"Vicki" wrote in message
news
Today we received a warning letter for truancy for our 2nd grader. The
principal said she was concerned about dd's absences. I am not concerned
about dd's absences--she is bright, she knows the material [she's missed
five days this month, but received 100 on her test for materials covered.]
I don't think the teacher is concerned. But the principal said dd is only
allowed 5 excused absences per semester.

I'm not happy about the possibility of legal sanctions for keeping dd home
(she was sick this month, but I wouldn't hesitate to take her out of
school
for other things we feel are important.) Can they prosecute us for
truancy
when dd is top of her class? I don't see the harm to anyone in dd not
going. And she *will* miss more school at Thanksgiving (important family
time.)

We had planned to talk at school conferences about keeping dd home one day
per week, or bi-weekly, to enhance her education. But from what I've read
about truancy laws tonight, this doesn't seem to be allowable. Has anyone
done this or know if it is doable?

dd does not want to homeschool full-time--she likes seeing her friends at
school and we think this is good for her. We have discussed getting
appropriate challenge in her classroom--the teacher has been helpful, but
there is only so much she can do. We chose not to skip dd to the next
grade
as she is already the youngest in her class.

I feel for you... I was in the position your daughter is in now when I was
in school. Your story makes me so grateful for my daughter's school program.

I went into her kindergarten year prepared to fight. I insisted she be
tested (and she was "diagnosed" as highly gifted) because a test result
actually gives us legal rights to accelerated and enriched course matter. In
kindergarten, it wasn't much of an issue, because the academic stuff wasn't
"the point". She was only in school for 2 or 3 hours a day, and most of
that was figuring out how to be in a group, follow the rules, etc.

In first grade, she started the Family School program. This is a small
"school within a school" alternative program in our district, a public
magnet school (entrance by lottery.)

Her classroom had grades 1-3. 24 kids. Now, if a teacher can teach 24 kids
from 3 grades all day long and keep them all interested and learning, then
CERTAINLY a teacher should be able to provide gifted kids within a
single-grade classroom with enriched material. If they can't, they're not
being creative. All the 1-3 teachers at my daughter's school did it and did
it well.

I balk at the notion that a parent should "have" to homeschool to get a
gifted child what they need (although I would have yanked my kid out of
school so fast if it hadn't been great for her...) or that it should take
"extra" time outside of school hours. Kids are in school for what, 29-30
hours per week? That's PLENTY to learn what they need to learn. No, bright
kids should not end up doing make-work or busy-work when they already know
and understand the material, particularly not in grades 1-3. And if it only
takes her 4 days to learn what it takes the teacher 5 to teach...well, why
not do something else with the extra day?

My daughter is now in her 5th year (5th grade) at Family School. It is a
less "age diverse" class (they generally put all the 5th graders together)
but her teacher, nevertheless, has engaged my daughter in learning like
never before.

Some of the ways bright kids can "get more out" of existing units.

Rather than doing ordinary spelling like the other kids, the better spellers
are in "dictionary" spelling where they basically pick out their own words.
My daughter picked out some I can't even pronounce...two weeks ago it was
antidisestablishmentarianism and
pneumoultramicroscopicvolcanosilicoconiosis. Last week it was a word I've
dubbed the "flua hua" word, because it's a zillion letters long and I really
can't pronounce it. She can, though! (she always laughs when I try it...so I
get very silly about it calling it the "floxihilipilifilifluapuapication
word") And hippopotomonstrosoquipedilian (or something like that), a word
which means "long"... g I thought I had a good vocabulary--but when I was
in school, kids teased me for using long words so I started avoiding them.
She delights in them! This works best when kids are not all thrown the same
stuff but are sub-grouped. Often groups can work together to learn and
choose words, which is why one teacher can teach so many levels at once--the
kids help each other, which helps them learn too. Other kids in my
daughter's class are hunting down long words, too, now...the right kind of
peer pressure.

When writing assignments are given, in a 1-3 class, the first graders write
a few sentences and draw a picture. The third graders write a few
paragraphs. The brighter kids might write a page or two. In fifth grade, my
daughter is touch-typing 1-2 page papers.

Reading...is always at the kid's level. (Oh, they are not "graded" on their
papers. Kids are evaluated based on how well they are meeting expectations,
what they excel at and what they need to work on, but they are not "graded"
to compare them with other kids.) So you might have slow learning 3rd
graders still working on sounding things out. And quick learning 2nd graders
reading chapter books. In 5th grade my kid is in the teacher's "private book
club", where the teacher picks out books for her (3 per week) with a
challenge to read as many as she can. These are real books that the teacher
loves, and she seems to pick them out for each kid separately.

Math is done by grade level, but is so open-ended that kids who fly get to
work on really neat logic problems and word problems while kids who are
working on the basic concepts spend more time with teacher and
helping/getting help from peers (who are used to such things and don't judge
people by it.) The only "rote work" assignments are phrased such that the
kids who consider them "really easy" treat them as races (How fast can you
do it accurately?) and those who need them still have them. I suspect that
the teacher wrote one of the logic puzzles just for my kid--because it
involved food allergies (which she has) and is exactly the sort of puzzle my
kid (and the rest of the family, in fact) adore. We had great fun sorting
out which kids lived in which houses and which parents bought which treats
and who wore what costume.

Her school has always done a zillion field trips. They fund raise for them,
and ask parents for money, get donations from the community, walk to the
trips rather than bussing, take city buses rather than renting a bus, car
pool, etc. to make the trips affordable. They go 2 hrs. north to OMSI to see
the science museum there. They go to the public works plant for a tour. They
go to the library. They go out to a farm. They ride bikes as a group across
town on a bike path to see a bike shop which makes eccentric vehicles like
3-person bikes and adult tricycles.

The upshot is, my "highly gifted" kid has been educated right along with all
the other kids for the past 5 years and aside from insisting on some
alternatives to learning the alphabet (which she knew before she was 2) in
K, I've not had to play the "gifted" card since she started 1st grade. Her
teachers just provide *all* the kids with a good education, no matter how
slow or fast they learn. All children learn better from an enriched,
interesting educational environment. ALL children can benefit from hands-on
learning.

We have a terrible budget crunch. But the school adapts. The kids don't seem
to notice, although it certainly has made life harder for parents and
teachers alike. But with less than average money resources this school
manages to put it together in such a way that parents, kids AND teachers are
passionately committed to the program and each other.

If school seems pointless... find another option. Because it really doesn't
have to be that way.

In my daughter's younger classes (I haven't asked since), I asked once how
many kids were on Ritalin.

The answer?

None.

They managed to teach all the kids without any of them being drugged. They
were not required to sit still all day. They were not required to do lots of
busywork assignments. When my daughter went a quarter without turning in
homework, all of us sat down together to find out why. Turns out she was
bored with it. So the teachers okayed her turning in something else (we used
worksheets from a math workbook she liked at a higher grade level), and I
insisted that homework be her first priority every night. Now she does
homework without being prompted, and the seldom-thought-about rule is "no
computer or TV before homework." She does her homework first. I do not allow
her to do more than 10 min x grade level per night. So she knows that as
long as she works hard at it for 50 minutes (this year), when that 50
minutes is over, she's done. There's no fight about it. (well, she argued
once for an exception, I didnt' give in, it ended up taking less than half
the usual time anyway....)

When the program can't adapt wholesale to all the kids the way my daughter's
school does, even so, teachers can adapt for specific kids. Yeah, I know
it's more work. But if they can't teach in a way which keeps all the kids
interested, more work is what they've created for themselves. Let a child
pretest through material.... if she's done early, have something related but
"deeper" for her to look at herself. If a whole section is clearly something
she already knows, give her an alternate project. Don't make a big deal
about it to the class--do it quietly.

So many bright kids are just "lost" when the school fails to give them
meaningful work. I never learned good study skills--my daughter is already
far better at academic discipline than I am. Why? Because I skated through,
rarely challenged, and she has been taught to seek out challenge and work
methodically. Recently the teacher sent home a survey to find out how the
kids were feeling about homework... it said something like, "Draw a picture
of how you feel about your homework." The picture was a side-view of water,
and they were supposed to indicate whetehr they were "drowning" "just
keeping their heads up" or otherwise. My kid drew herself walking on water
and said, "Need more homework."

She had more homework within the week, and was glad of it.

Jenrose