Fourth Grade - Part 2

I don't have much to add about fourth grade, but it's important to the topic at hand. In fourth grade my school district decided to implement a gifted program. Schools were given very little instruction on how to actually do this (so I have heard through the grapevine). At my school, we gifted kids were introduced to the Great Books system. The librarian (a close family friend) came to my classroom and we gifted kids were whisked away to the library to work on these Great Books. I don't remember the whole school year, but I remember spending a lot of time on Aesop's fables. We were to read the stories on our own and then come together once a week (I think) and talk about what we were reading. My probably contorted memory of this remembers that we spent most of our time talking about vocabulary (what was a pomegranate?) instead of talking about themes. It would seem to me that if you were truly a teacher focused on the gifted you would love to hear what these atypical kids were thinking about morality-based stories. I don't remember really getting to that sort of discussion, however. I think that Mrs. Crow was out of her element and that was totally the school's fault - not hers. I do know that at the end of the year, pretty much all of the adults realized that we hadn't really gained from the program. The gifted program the next year basically started from scratch.

The other thing that happened in fourth grade demonstrates how schools interact with gifted kids and their parents. My entire grade was given a paper and pencil IQ test. I call it that as an expert in the field. These IQ tests are nowhere near as accurate as a one on one 60-90 minute test with a well-trained professional. They can however be helpful for labeling or getting a child services. That being said, my mom set up the meeting one on one with the principal to go over my scores. Now remember, the principal is a friend of my mom's, he knew that I had been appropriately tested at 4, and he knew that I had been accelerated one grade. When my mom went in to the meeting, he still told her first thing that parents quite often expect their kids' test scores to be higher than they really are. He told my mom not to expect that I would test much more than above average. Then he actually opened my file and saw my test scores. Apparently, his jaw dropped. The test, especially since it wasn't a one on one IQ test, had a lower ceiling than a better test would have. That is, the test would give students different scores up to a cut off. After that point, all the test could say was that a child was beyond that point. It could not accurately give an IQ score for kids beyond that point. That was the case for me, and I would have been compared to other fourth graders, not other 8 year olds (who were mostly in third grade). He told my mom that I was the only child he had ever seen this happen to in all of his years as principal. That being said, nothing changed with regard to my education. He didn't say, wow, we are really not challenging this student. Instead it was status quo. A big part of that was that my mother did not take the opportunity to advocate for me. Personally, I would have been all over that, but I am much more educated about this than my mother was, and I was harmed by the education process, and my mother was not. My mother was taught in a one room school house until high school. She got to follow her interests and she was taught at her level. Again, I think that they thought that my one grade skip and my advanced reading group were probably plenty of help for me. They were wrong.

I won't be blogging for the next week because we're off for a family vacation. Dermot refuses to go anywhere other than Ocean City, NJ for vacation. So we are off for a full week of fun in the sun. Next year I think I am going to push him out of his safe place, but none of us were up for that battle this year. For the summer after I received tenure, I just wanted to relax and wind down. So we will be swimming, playing at arcades, going to the water park, riding rides, eating Curly's fries and Rita's water ice, and maybe I'll even convince the boys to spend some time on the beach and in the ocean. I just wish that I could convince the other two thirds of the family to actually do some relaxing while on vacation.