Reply to Has anyone been able to get accelerated math for their advanced kid?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Has anyone been able to get accelerated math for their advanced kid?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You can always ask. The math classes may not be at the same time, and so your kid will miss instruction on another second grade topic. If your kid is accelerated now, they won't know what to do with him or her later.

Here's the situation -

1. There are many precocious kids in this educated and wealthy area. There are many bored kids in public and private elementaries. The primary school curriculum is designed to cater to the lowest common denominator, because it is critical to teach reading, writing and arithmetic fluency to all children. Therefore the ones who already know all this are ignored. Both of my children were reading at a middle then high school level in elementary (vocabulary and comprehension). They just brought their own books to school.

2. MCPS has been trying to curtail gifted (and special needs) programming for years. All the special programming is expensive and logistically challenging. There can be significant pushback from central office when content coordinators in each school are asked by parents to accelerate their kid. We've experienced this at the middle school math level.

My second child has always been bored in school. Since magnets are lotteries now, she got into the CES but not the magnet middle. We asked for a placement test in Algebra 1 in 6th grade at her home middle school. They did their level best to deny us, but we managed to get her in. Despite being in the most advanced tracks of middle school, she is still not challenged. She will go to high school next year and has concocted an AP-heavy schedule for herself.

The reality is that no school exists for the gifted. Even MCPS magnets only deepen either STEM or Humanities, but not both, which is bizarre, because a lot of gifted children are interested in both, my daughter included.

You'll probably have to muddle through just like the rest of us with that type of kid. You'll need to stave off impatience, boredom, anxiety and depression in your kid, who may not see the point of going to school anymore. That's what I'm dealing with. Her hobbies and interests outside of school are what keep her from depression. Get your child into an instrument, or chess, or robotics, or whatever he has a liking for. It will distract them and make them use those brain cells.

This is not something the rest of the world can easily empathize with or understand. Even "gifted" is an incredibly loaded word people don't like to hear. It makes them insecure ;-)

[/quote]

OP here. Thank you for this. I am very worried about loss of school engagement. They are already coming home saying they hate school. We do RSM specifically to keep them interested and engaged — not to further advance — but it just exacerbates the issues. They have a sport and instrument outside of school but that creates problems too (frustration in music class that they’re learning to do rhythms they learned two years ago). I would be fine if the teacher let them work on their own but they have forbidden working ahead. [/quote]

PP you replied to.

They're in group music? Your child needs a private instrument lesson. My gifted child started the violin at 3, because string instruments are one of the only ones that come in fractional sizes. I thought it would teach her to fail, and teach her patience, resilience and grit, because it's such a finicky instrument to play in tune. Performances at Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center later, it hasn't taught her these skills, but it has kept her brain occupied at a higher level, since there is no barrier to acceleration. Another cerebral hobby that isn't separated by age groups would do just as well for your kid.

What HAS taught my kid patience, resilience and grit is having to attend mind-numbing school! Ha. I am her de facto therapist when she comes home. We talk a LOT about being kind, sustaining normal conversation about normal topics with other people (I let her have unlimited screentime so she can look up what normal people talk about in the real world), reining in the snark and witticisms that come easily to her but are not well-perceived by others, etc. It's almost as if I'm teaching her to pretend to be normal, and that on top of everything else, she needs to be a good actress to fit in and be a socially acceptable teen girl. I buy her all the "right" clothes and accessories, for instance. Sometimes I'm in two minds about all of this. Why can't my kid just be herself? Why ask anyone on the margins to fit in? But middle school can be a terrible place for bullying, and she's seen kids getting shoved into lockers and punched, and girls gang up against one victim... so she does accept my advice on how to fly under the radar.

You've got a long road ahead of you, OP, but I'm sure you'll figure it out. 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics