Alan & Brenda Leonard

5/31/03 05:29:

> Also, what about kids who are *gifted*? Katherine is learning so much at
> school, and in her Enrichment class. She is learning stuff that is beyond her
> *grade level* in this class. Stuff that I'm amazed that she is learning and
> doing.

*Gifted* education is not supposed to mean that you're learning beyond your
grade level (doing 5th grade work in 2nd grade type thing). The point of
gifted education is supposed to be that the children are learning more in
depth of the subject than the surface skim that a normal classroom gives.
They're also supposed to have time for things that normal classrooms don't
have time to do.

This is one of my father's favorite rants; he's an Educational Consultant
for the State of Iowa. Most schools don't get that. I know the DODDS
school here doesn't. When I registered my son for school so he could join
chess club and use the library (our post library is awful), they wanted to
test him for Talanted and Gifted (TAG). I asked a lot of questions as to
what the TAG classes were studying, and was told that they're learning
French because languages are "so good for kids", and they learn to play
chess, and some other things like 5th grade is learning Algebra.

My son already plays chess, and we live in GERMANY, folks. They get a very
basic dash through German culture for 1 hour a week in their classrooms, why
not work on their GERMAN, since it would have practical use! Oy.

The thing that strikes me for your friend, though, is the last sentence. My
questions for her would be, "Is your daughter amazed at the things she's
learning and doing?" and "Are these things that *she* really wants to be
learning?"

brenda

Alan & Brenda Leonard

> I notice in observing my kids that their interest in things tends to go in
> spurts. And, interestingly enough, it's when they're doing "nothing" in a
> given "subject" that the real progression happens.

YES! This is so much what I see, too. It's as though the information has
to go in and be processed for a while before it suddenly reappears in a new,
more complete form.

I think this is the step that schools miss so badly, too. Kids learn stuff
in the first stage, if you will. They ask and answer questions about it.
Then test, and boom, it's over. On to something else.

But they never get time to apply it to the other stuff they know and
reconnect it in different ways. Sort of like my son's beloved legos. New
sets always get built and played with as sets. Eventually Tim pulls them
apart. And they sit in piles for weeks on end. And one day, they reappear
in a whole different form, as part of something else.

My mother is a school teacher, and totally does not get what we do here.
She also insists that lego sets stay in their sets, and re-boxes them after
they're taken apart. I wonder if these are connected, somehow.....

brenda