Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
...
Jenrose wrote:


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.


Sure, they should have programs and opportunities for
gifted kids. But if they *don't*, then besides agitating for
them to have appropriate programs, one has to find a solution
that is workable in the current environment. And believe me,
having *been* a gifted kid in a school (at various times--I
was in a lot of different schools) where there were no programs,
I would *NOT* have wanted a solution where my folks pulled me
out of school once a week! I was already different enough,
thank you very much. Doing something that made it painfully
obvious that everyone else was having to accommodate me would
have been much worse. We found other solutions that worked
within the classroom structure. Sometimes I'd go to the
library (to read, to help, or to do special projects) *after*
I'd done the work for my regular class. Sometimes the
teacher would give me extra projects to do when I was
bored. There were always plenty of ways to keep me from
being bored in class when we looked for them.


I agree...but I've also been in situations myself where the teacher and the
school were not interested in making ANY adaptations, so I skated through,
bored. Mom agitated, but they mainstreamed the gifted kids to the "CP"
program from the "advanced placement" for 11th grade...and it was terrible.
They said they did it to "bring up" the level of the CP class...yet we were
getting cutsy certificates with stickers on them for acing brainless quizzes
about poor movie adaptations of literature.

I agree that anything that puts a kid up as "separate" is lousy--but when a
kid is very bright and clearly bored by the curriculum, they're both
isolated AND bored silly--might as well cure the boredom if you can't fix
the isolation.

I agree that the first step is to get some adaptation within the classroom
structure--my point in my lengthy post is to show a situation which avoids
all of these issues--kids aren't routinely taken out, yet even if they miss
a few days the school adapts. Kids are engaged in the learning process. Kids
are not bored. They can work up to their level and are encouraged to keep
pushing that level, not to compete, but simply because new challenges lie
ahead if they do.



But you'll notice that none of your suggestions involved
taking your child out of school every week! Your child is
working *within* a very nice system--and using adaptations
that the OP very likely *could* get implemented for her
child with a little effort!

Which is one of the reasons I went into such detail...g

Personally, I think that's a
much better approach than trying to "fix" things by bailing
on the regular classroom once a week. It's far less likely
to cause problems or resentment, and it's likely much easier
for the teacher to accommodate.

I agree. Partial homeschooling can work, but works best, IMO, when you are
cutting out "all" of one specific segment (say, if math is done every
Tuesday and Thurs from 10-11:30, then you take your kid out of all of the
math sessions and do math separately). Or when you're doing a majority
homeschool and using the school to supplement with music or such. My
daughter's classes are consistent enough week to week that it would be very
easy to do that sort of arrangment if we needed to. But it is best, IMO, to
NOT need to.

Jenrose