Independent School Teacher Pet Peeve Thread

[Anonymous]

To answer the NMSSF's question about why I was offended it was mainly because of this post which I pasted below. Also when I said blathering on I was again referring to posts like this.

The PG crusader will come back and have some argument about why what she is advocating will not have this result. But look at her statement about honor roll and how it isn't right for gifted kids to be on it if they are only putting out half the effort. That, my friends, is robbing your kid of his or her accomplishments. I hope her kids don't do what I did, and stand numb after hearing they got As on their thesis defenses and would graduate with high honors in their academic majors. I knew I should be happy, but all I could feel was a small relief that I didn't f up. At least I still get out of bed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:17:08, allow me to congratulate you on your correct use of ellipses....

I thought ellipses should only contain three dots...

In the middle of a sentence ... yes. But if they come at the end of a sentence, you have 3 dots for the ellipses, and then 1 dot for the period, making a total of 4 dots, not 3 or 5 or 6. The PP with the question correctly has 3 dots and a question mark.

For what it's worth, I'm guessing several of us who are arguing with the PG crusader did really well on this sort of thing on the PSATs and are NMSSFs and/or are very gifted, whatever you want that to mean. I'm not the first ellipses poster, or the one who caught "it's." I am an NMSSF, although my parents would never tell me the results of IQ tests. Another poster, again not me, actually identified herself as PG. This means we've lived the gifted thing ourselves, and we have kids who have also lived it. So when argue with a PG Crusader who gets things like this wrong (and believe me, we've been kind, there were lots of other opportunities), we speak from personal experience about advocacy, and what works and what doesn't work for gifted kids.

It is rare that I agree 100% with everything another poster has said. In this case, I do. She is dead right on punctuation. She is also dead right on the point that those of us who have personal experience with being gifted/highly gifted/profoundly gifted want to strangle the poster or posters who take such completely crazy positions about what is "right" for these kids - and she means (or they mean) all of these kids. I have not posted on this thread before, but I did post twice on the "S/O Privates are not filled with gifted kids" thread or whatever it was called. I was the "I give up" poster towards the end. After spending pages going on about how wrong we all are on these things and how private schools are a bad choice for gifted kids unless they do what she suggests, she ended with something like, "I will not judge you for your parenting choice in choosing to enroll your gifted kids in private school." I don't judge her for her parenting choices either, but I do seriously want to strangle her. The depth of her smugness knows no bounds, and I feel for her kids.

When I look back at all the things I wish had been different about my middle school and high school experience, and what I wish my parents knew, I never wish for a parent with her views. I know a lot of seriously damaged people with whom I went through many years of the gifted program, including one truly profoundly gifted kid who won a national science prize and went to MIT at 15, and my highest wish as a parent is to avoid that kind of an educational experience for my children. None of us - I really mean this - NONE - had a good outcome. I'm probably the most together of the bunch now. None of us have gone on to become the Google guys, or discover the cure for a rare disease, or to become president of whatever. We are all, for the most part, plagued by the sense that we didn't live up to our potential. The math whiz I mentioned above is plagued by depression and can rarely get out of bed sometimes.

My kids will never know their IQ scores. I wish I had never been told mine, although all my teachers knew it. I'll never forget my sophomore year when a language teacher threw it in my face in a classroom spat (in front of all my classmates) when he was ranting about how he wanted to teach normal kids and not kids like me with an IQ of XXX. (I came up with a question for which he had no answer. Apparently one is not supposed to do that in German class.) Being told my highly gifted IQ number and being labeled gifted was all bad, not good. It robbed me of the ability to be proud of my accomplishments (because, hey, with that IQ I should have done well - in fact better because I missed one question, so I really didn't do well at all). It didn't teach me how to buckle down and work hard even if I didn't like the teacher because - who cares? - I was gifted. I never liked school after 5th grade (when I got the label) until I got to a very strong and top 5 rated liberal arts college. If the school had not chosen to put more faith in my interview and SAT scores than in high school class rank (I think I was only top 10% and my grades were very uneven), I am not sure where I would be now. Maybe answering phones for RCN. Certainly not holding the kind of job that lets me choose to send two kids to private school.

The PG crusader will come back and have some argument about why what she is advocating will not have this result. But look at her statement about honor roll and how it isn't right for gifted kids to be on it if they are only putting out half the effort. That, my friends, is robbing your kid of his or her accomplishments. I hope her kids don't do what I did, and stand numb after hearing they got As on their thesis defenses and would graduate with high honors in their academic majors. I knew I should be happy, but all I could feel was a small relief that I didn't f up. At least I still get out of bed.

There is science to back this up -- studies that show that telling kids how gifted they are undermines their development. Achievements are expected, and therefore worthless. Kids stop trying after a while. They feel like failures. Kids in programs for the profoundly gifted rarely end up successful as adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To answer the NMSSF's question about why I was offended it was mainly because of this post which I pasted below. Also when I said blathering on I was again referring to posts like this.

The PG crusader will come back and have some argument about why what she is advocating will not have this result. But look at her statement about honor roll and how it isn't right for gifted kids to be on it if they are only putting out half the effort. That, my friends, is robbing your kid of his or her accomplishments. I hope her kids don't do what I did, and stand numb after hearing they got As on their thesis defenses and would graduate with high honors in their academic majors. I knew I should be happy, but all I could feel was a small relief that I didn't f up. At least I still get out of bed.

I'm the NMSSF (I sort of hate that tag, but I agree it's helpful to know who is speaking). I found the statement you bolded to be poignant rather than offensive. I'm trying to work out how it's compatable with her, and my, concern about telling kids they are gifted. I think we are saying many of the same things, and there is some commonality to be found here, but to be honest there's a lot going on at my house this afternoon and I will have to come back to this.

[Anonymous]

I don't know where the 10:22 got the idea that anyone was against praise for effort or in favor of easy-As/coasting.

That said, I don't want my kid to live for praise. I don't think wasted effort is inherently praiseworthy. And I think that doing worthwhile things well merits praise/appreciation regardless of how much effort was involved. Things like grades, money, and external reward structures matter to the extent that they affect your ability to do what you want to do, but, beyond that, they don't usually function as a source of standards for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is science to back this up -- studies that show that telling kids how gifted they are undermines their development. Achievements are expected, and therefore worthless. Kids stop trying after a while. They feel like failures. Kids in programs for the profoundly gifted rarely end up successful as adults.

The research I've seen on the "praise for effort" issue doesn't exactly say that. It says that kids praised for effort (or whose success is attributed to effort) will be more willing to accept a challenge framed as more difficult than kids whose success at the previous level was framed as a sign of their intelligence. It's not that the latter feel like failures -- they feel that the only way to go is down (i.e. they can disprove the "smart" diagnosis). Whereas the kids who are told effort is what matters will usually be willing to put more effort in. So it's really results vs. process more than brains vs. effort.

I have not seen a study on this topic that compared the habits/performance/attitudes of gifted-kids-who-know-they-are-gifted vs. gifted-kids-who-don't-know-they-are-gifted. Did you have one (or some) in mind?

What's the basis for the claim that kids in programs for the profoundly gifted rarely end up successful as adults? At face value, I'm skeptical because there aren't that many cases to study (e.g. rare kids and such programs are of relatively recent vintage) and much would depend on your definition of success. Certainly programs like CTY claim lots of successes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know where the 10:22 got the idea that anyone was against praise for effort or in favor of easy-As/coasting.

That said, I don't want my kid to live for praise. I don't think wasted effort is inherently praiseworthy. And I think that doing worthwhile things well merits praise/appreciation regardless of how much effort was involved. Things like grades, money, and external reward structures matter to the extent that they affect your ability to do what you want to do, but, beyond that, they don't usually function as a source of standards for me.

What do you think of the theory that failure breeds success? Just to be clear, I'm talking about "wasted effort" in the sense of working on something that doesn't pan out - not wasted effort because DC had one eye on Facebook all the time he was studying for the test he got a C on. But there's a body of literature that says that learning from your failures is crucial for success. So if a kid works hard on a science project but all the plants die or whatever, the kid has still learned something from this failure. This would seem relevant for a lot of gifted kids I know, who tend to be perfectionists and fear failure.

[Anonymous]

Failure's different than waste. And it's not wasted effort if you learn something from it. OTOH, I don't think waste is limited to the half-assed effort (e.g. Facebook while studying). If you do something obviously stupid, after being told it was stupid, and you keep doing it again and again after it's apparent that this approach is getting you nowhere, I think that would be a situation where effort is wasted (or at least not praiseworthy). Basically, the resilience I see as praiseworthy isn't of the whack-a-mole variety -- it requires a learning curve.

From an early age, DC has heard (and seen me point to examples of my own making, LOL!) that we learn through failure and that the appropriate response is not to despair but figure out what you learned or what went wrong and how you can do things different (hopefully better) next time. I *was* worried about perfectionism, because as a college prof I saw so many bright kids have nothing insightful to contribute because their main goal was don't be wrong rather than figure something out and they just refused to take any intellectual risks. But either that wasn't in the cards for DC or we successfully averted it. We were careful to choose a school that was on the same page in this respect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12. Parents who come to lunch and spoon/fork feed their 6 year olds.

13. My child lost their library book somewhere in the school. Can you find it?

14. I didn't have time to brush my child's hair. Parent then hands you a comb in carpool line.

C'mon. 12 and 14 didn't really happen, did they?

I'd believe 14 happened because I experienced the following "She didn't have time to brush her teeth this morning. Parent then handed me toothpaste and toothbrush."

[Anonymous]

I heard a K teacher complain about parents visiting during lunch to slip their kids Tylenol/cold syrup.

[Anonymous]

Parent to teacher, overheard at Back-to-School Night (high school):

"As you know, DD has been sick and has missed several days of school. I'm sure she's already behind in her work, but please don't tell her that because it will ruin her whole year."

[Anonymous]

Another teacher pet peeve: Parents who assert that a given teacher has "ruined" or "destroyed" child's love of a given subject.

[Anonymous]

Dangerous teen drivers zooming thru campus in $60,000 cars

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another teacher pet peeve: Parents who assert that a given teacher has "ruined" or "destroyed" child's love of a given subject.

This should be beyond a pet peeve. This should be a genuine source of anger.

[Anonymous]

Meaning you don't think it ever happens or it's a rude/nasty thing to say or it's typically melodramatic (and almost nherently so in real time)?

I certainly think it happens -- my dad gave up singing for decades after a really bad experience in school (only to take it up again in retirement and love it anew). And I've seen teachers whose approach is alienating and dispiriting for some students. The impact of those teachers probably depends on where/when they're encountered (e.g. more dangerous when a kid encounters them at his/her first chance to take it a subject in school, or at a decision making point about whether to take advanced classes in the subject) and what kind of support the kid has for his/her interest at home.

But if we believe that teachers can awaken a love in a subject, why shouldn't we believe they can destroy it as well?

[Anonymous]

For the record, I (8:44) am a teacher.