妈妈笑的博客
我的生活
呼吁书中提到好几所我们家附近的学校,我都叉叉掉了.
自己孩子是>HG的,可以看一看,得到一些启发.文中提到的私立GT学校没能解决问题,虽然没提是哪一所私立,也能猜得差不多,因为我们这里GT学校很少.文中还提到家教(home schooling),也没能解决问题.另外我的一个同事也试过家教,最后也是不成功,放弃了.他的四个孩子都是GT.女儿很可能是HG(很久以前的事,他记不得了). But what happens when highly gifted students for developing worldclass scientific leaders do not •When not challenged, gifted students will often “dumb themselves down” in order to avoid work they do not find meaningful, and also not to be singled out as “smart” among their same-age peers •Gifted learners are often not high achievers when they are in educational arrangements that do not challenge them •When presented with curriculum developed for age-peers, they can become bored, unhappy, disengaged, and get turned off from learning receive acceleration: •Acceleration is usually effective in terms of social-emotional adjustment •Intellectually precocious students who experience acceleration early in the academic career view their pre-college education experiences much more positively •Accelerated students are more likely than non-accelerants to aspire to advanced educational degrees • In radical acceleration programs (acceleration by two or more years), highly gifted students achieve high, sometimes extraordinary, levels of academic success • Acceleration is highly effective for academic achievement, and is far more effective than the most successful school reform models
•Accelerated experiences for students appears to be critical.
states: “The boredom that often results from discrepancies between the child’s knowledge and the school’s offerings leads to underachievement and behavior disorders affecting self and others”
While these facts may just be words on a page, they illustrate the very “real” uphill battle our family has faced in the last 11 years in attempting to find the best possible educational arrangement for our two daughters, Rachel (11) and Maegan (8), students at WXX Academy and WXX Elementary, respectively. To bring these startling facts to light, let us share our own story.
When our oldest daughter was two years old, she started to pull books from her bookshelf and began to read them without ever having had any reading instruction. After having a pre-school lab teacher tell us that our daughter was reading high school textbooks to her student teachers, we knew that our daughter was special. That was confirmed when she took an IQ test that put her in the profoundly gifted range. While to many parents this information would have been a blessing, for us it was merely the beginning of a long, difficult road we have traversed in our attempt to best educate our children.
As a public educator for 15 years, I know first-hand the well-meaning, yet ill-informed mentality that exists in most schools in regards to highly gifted students:we don’t need to spend money or resources on those kids – they’re smart, and will do well no matter what we do. Having spent most of my career in special education, I know that federal oversight and aggressive litigation has made it easier for students with disabilities to receive appropriate educational services. But gifted students have not received the same attention.
It was this disparity that led us first to enroll Rachel in a nearby private school that advertised itself as serving only gifted learners. Initially, Rachel was happy to be socializing with gifted peers, but in her second year when I joined the faculty of the school, I learned that even this school could not accommodate the few highly gifted students enrolled there. In fact, I found the school to be much like a public school campus where most of the curriculum and educational focus was on the middle part of the curve, and the two extremes (highly gifted and disabled students) very rarely received services that were appropriate for them. Because of that fact, we decided to home school Rachel. Initially, I was approached by several parents of the private school to teach their children as well in the home school setting with our daughter. But the experiment failed, as Rachel once again was not being challenged in an environment with proper acceleration. While the other students were gifted, Rachel’s high abilities still made her feel like an outsider.
Why?
By this time, our youngest child, Maegan, was old enough to attend pre-school at the WWXX. Having exhibited some of the same advanced characteristics as her sister, we had her tested and she actually scored higher on an assessment Rachel had taken at the same age. We felt very strongly that Maegan was ready for kindergarten, but because of the state age requirements and a strong resistance from Wilchester’s administration at that time, we were unable to provide that acceleration for her. So, Maegan spent a year in pre-school without being challenged at all. This trend continued when she moved to WX the next year, where Rachel had finally decided to attend, as well. While we were able to advocate for Maegan’s skipping kindergarten, we were still met with a great deal of resistance on the campus level for both our daughters. STAT meetings often became a very hostile environment, even when we had the support and backing of the district’s G/T director, Dr. BXXX. It was a perfect illustration of misinformed educators who were all but resistant to change.
So where are we now? Rachel is now in 6th grade at WXX Academy, and is only accelerated in 7th grade math. While Rachel is learning new concepts, she does not appear to be academically challenged and breezes through her work with all A’s in Pre-AP classes. The problem, though, is that Rachel has had such bad experiences with her previous educational arrangements that she is not willing to even consider acceleration, in fear of seeming “out of place” with her peers. Even though she is capable of high school work (and even university level in some areas), she has become another casualty of an educational system that forced her to adapt to their rules, and not do what is best for her. Consequently, she has become content with not being challenged. As for Maegan, she is now in 3rd grade at WXX 小学, and is only accelerated for 4th grade math. Maegan is bored, unchallenged, and has great difficulty finding peers with whom she can relate to. At only 8 years old, she seems to have lost her excitement and motivation to learn and excel. While this proposed program cannot help our oldest daughter, we really hope that it can bring about the part of Maegan that used to love learning. That is really what the goal of education is – to foster a life-long love of learning. Isn’t it?
Having said all this, we don’t want to make it seem as if XX ISD has failed our children. On the contrary, Dr. BXX’s constant search for better ways to accommodate highly gifted learners has kept us in the district, because we know that XX ISD is at the forefront of doing what is best for each individual student. Now, we are so close to seeing our hopes and dreams for our children come to fruition in the form of this new program. While we have personal reasons for seeing this program succeed, we would like you to consider the possibilities that this program could have. People are always asking where the next Einstein will come from, where the cure for cancer will come from, and where our next world leader will originate from? Wouldn’t it be nice for the answer to all these questions be XX Independent School District?
Thank you again for allowing us to share our story and our feelings about this wonderful program.
Sincerely,
家长签名.
It Affects All of Us
Our Own Experience
•These studies also found: “Many highly gifted children underachieve seriously in the regular classroom and that, by the end of elementary school, many have almost completely lost the motivation to excel”
•Longitudinal studies on students who were capable, but not accelerated, found these students to have greater rates of dropping out, depression, lack of confidence and motivation, and even higher rates of suicide
•A 1993 report concluded that “Over half the population of gifted students do not match their tested ability with comparable achievement in school”
•The Marland Report
Monday, November 29, 2010
To Whom It May Concern,
As parents (including one who is a public educator), we want to thank you for the opportunity to share our thoughts about the proposed program for highly gifted learners that is being considered for XX ISD. To start, we would like to say that we are not only in full support of such a program for our daughter, but as parents, educators, and citizens of the greatest nation in the world, we think we have a moral imperative to devote as much time and resources to highly gifted students as is already afforded students on the rest of the learning continuum. So, let us begin with the obvious question:Templeton National Report on Acceleration
Academic acceleration for highly gifted students has been thoroughly researched and documented, and here are some of the most significant findings of these studies as highlighted in the
• Acceleration is the best educational intervention for high ability (gifted) students, and works better than any other type of educational arrangement
