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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We currently have one child in the AAP class at FHES. I am very disappointed and shocked at the decision FHES has made. Having experienced the program as it stands, I have to agree that FHES is dismantling its AAP curricula. We have not had any issues of cliques and kids not wanting to be with each other in the APP class. In our experience having kids together that want to learn more and have the capacity to excel resulted in everyone nudging each other forward. Saying that all kids can learn social studies and science at an advanced level is absurd. We would never say that about kids in a traveling vs. non traveling soccer team. The school could have met their objective of more intermingling by letting the kids have specials, lunch, and recess together. If you want an environment of peers where your child will be encouraged to do their best in academics don't stay at FHES. If you think the social aspects of school are important and the transition to a new school will be too much for your 8 year old, then, stay at FHES. The emotional well-being of children is also important. [/quote]

Also,[b] I don't understand the need for gifted kids to be surrounded by peers to encourage them. Aren't they supposed to be self motivated?[/b][/quote]

(FYI, I am not the OP or any PP.) 
The larger issue is not just peers but teaching. When our child was in mixed classes, the teachers simply had to give more of their time and attention to the kids who needed more help, which makes sense. But that left the kids who were doing more and doing it faster to either to do busy work, rather than more challenging and in-depth work. More advanced work doesn't come in the form of busy work; it requires the teacher to be engaged in discussion with the kids and to have time inside and outside class to create (and grade) bigger projects and papers etc. That doesn't really happen in "differentiated classrooms" from what we observed. This hurts not just AAP qualified kids but the Gen Ed kids who are also moving faster and wanting more to do that's more interesting. The teachers aren't at fault -- they have to bring up the kids who are having trouble and that gets priority, from the school as well as the individual teachers, over any "enrichment." The idea of the center model was not just for students but for teachers, to allow them to teach at a different level and pace than they can in classes where the range of aptitude is much larger.

That said....there's no reason theoretically [i]not [/i]to have AAP kids grouped for some subjects and not grouped for others, as long as the teaching is able to give all kids real differentiation and meet their needs. Maybe it can and does happen; it's just not something we saw as realistically happening in our base school (which was not FH). To the OP: I do agree with a PP who noted that your kid would be in the initial years of this new format (new to FH, at least) and that's something to consider. Yes, someone has to be first in any change. But if you are concerned about your child being in that  first group (not just next year but as the new format moves up through sixth grade), then talk to the center school again about how it sees its classes as different from the model FH is going to be using.[/quote]

We are talking specifically about science and social studies. What particularly is part of the AAP science and social studies curriculum that you think the kids in general ed will slow down the class for? At only 2-3 hours a week every other week, it just seems like there's only so much a teacher can teach in those subjects anyway. For instance, in 3rd this year, the kids worked in groups to make a poster of an ancient culture. For science they made a computerized report. These could be elaborate or basic, but all the kids in the school did them. General Ed and AAP. It wasn't much of a problem.[/quote]

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