The following is a recap of our meeting with Karen Adams, Brenda Payne (administrator over 14 principals & just under Joyce Wilson asst. superintendent of elem. education), Angela Vaughan (principal at MST), Bonnie Mola (parent) & myself. I think some things were clarified, but we still lots of work to do. At least now we know how to do it. The bullet points are what we can do now for this school year to make it better for our kids. The process for getting a g/t magnet is what we want to accomplish for the fall, but to do that, we have to start now!
Principals would work with the teachers to encourage them to send out a weekly email communication letting parents know what the students are working on at school. This would let the parents know how their instruction is differentiated & it would be beneficial I think for all parents-not just the parents of gifted. MST’s principal is going to let the others know what they are implementing as a result of our conference with the 5th grade teachers a few weeks ago. Keep in mind that differentiated does not mean accelerated. They should be getting depth & breadth to their instruction. What that means is higher level thinking questions causing them to think more about the lesson. It might also be getting their math in the form of word problems instead of just number sentences. HMR does have leveled readers so your child should be getting the above level books if that is their strong subject. There are also higher level scienc books & I’m sure almost every subject has bonus or challenge questions. Make sure your teacher is requiring your child to do them. It can’t be optional, because if they’re like my kids, they won’t do the optional problems. Usually means more work for them, but they might be able to do them in lieu of the others that they have mastered. Also, is it really a big deal to do one extra problem?
Parents need to open the lines of communication with their teachers and ask them how instruction is being differentiated & make them accountable if it isn’t. If necessary, parents may then take it to the principal. If you’re still not getting it from the principal, take it to the principal’s boss. Admin can help you figure out who that is.
I encourage you parents to contact the school board reps and encourage them to consider establishing a gifted magnet school. It seems the only way to get this is going to be to go to the school board. There are also 3 seats open & up for reelection. Anybody interested in running? David Tyson isn’t running again so his position will be open. Lanette Greenhaw is seeking re-election as is one other. I can’t remember who, but it’s on the district website. There is also a bond election this year so now is the time to hit them up as well about making one of the schools or even a few of them g/t magnets. My personal opinion is that it wouldn’t cost anything extra to do that. They could even start at a couple of schools to have a g/t school within a regular school except at the kinder level. Start testing all of the students entering a magnet school so you’re not kicking out kids in their elementary school. Another option would be to just open up another school-take over one of these empty office buildings. Harmony public charter schools did it.
We talked about ability grouping & I was under the impression that the district was against it. Then when I asked Karen Adams about it, she said she was all for ability grouping & even sent me an article supporting her beliefs. Now what I need to find out from you is if that is actually happening. If there are 5 g/t kids in your child’s grade level, are they all in the same class so that they can get differentiated instruction?
Their is going to be a new curriculum adoption for LA.
Are they bored because they’re not being challenged or because they just don’t like the subject on hand. Brenda Payne brought up an interesting scenario. We as adults don’t always like to do certain tasks because they’re boring. We still have to do them. She’s in the middle of doing 14 principals’ reviews. Each one takes 3 hours. It is mind numbing & boring, but she still has to do it. I remember hating science & social studies in school because I thought they were the most boring subjects. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t being challenged. If our kids are bored, but are still being challenged, that’s ok. That’s life & we all have to do the boring stuff. If the teacher isn’t finding things to keep the kids challenged, that’s when you need to step in & ask for some differentiation. It could be something as simple as changing the spelling words. We had to take it to our principal to get the words changed in fourth grade because they were ridicuously easy. Now my son is still missing just a few of the word on his pretest with the harder words, so I asked the teacher if he could write sentences instead of writing his words three times each. Just because he knew how to spell them, didn’t mean he knew what they meant! Last week she had those who missed only 3 – 4 or less write the words once each, but in cursive. That is differentiation. That is what you should be seeing in the classroom & coming home for homework.
I think a good majority of us would like to see acceleration going on in the classroom. Honestly that is not going to happen unless we can get a g/t magnet school started. Testing has to happen for every child entering a school. MST & ACM are a good place to start since they are already designated magnets. I encourage you to get in touch with your school board reps (good luck with that because I’ve been trying for two weeks now) & tell them we want a gifted magnet. I’ve been having conversations with my rep off & on for the past year. What I got was that the magnets were set up to offer students a choice of more arts based curriculum or more of the sciences. Now we need to tell them that we want to be able to chose a school with a gifted curriculum.
Please share with the group your successes or challenges in getting differentiated instruction. Let us know what is working so we might try it on our campus. Let us know where you’re struggling so someone might have some advice on what works. Keep us all posted on conversations with your school board reps. If they get inundated with phone calls & emails from all of us, they’ll have to stop & listen. Most importantly, forward these emails to your friends who have gifted kids & encourage them to sign up for our communications on our website & to actually join Richardson Gifted. We have lots of exciting things in store for our members & dues are only $20 a year per family. You can join & pay via paypal on our webiste. http://richardsongifted.com/membership/
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