Ohhh I have so many things to say.
For anyone that doesn’t know, I teach hyper-advanced academics, too, but at the HS level: I’m at a high school where 25% of the kids are in Calculus as Freshmen and we don’t have “normal” classes: shit’s all AP. We’d have AP Study Hall if we could. I also have a 9 year old who’s “GT identified”. So I work with these kids, but mostly the older ones.
Far and away, my problem with GT education is that it still carries this idea that “gifted” kids all share some ineffable quality that manifests itself in different ways but that ultimately springs from the same source, some inherent difference that gives them deep and special needs that the normies just can’t understand. And forgive me for saying this, LHoD, but the GT teachers in my son’s district are among the worst for perpetuating this. I pull my hair out at meetings because it’s all like “Well, you know that life is a little different with a Gifted Child” and everyone nods and humble brags about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in Training they have. It’s the worst Mommy Wars scene I know. We laughed at the Indigo Child people, but these aren’t much different.
The thing is, in actual pedagogy, I feel like we moved away from that model and toward a “growth mindset” model like, 15 years ago. So when my son was tested for GT and I started going to these meetings, I felt I fell through a wormhole to 1992. And the GT classes seemed really rooted in this idea that it wasn’t about advanced anything. It was all super project-based in a way that seemed more about performance than learning, to me: it was creative projects that the parents would “help” a lot with. It was focused on unleashing that “gifted” quality, not actually learning more stuff. And I always felt like my fairly logical-sequential son’s fantastic math and verbal ability was sort of treated as inferior to kids who were more into self-expression. My son’s the type of kid who is way more interested in the world than in himself, if that makes sense. GT didn’t seem designed for that.
My school doesn’t feel like that model at all. We work really, really hard to always talk in terms of skills: if you have these skills, take these classes. If you have that skill gap, this is how to remediate it. I think it helps that math is our focus, and math is really something that rewards practice. So our culture is one of skill mastery. We don’t care about ineffable qualities. But I still have parents who want to talk about ITBS scores from 3rd grade and use that to defend the idea that their kid is somehow special and deserves better. It’s frustrating. There is an explicitly GT HS magnet in our building, and they have more of an “ineffable quality” aspect to their culture. My nerdy little Muggle children make fun of them; they make fun of us for, I dunno, being Muggles.
My husband is a SAHP and this year we opted for pure homeschooling instead of remote school, and it’s been wonderful. He’s challenged, he likes it, he’s learning a ton, and it only takes half the time school takes. Next year, the district I teach in is opening a new “hybrid school”. Kids go two days a week and the rest is done at home. Principal is very open to say, us swapping out the math curriculum for one of our own or carving out time in the school day for Latin. I am over the moon about this: we have always “homeschooled” after school with him, because he likes to learn and as two teachers, teaching is how we relate to children. But I have been really worried that as he gets older and starts to get homework, our stuff will be pushed aside. Now, he can have the social interaction and the experience of other adults telling him what to do (which he needs) but there will still be time to develop his interests, as well. I recognize this wouldn’t work for everyone, but for us it’s far superior to the GT pull-out model.
