That glass ceiling! Part 2

[var123]

Continuing the discussion about artificial limits placed on G&T children, and the resulting impact on their health and happiness (not to mention futures).

Do they really matter less because they have a perceived "advantage"?!

original thread here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gifted_and_talented/2507232-The-glass-ceiling-for-very-able-children?

Var, I am sorry to hear you are having a hard time :(

As a general comment, I think it is inevitable that parents' views about educating gifted children are strongly influenced by their own experience. I would have been less sanguine about outcomes for my DD a few years ago. Now I realise that whether she does or doesn't reach her "potential" is determined by a lot more than what, when and how she is taught at school.

One of the lightbulb moments came when she moved from a very deprived middle school setting into a very selective high school class. I expected her marks to fall, and that she would be more stimulated. Neither of these things have happened. If anything, because of the extra hours spent in class and travelling, she is LESS stimulated (and more frustrated). The ideal for her would be to spend fewer hours in school and more time pursuing her own interests (which are not especially academic).

greenleave boredom in gifted kids is a funny thing. Until this year DD never complained of being bored in class. Her younger brother complains a lot of boredom - but mainly in the subjects where he is less able!

Iwant what do you say to your child when they say they are bored?
I've never been bored at school. I'm not sure wat sort of techniques can be used to deal with that.

var whatever happened

var I agree with your view point, and sorry to hear you're having a tough time elsewhere in your life.

I'd also like to add extra curricular/ working on weaker areas is all well and good. But doesn't do anything for the utter boredom of lessons.

I'm also interested in the reasoning for the general assumption all parents of able children can and do support them, so they don't need schools support. Versus the assumption all middle/ lower achievers are reliant mostly on the teachers support.

People also ignore personality. I had a great time socially at school as an outlier, at a school that made Grange Hill look like eton. One of dds friends who is in that position now at a similar school is miserable and a target for bullies.

Var: hope he is out of trouble now and things are all going well!

Iwan: she is yr 3. She isnt gifted, I dont think she is however she is bright(or dare I say very bright) and loves to learn. She learns the times table herself by end of yr1. From yr 2 then she was told to slow down and given no work. She is now in the table which has 5 children who are most able among 3 classes and she said they are all still very bored every maths lesson as it takes them no time to get the answer 100% correct and spending the rest of the time staring at each other trying to be quiet while teacher is helping the others. I am planning to beg the head teacher asking the maths teacher giving them(her more challenge work, I know she isnt that good yet and she could(love) to learn so much more during school lesson.

Var: hope you will feel better soon!

Iwan: my daughter isnt gifted, she is although very bright and loves learning. She knows time table by end of yr1 and her mental maths is very very strong. She loves maths and any maths related(verbal reasoning stuffs or nrich questions). She was bored since end of year 1 and was told to slow down during yr2. By year 3 she sits with 4 other kids who are most able among 3 classes and she said they are all bored. Maths lesson doesnt have anything new, anything hard, anything exciting.

She loves her school, she loves all other lesson and very happy cheery girl. Its better that she is given a piece of paper to draw rather than sitting tight and trying to wait every dingle maths lessons for her friends to finish their work. Its better that she could go to tge library and read because she loces reading. Rather than bored, very very bored every maths lesson. I think for with literacy a child can always show different quality of works and they never gets bored. However for maths its very easy to be bored if the knew the concept long time ago and have to sit tight to listen to it again and again. Boredom kills their motivation, critical thinking

Var: hope you will feel better soon!

Iwan: my daughter isnt gifted, she is although very bright and loves learning. She knows time table by end of yr1 and her mental maths is very very strong. She loves maths and any maths related(verbal reasoning stuffs or nrich questions). She was bored since end of year 1 and was told to slow down during yr2. By year 3 she sits with 4 other kids who are most able among 3 classes and she said they are all bored. Maths lesson doesnt have anything new, anything hard, anything exciting.

She loves her school, she loves all other lesson and very happy cheery girl. Its better that she is given a piece of paper to draw rather than sitting tight and trying to wait every dingle maths lessons for her friends to finish their work. Its better that she could go to tge library and read because she loces reading. Rather than bored, very very bored every maths lesson. I think for with literacy a child can always show different quality of works and they never gets bored. However for maths its very easy to be bored if the knew the concept long time ago and have to sit tight to listen to it again and again. Boredom kills their motivation, critical thinking

Var: hope you will feel better soon!

Iwan: my daughter isnt gifted, she is although very bright and loves learning. She knows time table by end of yr1 and her mental maths is very very strong. She loves maths and any maths related(verbal reasoning stuffs or nrich questions). She was bored since end of year 1 and was told to slow down during yr2. By year 3 she sits with 4 other kids who are most able among 3 classes and she said they are all bored. Maths lesson doesnt have anything new, anything hard, anything exciting.

She loves her school, she loves all other lesson and very happy cheery girl. Its better that she is given a piece of paper to draw rather than sitting tight and trying to wait every dingle maths lessons for her friends to finish their work. Its better that she could go to tge library and read because she loces reading. Rather than bored, very very bored every maths lesson. I think for with literacy a child can always show different quality of works and they never gets bored. However for maths its very easy to be bored if the knew the concept long time ago and have to sit tight to listen to it again and again. Boredom kills their motivation, critical thinking

I am sorry for stupid multiple post, I thought it wasnt posted the had to type again then again and now see them all awww!!

An adult with an IQ of 115 used to teaching a fairly mainstream curriculum

Is that a fair representation of teachers? Wouldn't a decent degree put you more above average?

I've followed the thread with great interest. I can't believe it's already on its second part!

Sorry to hear about what happened to you Var, I hope it gets better soon whatever it is.

I agree with what Mistigri said: "it is inevitable that parents' views about educating gifted children are strongly influenced by their own experience".

From what I have read on here, I think Var's experience of primary and secondary schools hasn't been the best. Also, I know other posters have been having similar problems with their children's schools. Whereas a few (or so it seems) like Lurkedforever1 and Iwantakitchen have had the opposite experience with their primary schools. I fit in this last group, and like Lurkedforever1 said, it seems I'm one of the few that hit the jackpot. Whether this is because my son is bright but not extremely gifted like a 1 in a 100 or 1 in 1000, 1 in 10000, etc, or rather because his school has great teachers that know how to differentiate and take all children into account within a mixed ability class, or because of my son's personality that despite finding himself in the position of being an outlier (both because of his academic side as well as the nature of his bilingual family that makes him outright different to his peers) he thrives on it and takes it confidently on his stride, I don't know.

But, if I put myself in Var's position and see my son's school experience through her eyes, I am totally on her side. I think all children should have equal opportunities and access to education. This does not necessarily need to translate to all children having equal amounts of time with the teacher. I think the teacher can best judge how the time and resources could be distributed so that all children end up benefited at the end.

For example, the teacher might well know who are the children who have parental support at home for reading, and are already reading well or ahead of their target, and based on this plan to have the extra reading sessions with those children who are struggling and need her the most. If I were to know that my son only reads with an adult once a week and not always with his teacher but with a TA (as it happens) but that other children read one or more times a week with his teacher, I wouldn't mind. Because I know he is okay, and doesn't need the extra time whereas other children might need it more.

Regarding parental support, it is wrong to generalise and assume that the able children are okay because they have enough support at home and therefore don't need the teacher support as much as the middle/lower achievers. Each child is different, and I think that when the teacher gets the picture of where each of the students stand in terms of parental support (independently of whether the child is able/middle/lower achiever), this knowledge can then be very useful.

My son's teacher knows that he has good parental support at home. Not only that, but she also knows I teach him because DS has happened to mention our “fun classes” to her. So rather than make me feel bad about it, she acknowledged it in the nicest way when we had the parents’ evening, and has always made me feel part of the team when it comes to how best to teach DS. As an example, when she noticed that he seemed to have a weakness with telling the time, she had a chat with me so that I was aware (I mentioned I had noticed as well), and that as she knew I liked teaching DS it would be great if I could include it into our games and maths sessions at home.

So as far as I can tell, DS is happy with his school and loves to have maths classes with his Y2 friends. And although in Y1 it was discussed that he could benefit from going to the year ahead for his maths classes, at the end the consensus between his then Y1 teacher, the maths coordinator and the head teacher was that it would be better for him to stay with his peers but have the classes differentiated to his level. And that’s what they have been doing.

In the end, I don’t know what the secret to a good school or a happy able child is based on my own limited experience with just one child, but interestingly when we visited this school for the first time I remember how much they talked about how well they cater for children with SEN, how experienced they were, and also I have noticed that they have quite a good ratio of adults to children (one teacher and two TAs per 30 children) in each classroom compared to other schools I have heard of. So it seems true that a school that is experienced in teaching children on the lower end can also be good with children right at the other end.

An adult with an IQ of 115 used to teaching a fairly mainstream curriculum

Is that a fair representation of teachers? Wouldn't a decent degree put you more above average?

Assuming IQ is distributed normally, an IQ of 115 puts you (roughly) in the top 15% of the population. This is "decent degree" territory.

I suppose so, misti. I think being a maths teacher skews my perception somewhat because all my department are pretty bright and having a mathsy degree probably puts one further up the IQ scale than other degrees.

I think the 'used to teaching a mainstream curriculum' bit is more relevant to a teacher's inability to deal sufficiently well with super-bright students than IQ. The student is still a child, after all. I taught a student who will undoubtedly be better at maths than me, but I know more maths than him now.

Var, hope everything gets better soon.

noblegiraffe I think bobo was specifically talking about teenagers, and while I think her tone was unnecessarily condescending, in subjects outside maths I do think this is potentially (more of) an issue. DD says her French and Spanish teachers are not very clever, and I believe her. I don't think this is necessarily a critical issue though, because being good at teaching and inspiring bright teenagers does not require you to be a rocket scientist: DD adored her history teacher at middle school, even though this teacher was objectively not a brilliant thinker.

Ellle I suspect that a child's experience of school is partly luck of the draw (we've been lucky - deprived schools but overall good teachers) but that a large part of it is determined by personality and specific strengths/ weaknesses. I'm not sure that degree of giftedness is especially important. DD is right up in the 1 in 1000 bracket for verbal reasoning (1 in 100 for nonverbal) but has had a relatively positive experience, in quite ordinary schools, mainly because she is very sociable and creative. Her brother has had a less positive experience of school partly because he has a more rigid, less sociable personality (he thinks school is for learning; dd thinks it's mainly for hanging out with your friends), partly because he's less of a self-starter, and partly because he is a reluctant writer. They've attended the same schools and had the same teachers.

I'm talking about teenagers too, misti!

I'm not sure that having a teacher equally able is relevant. I think it's more their attitude, and willingness to accept that a child has more ability/ thinks differently to them.

noblegiraffe - the IQ spread among secondary teachers is quite wide but I have read that 115 is typical for secondary teaching in developed countries with universal secondary education and no special policies to attract very high calibre candidates (as eg Finland has) to teaching. Rigid national curricula with very formulaic examination systems (eg England) tend to repel high IQ candidates from secondary teaching. Secondary school systems with separate middle schools and high schools (eg France, the US) tend to have lower IQ teachers in their middle schools than anywhere else in the system. Primary school teachers tend to have higher IQs than secondary school teachers but again, this is often system dependent. But there are so many other variables. I'm sure a very clever HoD and SLT must make a huge impact at micro level on recruitment and composition of a department - it sounds as if your department is a nice place for lots of clever mathematicians to gather.

Lurked - a preteen or teen with an IQ of 150 will quickly run rings around a teacher with an IQ of 110, should they feel like it. And that's in a 1:1 situation...

Oh, hang on. Please don't tell me that people are saying that kids should only be taught by teachers with a higher IQ than them???

Ah it's ok, I can teach all the high IQ kids because mine's 177 so I usually win any IQ comparison. There are way better teachers than me out there though, more inspiring, imaginative and creative. High IQ doesn't mean good teacher.

My friend has a very positive experience with her daughter's school where her daughter has always been recognised, given separate learning approach than her friend, being praised(rather than told off and told to sit tight and told to be quiet and told to go and help her friends). They have more meetings/catch ups and the teachers are very proactive about it telling the parents how to help their daughter better, how to help her to progress fast. She was a free reader at very early age-year 1 I think.

Yes, its the lottery!

I dont think being a primary teacher you need to be extremely clever however I must admire all primary teachers working with 30 kids all are very different and have different needs. I think anyone who graduated from Univ could be a primary teacher as long as they have ethics and love the job. Loving kids and the job are the must otherwise how high your IQ is it doesnt matter at all. However I think supporting able children is extremely easy. They are very bright they understand and remember the concept very quick and well, you only need to give them some work or dare I say alot of work and/or very challenge work. They love thinking they will sit tight and behave. I cant imagine why its so hard. I could even print these works and give to the teacher and tell her to give them to my daughter at her maths lesson, if she doesnt get the answer correct there is an answer printed, she hardly needs a person to explain to her every single word.

Can I just check. When we say "very able" is that actually a synonym for "being very very good at Maths"?

At the moment, my ds excels in everything, not just in maths. (Except for sports.), just that maths is significantly beyond other class mates.

I'm not sure that G&T = especially well-behaved or compliant.

She is naturally very good with maths, yes. We brought her to explore centre beg yr 3 and she was tested and her maths is at year 6. After going for 2 months and every maths works she easily gets 100% we stopped, I found it too easy for her and no point going, they also dont ask the question in deep rather move to the new concept. I dont want her to learn too much ahead rather than given challenge and harder works for the concept she was taught. We both studied maths I know she isnt gifted and I know there are so much more she could learn and drill into