School for the gifted

[NameChangedNoImagination]

If there was a school for the gifted, would you send your child? I would have loved one when I was a child. Where learning is accelerated to your own pace and where you have time and encouragement to study special interests.

Yes, a gifted scientist will need those things, but they could all be available in a mainstream school.

Three of my kids meet the notional ‘gifted’ cut-off in terms of IQ. Two are 2e. As a military family, we have schlepped them around many many settings in different countries. We all know schooling is a postcode lottery, and adding, what, one school for the gifted (and yes, the cartoon popped into my head when I read the thread title) into a major urban conurbation is only going to exacerbate that, particularly if it is a common or garden fee paying public school.
My eldest (the NT one) has survived her 12-odd settings from nursery and chose a small non-assuming university. She’s thriving. Dc2 struggles. He finishes school this year. At 3 he was referred to the LEA for assessment because his nursery (a joint KS1 foundation unit) weren’t sure what to do with him. The LEA refused to assess as they didn’t have a policy for kids that aged For his entire school career, teachers have been asking me how to motivate him to complete school work. The answer is you can’t - he has an insatiable need to learn whatever piques his interest, but cannot concentrate on sausage machine learning if it doesn’t interest him. He is the most frustrating child to teach - his teachers know he should be miles ahead, but instead he hands in homework a term late, if ever. Meanwhile he will have been discussing something extra-curricular with them in vast depth. He hasn’t even applied to any universities. The idea of sitting in more classes being told what to learn isn’t appealing. Moving settings so frequently has not helped. Mostly they wring their hands and fret because they don’t know how to help him help himself. He was dx ADD at 9ish. The psych noted his spiky profile. I’ve read the fecking dual dx book from cover to cover many times, but in all honesty, there is no way to tell whether his inability to complete schoolwork is ADD, boredom, or laziness. The op would say it’s undoubtedly issues associated with his giftedness. His year 5 teacher would say ADD. I’m on the fence. I’ve seen him argue himself into a corner and essentially stymie himself into inaction.
Dc3 was lucky enough to be disabled enough to receive 1-1 support (Yes, that is irony). So the fact that she taught herself to read before she could talk wasn’t ever a problem for the school - she essentially had her own curriculum via her keyworker. As she got older and gained independence, (and moved to a different setting without an on tap keyworker) she has been refused access to gifted enrichment (the first time they said she had to be working two years ahead across the board. She was working between 5-7 years ahead but couldn’t write due to her disability. So she was barred from acceleration because she used a keyboard.) Anyhoo - she has filled her need to learn with extra-curricular activities - currently national level advocacy for a niche area and is working to make the national team in her para sport. She wants to study medicine. As well as her physical disability, at 14 she was dx with debilitating OCD. So did her giftedness and lack of appropriate gifted ed contribute to her mental health issues? The op would say yes. I’m more interested in the links between anxiety disorders and the site of her brain damage.
Kids are all different. No one way of schooling (or unschooling) is going to make all children reach their mythical potential. I’m of the opinion that appropriate extension needs to be available in all schools, rather than extending the postcode lottery that is the education system by building a couple of additional establishments for more privileged parents to fight over.

Sorry, that was a bit of an essay. Really I think it’s very easy to hyper-focus on the gifted stuff when kids are little. I went through it too. I read hoagies avidly and went through phases of being rudely dismissed by private schools because they were unable to offer a place to a child with mobility issues, however smart they were.
I read all the books (including that dual diagnosis one 😁). I went through a Holt phase, and an unschooling phase, but could never afford not to work, so the kids bounced from setting to setting as we moved. Experiencing the many different settings was interesting.
Potential is a funny thing, and academic ability is... intriguing.

50shades I can completely relate...neither of my dc are interested in going to a traditional 4 year university because their relationship with formal education has been so fraught. Ds is currently studying audio engineering at a vocational school and promoting raves. Dd has signed up for the following classes in the fall at her local Community College: Cosmetology, Oil Painting, Surfing (it is LA after all) and the Anthropology of Witchcraft.

I do expect that dd will eventually regain a trust in the educational system, but I don't think ds will ever go to a 4 year university, even an alternative one like Grinnell.

P.S. Ds had same issues as your dd. Disabled enough to receive support, but only got support for his medical disabilities and not for the fact that he couldn't write (dysgraphia) and needed to do everything on a keyboard (started him typing from the age of 4). I can't think how many people I had to patiently explain to that typing and handwriting do not involve the same brain function and that inability to handwrite is not necessarily due to a fine motor skill deficiency.

What I'd like to see is specialist provision at primary school, not necessarily just for gifted children but for all children. Especially for maths and science. Primary teachers in our experience are too generalised and we found that they didn't have the skills to even recognise how gifted DD was. They were in no way able to cope with her. At the other end of the spectrum children with learning difficulties were left in the hands of unqualified TAs who went on one day courses or handed a box of numicon with no instructions and no clue how to teach maths systematically.

We need a radical overhaul in Junior schools imo.

@Leapfrog - gifted science students are usually in secondary as you do limited stuff in primary. There are websites like Isaac physics and chemistry, YouTube videos, books about experiments you can do at home. In the long term gifted science students would need to attain a reasonable level of maths too.

While you get plenty of science researchers, rowers, bobsledders, tuba players who attain a v high level without a special school/starting at a v young age, you see many fewer violinists or gymnasts or ballet dancers who have NOT done it at a young age.

BUT if the country were to provide such a school, perhaps there would be MORE science researchers. I don’t know it there’s much evidence.

This is an interesting abstract on cost effectiveness:
docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/AAI8520063/

Sofia - it’s been a learning curve for me too - I was the first person in our family to go to university, and I admit to a very biased view of the importance of academic ability. It’s been a real challenge to question my own biases and accept that although ds ‘should’ have cruised through school gathering bouquets of As, he has a complete lack of interest/ ability to do so. If he decides at some point that he needs a degree, he’ll just go and get one. But it’s not happening soon.
I’m not in favour of labelling and boxing children according.

badbadkitten I completely agree. My kids got extra because I was able to provide it for them. But I saw over and over again, students who could have done so much more whether or not they were gifted, if their learning differences had been accommodated.
Namenic I agree that access to advanced science education should start in primary school. I believe that it can happen in a regular school setting and does not have to be segregated into a separate school.

DS2 was fortunate that his (state) primary school was flexible and supportive when it came to science teaching.

He was able to start some KS3 work from Y5. One of the TAs had previously been a secondary school science teacher and she taught him 1:1. The closest secondary school arranged access to their labs, supervised by their G&T coordinator.

He was very lucky.

The comments on primary schools are interesting. My dd's primary school was amazing at providing stretch and enrichment, working in partnership with other local schools and the nearby university. Apart from one slightly uninspiring year in year 2, I really don't think I could have asked for more, but then it was an exceptionally good school in so many other ways too. Brilliant at dealing with SEN, for example.

Secondary school has been a bit more hit and miss in our experience. Some brilliant teachers who try really hard to cater for dd's needs, but others less so. Year 8 was particularly challenging and she did get very bored and frustrated for a while. We took it as an opportunity to teach coping mechanisms and to emphasise the importance of dd being responsible for her own learning, while working with the school to try and ensure that her needs were met. They were actually very responsive and things have improved greatly. Thankfully, she is very level-headed and remained committed to her learning throughout. I can see how a less motivated child might disengage in such circumstances, but if it's approached in the right way, I think most schools do genuinely want to help.

I think all schools should be putting more emphasis on supporting the most able. My gifted child struggles much more than my bright child. The school got the Ed psych in who basically told them her issues came down to boredom. She is hard to cater for though! I'm s teacher and she would cause extra work

There’s a lot of talk about the facilities, extension and differentiation that ‘could’ happen in mainstream. The reality is in most schools it doesn’t.

It seems to be a bit of a lottery as to whether these children survive school or not. No one would ever force a child to go to a gifted school. I just feel as though it would be beneficial to have a choice.

In the 2e school I’m familiar with, the motto is ‘teach to the strength’. So use and extend the natural talent of the child. And a belief in project based learning in stead of regular classes, so in stead of having to transition very 40 minutes to a new classroom, there’s a real opportunity to go deeply into a topic, whether it be robotics, engineering, music or other.

While i do think some highly gifted NT kids are completely fine in a school setting, the fact is both that there is a high co morbidity between extreme giftedness and other ‘exceptionalities’, and also (as in the Dual Disgnosis book) at a certain level it becomes tricky to tease one apart from another. A child who could look very autistic in amongst age peers two or more standard deviations away from their IQ can be seen to be totally NT when placed with true intellectual peers. It’s not as straightforward as some are making out (NT gifted will be fine, 2E needs special provision.)

greathat it's interesting that you point out about the teacher needing to do extra work. I have seen here in the US (and seem to read about on Mumsnet about the UK) that many teachers today don't want to do the extra work that differentiated teaching with a gifted child in mainstream may require. It's my impression (I have no empirical data to provide) that that has changed since I was a child (many many moons ago).

So in my mind, the question is, how do you work around that? At my dc's elementary school they brought in older retired teachers to teach science. Those teachers were willing to do the extra work. Ds was very sick a lot of the time and missed tons of school. His lovely science teacher assigned him an essay to write (which he was delighted to do) to make up for the missed class time. He wrote a 10 page essay on White Phosphorous (the stuff you need to blow things up....just what a 9 year old boy likes to learn about). The teacher was delighted and didn't worry that he hadn't done the collage of the parts of the cell that the other kids did during class (which would have been torture for him anyway and he already knew the facts). It worked for everyone and he got advanced science teaching.

In the 2e school I’m familiar with, the motto is ‘teach to the strength’. So use and extend the natural talent of the child. And a belief in project based learning in stead of regular classes, so in stead of having to transition very 40 minutes to a new classroom, there’s a real opportunity to go deeply into a topic, whether it be robotics, engineering, music or other.

I don't have an issue with this per se, but actually, I think it's equally important for kids to spend some time on areas which are not their strengths. My dd has probably gained the most from a particular extra-curricular activity in which she certainly isn't gifted. Quite the contrary, actually, she finds it really difficult, but she has continued to do it over the last ten years and she has gained at least as from that perseverance as she has taken from allher other activities combined. It's really important that gifted kids have opportunities to learn how to struggle and persevere, to develop resilience and a work ethic, and to learn how to deal with failure.

I didn't ever learn this as a child, and my fear of failure gets in my way so much now that I'm an adult. I marvel at the fact that my dd does not experience this fear. She is never afraid to have a go and just do her best, and a world of opportunities is opened up to her as a result.

So yes, I'm all in favour of teaching to their strengths, but sometimes it is important to let them find their weaknesses as well.

BTW, I really don't think a child that "looks autistic" amongst peers suddenly appears NT among people with a similar IQ. That would imply that autism is little more than an inability to connect with people less intelligent than oneself, but that's not really my understanding of it at all.

I don't think it's so much that a child "looks autistic" but rather is not the same as everyone else (ie NT). It's also not just a high IQ thing, but also one's relationship with the world around. I am sure that if my parents were children today they would both be diagnosed as Aspergers. Yet, as Profs of Biochemistry in Berkeley, they were the same as all their peers and no one really thought of them, or treated them, as different. I didn't realize until I got into my 30's (and out of higher education), that my family was not "normal."

Alexa I too have that marvel with my dd. She will keep doing something over and over that she's not "succeeding" at without an awareness that she's not so good at it. And then finally she does become good at it. She is currently taking AutoMechanics...I am sure that no one will ever want her to work on their car (she can't walk across a room without tripping or breaking something), but it's good for her to have an understanding of how everyday things function.

@AlexaShutUp of course autism isn’t “an inability to connect with people less intelligent than oneself”. I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood there. What I’m saying is that some NT gifted children can superficially present with autistic type social traits in certain settings - not that autism can come and go. That would be ridiculous.

“I don't think it's so much that a child "looks autistic" but rather is not the same as everyone else (ie NT). It's also not just a high IQ thing, but also one's relationship with the world around. I am sure that if my parents were children today they would both be diagnosed as Aspergers. Yet, as Profs of Biochemistry in Berkeley, they were the same as all their peers and no one really thought of them, or treated them, as different. I didn't realize until I got into my 30's (and out of higher education), that my family was not "normal."

This

@AlexaShutUp Yes i completely agree with you re: learning to fail. In fact that’s my main regret from my own school experience. Having never had to struggle or develop resilience is a terrible pattern. I think kids can be challenged both in their areas of interest and in others. I don’t think the school I’m thinking of ONLY teaches children gifted in Maths mathematics. Just that they nurture that talent (along with supporting weaknesses), and approach learning in a different way. More of a university type deep dive approach, which is made possible by the fact that the children pick things up first time round in a lot of cases. What was stultifying for me was the repetition. I of course was a good girl and sucked it up and made sure I did everything that was expected of me, but if I had been even a touch naturally rebellious or not willing to jump through ridiculous hoops year after year, I’m sure I’d have dropped out very early on.

Fair enough, Leapfrog, perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying.

I do see that some people with aspergers or similar might appear to be like everyone else around them if many of the other people around them also happen to be on the spectrum. I know a lot of academics, and it's true that people on the spectrum seem to gravitate towards certain disciplines. However, while their traits might not be seen as particularly out of the ordinary in those situations, I don't think that they necessarily appear NT to their NT colleagues. It's just that not being NT is not considered unusual in that environment.

As for NT children sometimes presenting with similar traits as those on the spectrum, I'm sure that this does happen quite a lot. My nephew who I mentioned further up the thread was probably a good example of this. However, I think it's generally much easier for an NT child to learn how to change and adapt their behaviour in order to interact effectively with those around them.

More of a university type deep dive approach, this is exactly what I had in mind Leapfrog.

What I had in mind in totality was this...

Literacy (mathematical, English, financial, computing, economics, politics, home studies etc - a basic understanding of a huge range of topics they'd need for life.) Progression is according to LOs met, so class composition would change all the time.

Broad interest - topics introduced every week with choices on what to go to and recordings to catch up on a HUGE range of interdisciplinary subjects (various periods of history, architecture, farming, fashion design, everything you can possibly think of). This could be mixed age and ability.

Special interest - topic and project work at an advanced level, focused on both input AND output (composition, writing papers etc) and interaction with subject area experts.

Extracurricular - sports, music, chess, huge range of clubs with local schools not for the gifted

Psychological and emotional support - teaching social skills and resilience, offering therapy if necessary.

Realistically because of ratio of staff to students and support needed, I think it would have to be a very small private school. Can have full scholarships for 10% of the school, plus support packages, for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

entrance would be a huge mixture of tests and interviews that would weed out the children from pushy parents and also account for socioeconomic differences.

Not that I've thought about this much

@SofiaAmes I don't think that it's that teachers don't want to do the extra work, it's that there's so many time constraints and stupid hoops to jump through. Last year my DD was showing some extreme behaviours, hence the ed psych, and there was a less experienced teacher who when we asked for extra challenge just showed us the massive spreadsheet she had to evidence of.

Her teacher this year has been a lot better not so much with the work but he's made sure to take the time to chat with her, about how people switched from hunter gatherers to farmers, or how the wavelength of light effects its colour. He's said to us she could happily be learning in a secondary school, but there's lots of box ticking. I think when she gets to secondary it will be the pace that frustrates her. She gets things very quickly, but the teacher won't just be able to move on as there's the rest of the class to think about...,

My daughter would love it @NameChangedNoImagination, I couldn't send my kids to a boarding school though so when you work it out set it up by me

NameChanged, my dd would enjoy a lot of that too, but so would many of her non-gifted friends!

@NameChanged Sounds amazing.