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This article was downloaded by: [Northeastern University]On: 11 October 2014, At: 18:28Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
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One year at a time: Parents'perspective on gifted educationSue Ann Bartchy Reinisch & Lou ReinischPublished online: 22 Jun 2011.
To cite this article: Sue Ann Bartchy Reinisch & Lou Reinisch (1997) One year at atime: Parents' perspective on gifted education, Peabody Journal of Education, 72:3-4,237-252, DOI: 10.1080/0161956X.1997.9681876
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PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, 72(3&4), 237-252 Copyright O 1997, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
One Year at a Time: Parents' Perspective on Gifted Education
Sue Ann Bartchy Reinisch and Lou Reinisch
Sue Ann and I share similar thoughts and ideas on most topics. The education of our f led son, Peter, however, has created many discussions about what is "best." I don't think that we have ever found the best answer, yet our discussions cause both of us to think, read, and defend our beliefs. These discussions have helped to guide us when making decisions. When we speak to school officials about changes or specific educational plans, we have already thought about what we want, why we think it is appropriate, and why it is better than other solutions.
We have left this article as two parts to reflect our differences and perspectives. We have tried not to repeat each other. We do not have all the answers, but we each have a set of answers. We hope that you share our enthusiasm for thought and debate.
Sue Ann's Thoughts
When Peter was 7 years old we were living in Maryland and had been visiting a church for a short time. I remember one Sunday a woman, who
SUE ANN BARTCHY MSCH is a self-employed musiaan.
Lou REINECH is Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology and Director of Laser Research at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. Lou Reinisch, Director Laser Research, S-2100 MCN, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37232-2559.
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was sitting behind us and had apparently taught Peter in a Sunday School class, introduced herself to us after the service and then immediately said, "Do you know there is a gifted magnet school in this county?" I smiled and told her that I did, thinking to myself, "Why do people--total strangers included-say things like that to us?" He had always been a little different and often difficult to deal with. He was a "late talker," and despite being chosen to work with a reading specialist in kindergarten, I was not con- vinced that he was reading early; he hated anything even remotely associ- ated with writing. It had not escaped my notice, though, that when the other children in kindergarten were making clay cats and dogs, Peter was sculpt- ing a platypus and a fish with fins in motion.
He is 13 now, and it has been reasonably well determined that his talents do not lie in language arts, but more in math, science, and social studies. His IQ qualifies him as gifted in the state of Tennessee but is definitely not in the profoundly gifted range. No, Peter was not a precocious preschooler, and he is not a distinguished student. There are two things, however, that have always been very gifted about Peter. They are his personality and his capacity for learning. These are the thiigs that have brought out the best and the worst in his relationship with us and with the schools.
Peter is at once a wonderful and exasperating child at home and at school, I imagine. He is very creative, has a wonderful sense of humor, loves an audience, and loves being around adults. He is fiercely competitive in intellectual games, has intense feelings about justice and fairness, and is caring and compassionate toward the disadvantaged. He is compulsive, obsessive, and needs little sleep. He refuses to care about what time it is, where he is supposed to be, what he is supposed to be doing, and what other people wear or do. Although he does not like to be teased and wants to fit in with others, he spends very little effort worrying about peer expectations. He is fearless, confident, and very independent. It is very difficult to persuade Peter to do something he does not want to do or to dissuade him from something he does want to do. Peter rebels against restraints of any sort. He has no tolerance for boring, repetitive activities. These are not learned behaviors. He exhibited many of these characteristics as an infant.
It has been a long, slow process to modify some of these behaviors so that he can function in school and society. The effort he must put into following the school's rules all day and into not complaining about what he is asked to do is nothing short of heroic. I know how hard it is for him, and by spring, he is like a pressure cooker ready to explode. Every school year ends with a great sigh of relief. As a parent, though, I live every day with the inner turmoil of not knowing whether I should let him be himself even when it causes him a lot of pain with peers and school or whether I
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should continually try to change his character in an effort to teach him to fit in and be more compliant. I know that at best I have stayed in the middle ground; at worst, I have been inconsistent and indecisive.
Peter is not a bad student by any measure. He gets As and Bs and tries very hard to stay out of trouble. He really wants his teachers to like him, and most of them have. Peter is not motivated, however, by the same things that motivate most children. He has his own agenda. He will put incredible time and energy into that which interests him (even if it is for little or no credit) and do as little as possible with things he dislikes (even if it is a very important grade). Behavior modification is almost totally lost on our child. As for positive and negative reinforcement, well, it has become more effective over the years, but its usefulness is still very selective. If there is one single personality trait that has gotten Peter into the most trouble with teachers and made him the most difficult to live with it is this one.
We Were Doing Fine Until Third Grade
Our educational difficulties began with "minute" math tests in third grade. Most third-grade teachers simply cannot comprehend that an 8-year- old child would deliberately make a decision not to answer the questions on a minute math test because he has already done it once and it bores him, and that the child is willing to accept the consequences for not doing it, even though it would be much easier for him to just do it. Is he being willful and defiant? Maybe. Should he have to do it four more times when he got a 95% the first time? No. Is this a reason to withhold gifted services from him? One might think so, if one has no understanding of the @ed personality. I remember this third-grade teacher explaining to us why Peter should have to do this task repeatedly by saying, "Everyone has to stand in line at Walmart, even though they don't like to." I totally agree with that. If an adult, however, were asked to stand in line at Walmart for 7 hr every day for 180 days every year, they would complain, and others would empathize. One thing we have definitely learned over the years is that gifted children (and their parents) are not supposed to complain, and most people to do not empathize with them.
This teacher interpreted his rebellion as a leaming/memory problem. Later on, this behavior would be brought up in Individualized Education Program (IEP) team meetings as justification for not doing anything for him.' (He doesn't do anything for us, so we don't have to do anything for him.) Back when we were angry, frustrated, and uninformed parents living
'III Temessee, students who are gifted receive services from "special education." Therefore, IEP teams are involved in setting goals and planning programs.
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with an angry, frustrated child, these sorts of meetings left me disillusioned and very hurt that the teachers and administrators who had nothing but praise for my child all year would turn on him when they were asked to do something for him.
The issue here is the common misconception, especially among educa- tors, that all gifted children must automatically be high achievers. In fact, many of them are not high achievers. It is extremely difficult to deal with school personnel when one has a gifted child who is not a high achiever, because I always feel pressure to make him perform. I sometimes wonder if Peter were in a wheelchair, would the school offer to build him a ramp to the front door only after he had gotten out of the wheelchair and proven that he could not step up onto the sidewalk on his own? I have also found a broad lack of understanding on the part of school personnel of what actually qualifies students like Peter as handicapped in the state of Tennes- see. Too few teachers understand that these children sometimes have extreme academic strengths and weaknesses depending on the subject, and that they do not think or learn like other children, so a typical curriculum does not serve them well.
There has also been too much focus on Peter's "socialization and study skills," presumably because that shifts the responsibility for the total edu- cational experience from the school to the child. I have noticed over the years that neither I nor any school personnel (despite what they think) have had any real effect on his study habits or social skills. Most changes that I have seen have come about only because he wanted them to happen. I also have noticed that the more burdened he feels by the lack of control over what happens to him and how he spends his day, the more apathetic he becomes about everything (i.e., that gifted personality and enthusiasm for learning fade away). I believe there is a wonderful mind inside that child just waiting for the right teacher and the right subject at the right moment. I wonder how many of those opportunities have been lost because we try so hard to make him "normal" when he isn't and never will be. Our younger son is a nongifted high achiever. I am very proud of his accomplishments, but it is clear to me that he works only for the grades, with no real depth of understanding or love of learning, and his fear of failure is almost paralyz- ing sometimes. Even if I thought we could change Peter, I don't think that should be the focus of his education. The world needs people who are independent thinkers, unafraid of failure and intolerant of boredom.
Hitting Bottom-No Where to Go but Up
In the 6 years that we have lived in Tennessee, there have been many very positive changes (program and personnel) in our school system and
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in our own attitudes about dealing with the schools. We have all come a long way since the end of fourth grade when Peter was an emotional minefield and our IEP team meeting ended in a shouting match with nothing written on the IEP form.
At the end of fourth grade, Peter was drawing pichues of assassinations and torture (of specrfic people) all over his school papers. He picked fights constantly with his bm* and the slightest incident would trigger late- night litanies of things that had happened to him at school. We were all emotionally exhausted. Wk got the name of a psychologist who worked with @ed children, and Peter spent the summer seeing him on a regular basis, supposedly to prepare him to face school again in the fall. Toward the end of summer, he started refusing to go and has refused to ever see any counselor since. When my husband and I met at the end of summer with this psycholo- gist, we thought he would give us insight and advice about school. Instead, he told us Peter had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and needed to be on Ritalin. On the way home, I told my husband that if we had to drug Peter to get him through the school day we were going to keep him home. I would have to say that was our low point, from which very good things gradually happened.
The fifth-grade year we home schooled, something that advocates of gfted children recommend highly It was an act of desperation, the results of which I can now appreciate the most in retrospect. During that difficult year, Peter went through a long healing process and, by the end of the year, wanted 'to go back to school. Academically, we set Peter loose and let him work above grade level for the first time. We joined organizations for gifted children, started reading about grfted children, talked with experts about grfted children, and attended d m s . Our school system hired a gifted- program cooldinator for the first time during that year. When we called the superintendent in the spring to see if Peter would be allowed to come to school in sixth grade only for band, he told my husband they were trying to implement a magnet program in Peter's grade and asked him to be a part of the parent meetings. He also asked us to come back to the table and talk about putting Peter back in school.
Peter and I flew to Boston for the Hohgworth Confe~nce on Highly Gifted Children in May of that fifth-grade year. Peter met a pen pal and attended workshops with other @ed children 1 enjoyed a complete trans- formation of how 1 viewed my child and his education. For 2 days it was okay to laugh about gifted people not being able to spell, keeping sloppy desks, never being on time, and forgetting to go to bed at night. The overwhelming message was that these children, with all their eccentricities, are the hope of the future. We must protect them from a world that does not understand them and must never give up on them.
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One of the more interesting sessions at the conference was an informal parent discussion led by a single mother of a child who had graduated from high school when he was 14 years old. After she told how she worked with the schools to accomplish this, she invited questions. I was one of the few home schoolers in the room and realized how far I had come, because I wasn't one of the angry people. Everyone else had a story, and the room was absolutely seething with anger toward schools. This woman repeated over and over again, "You have to learn everything you can about educating these children and go to your school with a positive attitude, committed to working together for your child. No situation is hopeless. You can do it."
We had our IEP team meeting 2 weeks later and worked out a half-day schedule for sixth grade, with math and science home schooled at an accelerated grade level. There were some tense moments when we insisted that Peter was not going backward into a sixth-grade math and science curriculum, but we finally agreed on a 5-hr day This satisfied the state requirements for the school to consider him enrolled, while allowing him to continue the accelerated subjects and spend less time in school. It was a reasonably good year, but by spring, Peter was becoming too uncooperative about working for us at home.
At the end of sixth grade, our gifted consultant felt we should involve the high school administrators in his IEP team, as he was accelerated and we were asking that he be allowed to actually take algebra and biology in high school for seventh grade. We worked out a schedule similar to sixth grade, except that I took him to the high school in the afternoon instead of bringing him home. All throughout this process, we were fortunate to have had the full cooperation of teachers, counselors, and administrators. It was not without emotional pain on my part. I was incredibly fearful that this would be a disaster, but he got along well and did fine.
When people ask me how we got the schools to do this, I tell them it was the home school year. Without that, Peter might never have been rescued from the state curriculum-the great academic leveler. I understand per- fectly the practicality of keeping all children of a certain age in the same grade level curriculum, and for most children, that works. It is not fair to gifted children, however, to be held back at grade level in their best subjects because that is easiest for the school. I am very sympathetic to all the problems acceleration can cause the school and the child. Peter has certainly taken abuse over this. Every year the decision-making process is painful, and the fear of doing the wrong thing is always on my mind. Every year, however, he wants to continue. We won't know for a long time if we are doing the right thing. The possibility of skipping eighth grade was on the table this year. Peter decided not to skip the grade. Academically, he wants and needs to do this, but the social pitfalls of being a teenage boy younger
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than his female classmates and not having his driver's license when his classmates did swayed him the other way He will stay with his age peers as long as he can do high school math and science.
Peter has never attended one of his IEP team meetings, but we have decided that it is time for him to develop a relationship with them. I want him to feel some accountability to them for the quality of his work and to feel that he is a part of the process, even though his feelings have always been fully considered. I am hoping that when he feels he is partly in control of what happens to him and he has an outlet for his academic concerns, he will approach his schoolwork with a little more enthusiasm. My husband heard a panel of gifted teenagers talking at a conference and noticed that they all said they wanted to be pushed by their teachers, not by their parents. I am taking a lesson from this. I want the IEP team to push Peter so that I can just be his parent.
Peter and the Psychological Community
I would like to digress just a moment and talk about our child's experi- ences with "counseling." Counseling is something that many gifted chil- dren need, as do many normal children. Even when schools balk at provid- ing meaningful educational opportunities to grfted children, they are always more than happy to provide a counselor. I have, however, been shocked repeatedly by the ignorance some of these professionals show toward gifted children. We have had two different PhD psychologists tell us that Peter was ADHD and needed to be on Ritalin, because they ignored the si@cant differences between gifted and ADHD behaviors and fo- cused only on the similarities. (We talked with national experts on the gifted and ADHD and were reassured that they were wrong in Peter's case.) The second incident was with a psychologist who, because she was in a hurry, administered both the WISC I1 and Woodcock Johnson tests to Peter over a 3-hr period without even letting him out of his chair to walk around, go to the bathroom, or eat a snack. She then lectured me for 45 min about how I would ruin his life if I didn't put him on Ritalin because he can't pay attention!
Our son really has not fared any better with school counselors. I could only describe his elementary school counseling experiences as "victim training." Peter has always been teased and bullied, but he learned early that he would not likely get justice from the adults, which only emboldened the bullies. Because I only hear Peter's side of the stories, I try not to get emotional about this. I can't help but wonder sometimes, however, if there are teachers and counselors who basically feel that gifted children, because they are different, bring these things on themselves, and because they are
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already academically privileged, they deserve no pity. Thus, they are sent to the counselor to learn how to turn the other cheek. If any other handi- capped child was bullied on the playground, I doubt the perpetrators would go unpunished and the victim would be sent to counseling to learn to be a better victim.
I suggested to a sixth-grade counselor once that Peter would probably take some abuse for being allowed to go home at noon every day and that we should be sensitive to that. She gave me a blank look and said that no one would know if he didn't tell anyone and that it was no different from going to the office to get asthma medication, which lots of children do! I couldn't decide if she was totally naive or totally callous, but either way I knew not to go to her for help.
I respect Peter's refusal to be counseled. Bad things still happen to him-sometimes his fault, sometimes not-but as he gets older, he seems to deal better with his anger and learns from most experiences. The stigma attached to visiting the school counselor makes counseling out of the question now. He has many positive social relationships outside of school, and I feel he is as well adjusted as we could expect.
Where We Are and Beyond
No school setting is ever going to be ideal for most gifted children. Lou and I feel that we have at least provided some good compromises for Peter. We have been very fortunate to have had the level of cooperation with the schools that we have enjoyed the last 2 years. For us, public school has been a better option than private school because they will do things (like accel- eration) that most private schools will not. The presence of an excellent gifted programs coordinator in the system has provided not only us, but many families, with a strong and important voice in IEP team meetings and in the administration. Our school system did implement the academic magnet program, which was a very positive step. We hope that Peter's experience will open the path for others. We hope he has shown that the system will not fall into chaos if you allow a @ed child to accelerate and that, with the proper support system, they can be successful.
I think it is critical that teacher colleges give more attention to training in gifted education. All regular classroom teachers are going to encounter $ted children--especially if they look for them. It is so destructive when they are ignored and held back. I have always found it difficult to deal with teachers and guidance counselors who have an attitude about gifted chil- dren because they don't understand them. A gfted program coordinator can help a sympathetic teacher help a gfted child, but if the teacher is an obstacle, the best the child can hope for is placement with a different teacher.
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During the last weekof school last spring, my husband was helping Peter prepare for his algebra final and had just explained how to do a certain equation when Peter was called to dinner . . . and called to dinner . . . and called to dinner. "Wait . . . wait, I just want to finish these problems," he said. My husband and I looked at each other in disbelief. Peter ... voluntarily lingering over an unassigned math problem? It is these momentary glimpses of a mind crying out for challenge that keeps us (very politely) pushing the school to push Peter, one year at a time.
Lou's Thoughts
School Life
Peter's school life has been roller coaster, for him and for us. As parents, we did not want to be like many parents and think that we had an exceptionally brilliant child, so we probably ignored things like the reading specialist in kindergarten. In second grade, Peter had a first-year teacher who did not know what to do with Peter. He would read Newsweek at home and wanted to talk in class about the articles he had read. The teacher knew that Peter did not fit into the classroom when he started a discussion with her about international banking, and she suggested that we have him tested and identified as a gifted student. In hindsight, it should have been obvious that Peter is fled. Not only did we not recognize the signs, we did not even know what the signs were.
In our first IEP team meeting, we were told about all the special programs that would be offered to Peter the next year. Needless to say, the special programs were less than I expected them to be. Third grade started out poorly. We had a conference with the teacher, who claimed that Peter had a retention problem and would have to do the regular curriculum until he demonstrated that he knew the material. Peter also had his name listed daily on the blackboard for bad behavior. Generally Peter was unaware of why his name was listed on the board. He did not understand, for instance, why he could not read his books in class when they returned from the library.
In fourth grade, Peter's tolerance for school had reached a limit. We decided that we had to home school him the next year. Sue AM taught him everything except science. When teaching science, I tried to avoid the elementary-school-collection-of-facts science class that I hated as a kid. We did science projects: biology, chemistry, and electronics.
Peter returned to public school for sixth grade, except that he came home early for math and science at home. There were long discussions at his IEP team meeting about his fifth-grade curriculum and whether he really
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learned all the material deemed appropriate for fifth grade. With sixth grade, I continued to teach science. This time I discovered a high school biology course offered through the extension division of the University of Missouri. The course could provide high school credit in science. We were not interested in the high school credit. I was happy that someone else had picked up the burden of making the lesson plan and to find a course that had a recognized lesson plan for the next year's IEP team meeting.
Peter worked with the Educational Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) Program from Stanford University for math. This was a CD-ROM-based math course with lectures and interactive problem solving. Peter's math skills improved dramatically; he learned to do fairly complicated problems in his head (because he did not want to take the time to write down the numbers). Half way through the year, however, Peter let us know that he did not like the math program. Peter hated the repetition of the program, and he was forced to work thousands of problems. The computer would not advance if you did not answer the problem. He started to answer every question with B, just so that he could move ahead to the next problem. Sue Ann then worked with Peter using the highest level prealgebra book that I could find.
Peter was with his age peers in seventh grade and went to the high school to take math and science. It was successful, and he plans to do it again in eighth grade. I am certain that there are other students that are also gifted and should join Peter for a partial day at the high school. Why does this not happen, or why has this not happened before? I recall a teacher who once voiced concern about a student taking algebra too early. She was worried that the student would get to calculus before their senior year and that there would be no more math left for them to learn! It is concerns like these that prevent more students from accelerating in particular subject areas.
Mountains Climbed
I find it is often very lonely to be the parent of a grfted child and an advocate for programs for the gifted. Friends label you as a pushy parent who expects special favors for your child. They do not want to hear about your problems with the schools because they view you as the problem, not the school.
There is a very common feeling that @ed students will always succeed. A slow learner is doomed for failure if he or she is not given special attention; however, gifted students will figure it out on their own, no matter what the problem is. This misconception is shared by parents and school teachers and administrators alike. There is no appreciation for the different methods
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of learning by the gdted students. There is no appreciation for the frustra- tion and boredom of the gifted students when material is reviewed for the second, third, or even fourth and fifth time. There is no appreciation for the constant badgering and tormenting of the grfted student for being different.
Peter is known among his school classmates because of "the way he talks." No, Peter does not have a funny accent or speech problem. Peter uses a large vocabulary. I do not believe that Peter chooses to use an extended vocabulary to demonstrate his intelligence. I think that Peter simply chooses the best words that he knows to communicate an idea. He does not realize that other kids are not using the same words that he uses. In fact, he does not realize that other kids do not share his interest and knowledge in many of the subjects about which he talks. I recall being teased as a child and being frequently asked to "speak like a professor." I know from experience; it is embarrassing as a child to have others point to your differences and make fun of them.
Unfortunately our society does not help. Intelligent kids are "nerds" or "geeks." Even the schools promote these terrible stereotypes. The school newspaper contained a column talking about the nerds and geeks at school. Why do they allow a child with outstanding skills to solve math problems to be called a "jerk?" Why do we not promote academics? For instance, how much have you read about the winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry? The United States has been home to a wide range of scientists, musicians, poets, writers, and other intellectuals, yet for the most part, they are forgotten names buried in thick history books.
Divergent thinking is so foreign to many people that they do not realize it is one of the characteristics of a gifted student. There is a classic story of the young gdted student who was asked about the difference between a fish and a submarine; after thinking for bit, he said, "a submarine has lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise but a fish normally has just tartar sauce." The student demonstrated the divergent thinking of the gdted student. This is not always accompanied by outstanding grades at school. Indeed, the answer of mayonnaise and tartar sauce is appreciated by parents and teachers of the gdted. It would be regarded, however, as a "smart aleck answer and would earn the student a low grade in some classrooms.
What Needs to Be Done
Establish the problem. We have learned to work with the schools, not against them. The first and most important step of any meeting with the school is to create a consensus that something needs to be done. Get everyone to agree that the regular classroom is not correct. After estab-
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lishing the problem, then work on the solution. Too often, parents start meetings with solutions, and the other side of the table has not decided if there is, indeed, a problem.
Do not grve up. When working with the local school district to create a magnet program for the gifted students, we would have a 3-hr meeting and finally convince the administrator that something had to be done for these students. A week later, we would attend another meeting with a different administrator. We were back to ground zero and had to reestablish the need all over again. It was frustrating to meet with the third set of administrators and wonder if these meetings were designed to wear down the parents. In the end, the results are worth the efforts.
Consider all the alternatives. We often think that we have no options. Often, there are many possibilities. Take some time to think of all the things that could be done. When we felt the school situation was hopeless, we opted for home schooling. When Peter decided that he wanted to go back to school, we asked for him to take art and band at school. The school said that was impossible. We then discussed how Peter could come back to school full time. The school agreed that Peter needed special instruction in both math and science. To them, this meant hiring tutors for two subjects. The expense of hiring two tutors did not fit into the school budget. We continued to talk about the options and decided that he would come home for math and science after lunch each day. It was a novel concept for the school to have a student partially home schooled and partially in public schools.
Work with the schools and teachers. Often, parents view the IEP team meeting as parents versus the school system. Sue Ann and I sit apart at IEP team meetings. We try to avoid creating an "us versus them" situation. We try to structure the meeting as a roundtable meeting of defining the problem and discussing the solutions. Everyone is working for the same goal. We take some time at the beginning of the meeting to describe Peter to any new members of the IEP team. We bring pictures of Peter, so he is not just another name but a person. We also know that the school system has a budget and must offer many and varied services within that budget. It is ridiculous to ask for a special tutor for each subject. We offer to provide special transpor- tation if they provide special services.
Seek professional help and advice. As parents, we have read a wide range of literature on gifted education, gifted emotional problems, and gifted students. We have attended conferences on gifted students. I have called
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and spent hours on the phone with experts in the field of gifted education. We have also had many long, open, and hard discussions with parents of other gifted kids. The other parents often let us know that we are not alone, and they tell us how they found solutions (or what did not work) with their problems; they have faced similar problems.
What the schools can do better. Parents of @ed students need to find other parents of gifted students. Local and state talented and gfted organi- zations play an essential role in providing support groups, information dissemination, and someone who understands the problems that you face. Many parents do not know where to find such organizations. I remember feeling alone. A friend of Sue Ann gave us some information about the Kentucky organization for talented and gifted students. I wondered why Tennessee did not have such an organization. A year later, a parent of a grfted student in our town told me that Tennessee does have a talented and grfted organization; it is called TAG-Tenn. Why didn't the school tell me about TAG-Tenn when Peter was identified as @ed?
Parents of gifted students need help and guidance. Sometimes their shouts and finger pointing are cries of desperation. It would be a positive step forward for school systems to have a gfted resource center. At this center, parents could pick up literature from local, state, and national associations for the gifted. Almost every state has a gdted organization with a newsletter. Copies of these newsletters (or just the application form) should be handed to each parent.
Parents will h l p . The parents of many gifted students are committed to the education of their children. Parents should be invited to tell students about their careers. Parents can assist with larger projects or trips for the gifted students. Many parents are very willing to devote time and energy in developing gifted programs, if they are given some guidance. I serve as the editor of the newsletter for the Tennessee Association for the Gifted. The newsletter is to inform parents and teachers about issues important to grfted education, gifted students, schools, and families. I hope that my efforts will help more gifted students receive an appropriate education. I care, because I know that Peter is one of those students.
It Is the Job of the Schools to Educate the Students
Perhaps it is my most conservative thought, but I think it is the job of the schools to educate the students. That's it, nothing more. It is a monumental job, so why would I expect any more? I dislike it when schools think things
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like social development are their primary concerns. It is not in school that Peter develops social skills. Peter goes to school to learn. -
What Works
Clustering. In third grade, Peter had pull-out programs for the gifted. I am not convinced that these programs have any affect on the gifted students. In recent years, Peter has been clustered with other d t e d stu- dents. Peter has been competitive with other @ed students when he is clustered with them. Still, he appreciates the higher level academic program that is possible with a class of primarily gdted students.
Summer programs. The structure of schools is very restrictive to Peter. I am not certain if it is the rules, the students who tease him, the rigid attitude of some teachers, or a combination of all of these. Peter does not develop social skills at school. On the contrary, we have found Peter to be really happy and socially matched in programs like Space Camp or Duke Univer- sity's Talent Identification Program (TIP) summer program. In these situ- ations, he is with other gifted students. He is not teased about what he knows. He finds other kids with interests and abilities similar to his. I have no idea if Peter benefits academically from these programs. Frankly, I do not care. I know that he can act like Peter at these camps, and that is all right.
Academic challenges. The students need to be academically challenged by their teachers. A panel of gifted high school students at a conference all stated that the teachers they admired the most were the teachers who pushed them to do more. They did not want to be pushed to do more busy work. They wanted intellectual challenges with results. As mentioned previously, they wanted the pressure to work to come from their teachers, not their parents. These students recognized the separate roles of the parents and teachers and did not appreciate having the roles mixed.
Intensive learning in one topic. Peter likes to learn just as a small child learns to eat: one food at a time. Peter enjoys intensive learning in a specific subject, then moving on to another subject. He does not learn in 30-min blocks of math, reading, science, social studies, etc. If we are discussing a science topic, he likes to learn that topic in increasingly complicated detail, until he is unable to keep the concepts straight.
Accelerated learning. The most distasteful part of learning for Peter is having to repeat anything. Of course, repetition is key to our system of learning. If you do not remember eight times seven, you repeat the problem
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until you memorize eight times seven. Peter wants to be told 8 times 7 is 56 and then move on. Of course he will not remember the answer the next day. Before long, he will have to divide 56 by 8. Then, he will use his 8 times 7 multiplication fact. He will use and repeat this multiplication problem in many different problems. If it is something important to know, he will eventually learn it.
When I suggest accelerated learning, I mean teach the broad concepts. Go over the details, but do not "sweat the details." The details that are important will be covered again. Move ahead and let the student be responsible for the missing details. The average student gets lost when the details are missing. Peter fills in the details when necessary.
How do I know that Peter fills in the details? When Peter was given the IQ test and the Woodcock-Johnson exam, the psychologist noted that Peter might have a photographic memory. He would recite encyclopedia expla- nations for many of the questions asked. As far as we know, Peter does not have a photographic memory. He does remember enough details to sound like a =port from an encyclopedia.
Grades. As a parent, I am aware that grades are unimportant to what or how a gifted student is learning, yet college entrances, scholarships, honor rolls, and many other aspects of our society make grades critically important. It is difficult for us to be consistent with grades. We try to show an appreciation for good grades and let it be known that we have expecta- tions. At the same time, we try to avoid punishing Peter for poor grades or poor performance on a test. It is very hard to avoid the trap of expecting a gifted child to perform well, especially when we have a pretty good idea how much he has or has not worked. One thing we know is that Peter is intelligent enough to understand perfectly how his grades may affect his future. After we have provided him with incentives, expectations, and a home environment conducive to learning, we have to accept that he is ultimately in control of the quality of his work. Like the minute math tests, he does not seem to fear the consequences. Only time will reveal if we worried too much, or not enough.
Summary and Conclusion
As parents, we try to create a world around Peter that is as normal as possible, both in his school experience and nonschool activities, while still meeting his emotional and educational needs. We know that some modifi- cations have to be made and that he willnot interact with others in a normal way nor will he have "typical" experiences in many settings. We also know
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that those who indulge Peter with a little more patience and acceptance receive much more back from him than they ever expect. Although it is not the burden of gdted children to enrich the classroom for others, the effort that educators put forth to provide gifted children with a satisfying learning environment will ultimately be rewarded many times over.
Post Script
Because of scheduling problems, it was not possible for Peter to attend eighth grade and take math and science classes at the high school this year. We discussed the situation with Peter, and he said that the high school classes were his first priorities. So, he enrolled full time at the high school. So far, he is doing well.
Acknowledgments
We thank Anne Corn for her invitation to submit this manuscript. We also appreciate all of her help and guidance and inspiration in our struggle to educate Peter.
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