Comments:

sparkspark - 2007-01-03 14:16:47
"It's just the sun!" is my favorite quote of the day. XOXO Violet
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Julia - 2007-01-03 15:06:07
My mom (the gifted education coordinator) says that being gifted is as much a "learning disability" as autism, in that those kids require the right teaching style. The grain of salt here is that she believes her children to be gifted, and home schooled us all. Which had its own drawbacks socially, obviously.
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Erin. - 2007-01-03 15:06:13
But won't AJ be separated out no matter where he goes? Don't all schools have tracks for more advanced and less advanced students? In some ways, it seems to me that if you're in a school where the gifted and the not-gifted are in separate classes, vs. a school where everybody is gifted and there is no distinct hierarchy, the sense of segregation may be less. The other thing is, in the long term...are you hoping AJ is going to go to a really good college? Or do you want him to be in the top 1% at a state school? And after? Because if your ultimate goal is place him among peers, why not start earlier rather than later?

Obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm wondering exactly how far your reasoning extends.
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Harriet - 2007-01-03 15:26:14
I think the "right teaching style" is the key to pretty much any good education. And schools are remarkably ill-equipped to deal with that. Self-learners often get squashed, because they don't go with the rest of the class. On the other hand, they do need to learn to discipline themselves at some stage of the game. School gives kids a lot of information about what society at large expects of them -- information that's pretty hard to communcate at home alone. Erin, part of my reaction is totally irrational. I do, though, want to ensure a certain amount of exposure to a diverse student body. If we were facing this choice while living in the city (where the friends I was talking about reside), I suspect I'd have a much different reaction. But here in an extremely homogeneous suburb, I want to make sure AJ is in a position where he has to confront people with different backgrounds and skills. In small school systems, there isn't a lot of tracking. The work is handed out in the classroom. And yes, that singles them out in a certain kind of way -- we're already dealing with that in terms of the classroom reading groups. There is no group for AJ -- he has to read alone with his teacher. I'm not sure it's fair to map the comparison onto college choices that way, though. By that stage of the game, there are many other issues at work. I'm planning on visiting the local gifted school (an expensive private school -- there are no such public schools in our swath of suburbia that I know of). I was put off by them in my previous conversation with them, though, because they were very high pressure. They also ask that the parents foot the bill for some very pricey admissions exams to the tune of $500 or so. Finally, I'm concerned about AJ being tracked as one kind of a student or another so young. AJ loves science and math. But he also loves baseball and music. And just being silly. At the age of 5, I think he should be encouraged to love all those things, not just some of them. And the impression I got from the gifted school I talked to was that it was overwhelmingly academically oriented. AJ puts enough pressure on himself. At this point, i don't want to be pushing him too hard. I want him to get all he can out of school, but ultimately what I want for him is to have the resources to find his own way, the way that's right for him. It's not about whether I want him to go to a good college or a state school. It's about him being in a position to make the right decision for himself. I guess that I'm feeling like making the decision to put him into the gifted school (and I'm basing this entirely on the one school I've talked to) would open some doors for him, but it would also close some others. And I want to be careful about that. Finally, there is a good chance that we won't be living here forever and gifted schools are not available everywhere. I am also concerned that if he started there he might have a more difficult time switching schools later.
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Erin. - 2007-01-05 15:14:26
You know, you might look into religious schools. Because the Catholic school I went to - it was high school, but this might be true more generally - was pretty impressive as far as both academics and sports went. Admittedly, diversity is really lost, and the praying and going to mass can get pretty tiresome. But if you're having a hard time finding a place that will have the right blend of stimuli, it could be worth looking into.
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