Sally Reis on Gifted Education

bugmom
Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:29:39 +0000

Jolynne, My S did Algebra I at CTY the summer after 7th grade and was able to skip it in 8th grade and go straight to Honors Geometry at the HS. It was a bit of a hassle for the school, since they had to provide a bus, he was not allowed to walk across the street to the HS. Later on in HS he realized he could give up his lunch/study hall and take an independent study. He created a course for APMicro/Macroeconomics. Again it was a bit of a hassle, but the school was willing to work with him. He had to find an advisor, got a place in the Library to work, we bought the books and a DVD set from the Teaching Company (great outfit for enrichment courses, BTW, www.Teach12.com). His S, followed after him, gave up lunch Soph year to take AP Stat (offered by the school) and now as a Jr. is doing AP Computer Sci independent study. I think doing self-paced math at CTY made them both comfortable working on their own through material, with just consulting help from the teacher. I think having just this amount of independence and control over something they were interested in made the rest of school bearable. But they both definitely struggled with public school re-entry after each of the 4 years of CTY summers.