Last year I posted on this topic, expressing displeasure with the system and confusion as to why all students were tested, identified and labelled in the first few months of Kindergarden, then essentially nothing more was done in follow up. The only identifiable difference was more “busy” homework for our GT dubbed kid. Not exactly what I was expecting.
The consensus was to talk to the Principal and the teachers about it. We did this and I am very glad we did.
I’ve read much of Bush’s No Child Left Behind program, and on the face of it I didn’t like it. After our talk with the principal we were invited to a meeting with the District GT program director and their staff. They literally blew me away! He said to stop him at any time, but he was going to go through their program from Testing and identifying to graduation, highlighting the few areas their program were deemed less than exceptional and mapping out his plan to become exceptional in that particular area. I walked away from the meeting “Last Year” with a new confidence in our decision to move into this public school district. We chose the district because of its testing versus the national averages on the TAKS test. I won’t get into the pros or cons of the TAKS test. It is my opinion that it is as good of an upper intellectual abilities development assessment as is available, and essentially cannot be taught. If the kids masters the skills, he/she will do well on it. If they do not, they will fail it.
Fast forward nine months. Our daughter is flourishing under the program. The No Child Left Behind model puts more responsibility on the teachers, but I do believe that all the kids benefit. An example of a lesson would go something like this. The teacher reads a story about a yellow caterpillar. The teacher knows who is at what level in the classroom. She will ask the lower level child what the story was about: A caterpillar. She might ask an on level child what color the caterpillar was: yellow. Where as she might ask the GT kid what he/she felt the Caterpillar was thinking about while it was doing a particular thing and what motivated it. Each kid gets an appropriate question for their cognitive ability. Each kid may or may not get the right answer, but all are challenged and get an opportunity to hear and think about all the questions. The lower level kids get their answers correct and are praised. The GT kids get their answers correct and are praised. All are exposed to the same material and have the opportunity to break out at any time.
When reading time comes around, they will send my daughter to the kindergarden class to read stories to the kids at story time. She gets a huge kick out of this and the teacher usually gives her books that will challenge her. Her reading, story telling, writing and comprehension have skyrocketted from this interaction and increased responsibility in her school day to “Read the Little Ones a good story and make it fun and interesting.” She does different voices for different characters and really has fun with it. The other kids in her class are appropriately learning how to read.
The entire GT program basis is that the GT kids are capable of things well beyond what people think in years or maturity. The program is there to challenge them up to the point of failure, then go in another direction to the point of failure. The director said that some of these kids are very normal in many capacities but when one area is identified as their strength, the point of failure often isn’t reached during their stay at public school. His previous district in California had an elementary school class of GT kids publishing a weekly newspaper and selling it for a profit in the local grocery stores. This type of real world product oriented challenge is what it is all about. My daughter’s first grade math homework is multiplication and elementary algebra with spelling words like mathematics, calculator, etc… well beyond anything I expected in the first grade. There are children in her class that sit at the same four desk cluster that can’t read, but all are working side by side, interacting on a daily basis…much like the real world.
This leads me to my latest revelation and the spur to this post. My biggest fear was my daughters exposure to the really “bad” kids. Last week one of the “Special Needs” kids threw sand in her eyes at recess. She responded much more maturely and responsibly than I would have. She cried appropriately, but after settling down she told the teacher that the “Special Needs” kid was just playing and she should give him more room to play from now on. I talked with her a few more times about it since and she is completely fine. No trauma, no lingerring psychological effects, just a real world lesson taught at an age where no real damage can occur that will serve her well the rest of her life. All these kids exposure to one another is benefitting them. I would have argued against it less than a year ago, but I have to admit that I was wrong. This program works, is working, and I expect that my daughter will be served very well by this public school district over the next 11 years.
This is just one parent’s opinion of one six year old’s experience, but I thought it was interesting enough to share and get some feed back on.