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Old October 27th 03, 02:50 PM
Ericka Kammerer
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Default Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?

toypup wrote:

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...

I certainly won't contest your impression of your
district, as I have no experience of it. We have a similar
program (center based GT program), however, and it is *totally*
different. The kids are delightful, very well behaved, and
highly supportive of the school and school programs--not to
mention that their parents are some of the most highly
active in the whole school, and their efforts benefit the
*whole* school, not just the center based GT part. I'll
agree that the label is unfortunate, though I'm not
sure what the program ought to be called.


I doesn't matter what it's called, everyone will know what it means. We had
a blue bird, red bird program at school where the excellerated readers
started school a little later. The labels didn't mention gifted or
talented, just a different colored bird, but everyone knew what it meant.



I certainly agree with that. Most of the grades in
our school have reading and math groups. They aren't
identified as anything beyond "Mr. Alexander's reading group"
or "Mrs. Grader's math group" and they don't tell the kids
(or the parents, unless you torture it out of them!) which
groups are which, but the kids figure it out in very short
order. Still, I think there is something important about
names, and calling something the "gifted and talented"
program does beg the question of precisely what these
kids are gifted and talented *at* and whether everyone
else is *not* gifted *or* talented (which would be patently
untrue). I'd be happy seeing a somewhat different label,
but I haven't the foggiest idea what it would be. And
really, maybe it wouldn't do any good after all. Even if
you started out with more neutral words, perhaps they'd
just acquire the meanings one hoped to avoid anyway, as
you say.

Best wishes,
Ericka