<p>Our school system would like to eliminate the elementary school ATP from the school budget. How many of you have elementary schools which still offer enrichment, and what kinds of programs does your district offer? I would like to provide our school board with more information. Thanks!</p>
<p>What a shame that they’re considering this. My story likely won’t be of much assistance to you because I’m in Canada but our district offers a self-contained program for grades 5-8. Testing of all students is conducted in 4th grade and the option is offered for the beginning of the following year. It’s centralized in particular schools so the kids tend to come from all over (they’re bused). Three of my Ds were in the self-contained program and the other two were in a pullout program (which I believe is no longer available due to the majority of families going with the s/c option). We were very happy with the program for our kids and the families I know who have kids there now also think it’s great. All school boards in Ontario are required to offer programming for students who are identified as academically gifted. The delivery may vary, though, district by district.</p>
<p>Our school district did not have particularly strong enrichment programs. I found it MUCH more fulfilling to find things for my kids to do that were of interest to them OUTSIDE of the school day than to wage an uphill battle for a service that wasn’t all that great anyway. </p>
<p>Our kids benefited from having excellent enrichment opportunities outside of school, and they not only loved the activities but also made a broader circle of friends and mentors.</p>
<p>DS1 was in a G/T prgram. It was mostly busy work. I was ok with it since he misbehaved when he was bored, but the stupid arts/crafts projects were annoying.</p>
<p>Ditto what Thumper and AllThis said…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>DS was TAG, He skipped and elementary grade. Still more advanced than grade level. Did IB in high school but was still ahead. etc. Now that he’s working, he does more engineering artsy stuff than his engineering work. The academics he found easy, the manual stuff he found challenging.</p>
<p>When our kids were in elementary school they pulled out the gifted kids once a month to go to another school across town. My kid’s loved their friends and recess and didn’t want to go. So we skipped it.</p>
<p>Our elementary schools provide a pull out 3 hr block once/week for kids identified as G/T. There are 5 or so teachers who split their time and travel between various school during the course of the week. Both of my kids loved their time with these teachers and in these classes which ranged from about 5 in younger years to about 15 in later years as more kids were pulled into the program. </p>
<p>They did some crafty stuff but the kids liked that too. They felt they could be themselves and not be bored when they were in these classes.</p>
<p>They have periodically looked at stopping the program but the parents and the kids would go before the School Board and state their case. Each time, the Board has decided to continue the program.</p>
<p>My school provides a TAG program for kids from 2nd grade. Those kids leave for their program, which is offered in Math, English, and Interdisciplinary. My son was in the Math and English programs and it was good for his self-esteem and friendship-building. My other son missed out, and I felt frustrated for him, but in retrospect, why did I bother? His education was just fine. </p>
<p>As a teacher, I think it’s important to ability-group kids in Math and Reading in the elementary years. There’s just a huge difference among kids and it’s just better to teach concepts to where they’ll learn something without frustration. By Middle School, I think it’s fine to offer a TAG program, especially in Math.</p>
<p>Our gifted program basically was just a grouping of capable kids. It didn’t cost any more since it didn’t really involve any extras. Seemed pretty fair to me.</p>
<p>“As a teacher, I think it’s important to ability-group kids in Math and Reading in the elementary years.”</p>
<p>At what stage in their development would you do that? yD struggled with spelling and could not read even simple words such as “cat”, “dog”, etc. in the first half of the first grade while her classmates were busy reading Dr Seuss books. I almost broke down in tears at the fall parent-teacher conference, but her teacher (amazingly patient, very experienced and smart lady!) reassured me that it was too early to sound any alarms. Surely enough, by May, DD was the best reader and speller in her class! :eek: Had the teacher given up on her very early on, she would not have developed her reading and writing skills so fast. She was not given any extra help or put in any special programs for slow learners…</p>
<p>I was involved with two gifted pullout programs (plus a magnet school) in two school districts in two states during my elementary school years. One worked well and one worked very badly.</p>
<p>The good program was for a few hours twice a week but was also paired with in-class math and reading acceleration. The goal of the program was to present interesting, project-oriented problems during the pullout sessions and involve kids with very creative applied thinking. For example, an assignment was to enter in a local invention competition. The pullouts were excellent, but the in-class stuff was probably more important. That part of the program was designed for advanced kids who were capable of some self-discipline and work ethic; the teacher was primarily focused on the normal class material, so a fair amount of self-teaching was required. I believe the PTA provided some parent volunteers to help with the advanced material a few days a week. Elementary math and reading beyond the very lowest level aren’t that hard to pick up, and the program - which started in 2nd grade - allowed me to jump three years ahead in math.</p>
<p>So, imagine my dismay when I moved and started at a new school, which promptly entered me back into standard math. I eventually skipped two years at the magnet school, but never made it all the way back to where I would have been with the first program. This new program was just a pullout for about 90 minutes once a week. We did nothing but play “academic” games that were horribly boring and at a low level. Part of the catch to a very strong magnet school is that the “regular” gifted programs tend to have lower entrance requirements and less resources. That was certainly the case here. I was bored by it and eventually stopped going altogether. This program did not deserve the funding it received.</p>
<p>Our GATE was a pull out, it was perfunctory and not at all substantive IMHO. A much better way to address my kid’s needs would have been tracking kids by ability…very politically incorrect, but when we moved, English, Science & Math were tracked at our HS and it was perfect</p>
<p>In most school districts GT programs are a joke. In Texas they exist because the state gives some extra money. Many times those kids are embedded with the worst kids. The PC correct education gods believe that their smartness may rub off to junky kids.</p>
<p>The elementary school my younger daughter attended from 3-5th grade had a great program. They had five homerooms (big school) for each grade. The kids were re-grouped by ability and shuffled around to different teachers for reading and math. The math groupings included two on grade-level, one a grade-level above, one two grade-levels above, and one remedial level. They also had some science and social studies enrichment pull-outs that were offered as an option to some of the kids.</p>
<p>Because they had math up to 7th grade level routinely offered to the elementary school kids, they were even able to accommodate kids who were 3 levels above (although they did have to send those kids across the street to the 8th grade once they got to 5th grade…but they DID it).</p>
<p>I am finding this discussion interesting because I am seeing others state the same thing I concluded about my son’s gifted programs throughout elementary school. They were pretty much a waste of time. He would have benefited much more by simply having an accelerated math and english program.</p>
<p>I hope you can convince your adminstration to keep the classes. Our elementary schools have replacement math and English classes. Students are pulled from all the classrooms in the school for these periods. There is one teacher who covers both. My DD was challenged in these classes, where she might have gotten lost otherwise. My DS was not in the classes but also benefited. The teacher had a smaller class for these core subjects and the kids were more similar in ability.</p>
<p>Our school even had a half-time GT math teacher. Because they offered 6th grade math (to 4th and 5th graders) and 7th grade math (to 5th graders), they needed a middle school math teacher. I think she might have worked half-days in two different schools. She was fantastic.</p>
<p>The GT classes in our elem. schools were a joke, just busy work. The kids got pulled out once a week. My kids disliked it and wished they didn’t have to go. I didn’t pull them out because I was afraid it would have some impact when they went to m.s. Turned out it wouldn’t have mattered and my S could have been playing on the playground with his friends instead of sitting in a trailer listening to a dull GT teacher.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to me that many of you live in districts that do not offer self-contained programs. In my opinion, and in our experience, they are the best option for the delivery of programming for academically gifted kids. The teachers have special training and the curriculum was about as distant from ‘busy work’ as you could possibly get. </p>
<p>Were your districts unresponsive? Did parents not advocate for better programming? Are there similar issues with educational delivery to children identified with other special education needs? It’s surprising since our experience has been so very different.</p>