jkpmomtoboys]

We're in our local, Sudbury-like public school and love it. They already accommodate my son's need for acceleration...we are very, very lucky...

[oldcrunchymom]

We homeschool. We homeschool for many reasons, but even if we wanted to do public school it would not be doable here. We had Hollis tested several years ago through the school system and they told me outright that there was no place for my child in their school and they were not set up to handle a kid like him. My mom is a substitute teacher and a couple weeks ago was chatting with the lady who tested Hollis and she said the same thing again: "There was no place for him in this school. It just wouldn't work out."

So there you go.

[momtokay]

I voted "other". As I qualify each of my posts in this forum, I'm not sure if my kids are gifted or simply bright, but DD1 attends and DD2 will attend a small, part-time, private school. They have mixed age classes, ability based groupings, and DD1 loves it there. I think if DD2 had been my first we might be full time homeschoolers, but DD1 is an extreme extrovert and is really thriving where she is at. Since her school is part time we register as homeschoolers through the state and also supplement her education at home, though at this point that is all done through unschooling, aka following her lead and teaching her what she demands to learn. I think we'll stick with this as long as our financial situation doesn't drastically change. I feel like we have the best of both worlds (school and homeschool) with what we've got going.

[straighthaircurly]

We haven't actually fully decided yet. I am leaning toward the public Spanish Immersion school near us. But a close second are the Chinese immersion school and the Waldorf school just down the street. I need to spend more time at each and see which will best address my son's needs. If nothing works well for him, then I am fully prepared to homeschool (though I am not sure it would be a good fit for his personality).

[Rikki Gard]

AAaaaaahhhhhh what a decision. Mine is almost 2 and when we move next year I have no idea. I put homeschool but then when I read about some the fabulous schools talked about on this thread I think to myself "I have no idea". If I had a great Sudbury school or a great part time private school or an immersion school...I just have no idea. If we stayed in Italy I would definitely homeschool. But in the states......if we go to Philadelphia maybe Agora...that looks good...or if we are in Boston or Chicago (sigh)...

[Daffodil]

I hope to homeschool my kids. The only reason I would send them to school would be if I ended up having to work and couldn't manage to come up with any other childcare arrangement. I would want to homeschool whether or not I thought my kids were gifted. There are so many things I hate about the typical school experience - the way grades are given more importance than actual learning, the emphasis on unquestioning obedience to authority, the idea that there's a "right" way to do everything (the way the teacher had in mind) and that it's important to do things just that way (so you can get that all-important good grade.) I'm sure there are a few schools that are different, but why work on trying to find one (which would certainly mean moving away from where we live now) when I could just homeschool and get what I want?

[LeftField]

Originally Posted by Daffodil

I would want to homeschool whether or not I thought my kids were gifted.

I feel the same way. I just got off the phone with my sister, who was venting about the repeated notes sent home from K about not coloring meticulously enough and using inappropriate colors (e.g. green hair). Coloring is apparently a very important academic skill and I never even knew it. Instead of encouraging kids to use their imaginations to draw people with beautiful green hair, they are very concerned about conformity and identical outcomes. I could go on, but I won't. While I will say that the g issue was the catalyst that made me seriously homeschooling, it's no longer the main reason we do it.

[ChristaN]

Originally Posted by lckrause

We homeschool. We homeschool for many reasons, but even if we wanted to do public school it would not be doable here. We had Hollis tested several years ago through the school system and they told me outright that there was no place for my child in their school and they were not set up to handle a kid like him. My mom is a substitute teacher and a couple weeks ago was chatting with the lady who tested Hollis and she said the same thing again: "There was no place for him in this school. It just wouldn't work out."

So there you go.

I'm supposed to be getting ready to get out of her, so I need to be short, but your post really hit home with me. Our local ps system basically told me the same thing in regard to dd#1 last year. She had attended there from K-2 (save for part of 1st when I homeschooled). After we went through the identification process with the district, the TAG coordinator's exact words to me were, "highly gifted students don't last long in the public school system. Have you considered homeschooling?" and that the higher ups were "philosophically opposed" to putting into place the programming that would better meet the needs of kids like her even though she acknowledged that it would be less expensive than the piecemeal system they have now.

I was very hopeful for the charter school that we have dds at this year, but it just hasn't turned out to work as well as we had hoped. Dd#1 is in 3rd grade and going to 4th for language arts and math. She currently has an A+ in an "accelerated" 4th grade language arts class and has gotten 100% on every test and paper in that class so far, but she still isn't happy. Happy is my major goal. I am feeling pretty awful at this point b/c I feel that the past 3.5 years of having dd in school have done a lot of damage to her confidence and self esteem. I would have so much work to undo all of the harm that has been done that it is daunting.

We are looking into getting her into counseling and I just don't know what to do in regard to schooling anymore. We are still hoping to move by this upcoming summer which would open up some other schooling options for us (Sudbury type, etc.), but I am at the point where I don't know that my daughter can make it in almost any school system and I feel like cr*p for having let her get so hurt already.

[abqmom]

When my older son was screened in Kindergarten and shown to have a high IQ, we were told that our public school did not have the necessary programs to meet his needs. Therefore, if we proceeded with testing, he would most likely end up having to move to another school. Instead, we put him in private school through fifth grade.

Private school offers the option of ability grouping, since they can screen kids and only accept those with higher IQ's. But we found that private schools here are geared more for the higher achieving kids who are not gifted. The curriculum offered little in the way of creative higher process thinking skills and required a lot of rote learning, reptition, and regurgitation of facts.

We now have him enrolled in the gifted program in regular public school. He is thriving like never before. We are fortunate to be in an area that has a strong gifted program, so I have no interest in other options at this time.

[ChristaN]

Originally Posted by abqmom

But we found that private schools here are geared more for the higher achieving kids who are not gifted. The curriculum offered little in the way of creative higher process thinking skills and required a lot of rote learning, reptition, and regurgitation of facts.

Thank you for putting that into words. That's really the problem we are running into for dd. We chose the charter school she currently attends b/c of the ability to subject accelerate her and group her with other advanced students (which the ps would not do).

However, what you state is exactly what we have found -- a system that pushes kids to work fast, study, study, study, and produce large quantities of output. While dd has 4 or so other kids who are subject accelerating with her, I honestly don't know if these other kids are different in the way that dd is and I strongly suspect that a good portion of them are just high achievers who have been raised in a pressure cooker or, if they are gifted children, they are likely more "normal" in other ways than dd or more moderately gifted.

[LauraLoo]

Originally Posted by ChristaN

However, what you state is exactly what we have found -- a system that pushes kids to work fast, study, study, study, and produce large quantities of output. While dd has 4 or so other kids who are subject accelerating with her, I honestly don't know if these other kids are different in the way that dd is and I strongly suspect that a good portion of them are just high achievers who have been raised in a pressure cooker or, if they are gifted children, they are likely more "normal" in other ways than dd or more moderately gifted.

Some gifted children also need time for quiet introspection to evaluate the information presented -- more true of gifted children who have a highly associational preference of learning to need more time to process their thoughts and think more deeply -- not to just regurgitate info back on a test.

[ChristaN]

Originally Posted by LauraLoo

Some gifted children also need time for quiet introspection to evaluate the information presented -- more true of gifted children who have a highly associational preference of learning to need more time to process their thoughts and think more deeply -- not to just regurgitate info back on a test.

Yeah, that would be dd. She's a little scientist (a very deep, introspective person). She does well on tests, but she is very bothered by the frantic pace and the constant switching from one thing to another every 15 minutes with the teacher yelling for the kids to move on over to another part of the room. Plus, switching classes for subjects in which she is grouped in a more advanced group basically makes the whole day a run at break neck pace kind of thing. She really needs time to breathe and delve in depth into things.

[abqmom]

Originally Posted by ChristaN

Yeah, that would be dd. She's a little scientist (a very deep, introspective person). She does well on tests, but she is very bothered by the frantic pace and the constant switching from one thing to another every 15 minutes with the teacher yelling for the kids to move on over to another part of the room. Plus, switching classes for subjects in which she is grouped in a more advanced group basically makes the whole day a run at break neck pace kind of thing. She really needs time to breathe and delve in depth into things.

I have been very impressed with how the open-ended learning is made possible in my son's mid-school gifted program. For the Language and Literature class, they had an assignment given two weeks ago for a debate and were assigned a topic but were not told which side they would have to debate. They would be assigned a side of the issue on the day of the debate and have to be able to argue the points of their side. At first my son complained, but he really liked doing the research into both sides of the issue and finding out why people had passionate, reasoned thoughts on both sides of the issue. How very different than in regular midschool where the social issues would have been presented from an historical aspect and then tested to see if the kids knew the facts of how the issues came about and any significant historical moments surrounding the issue.

For science, they've built a car powered only by a moustrap and a solar oven from a cardboard box. I'm learning new things along with my son, and it's so nice to see him engaged in the creative process of incorporating what he's learning in order to finish the project!