School meetings-round 2
So tonight, BOTH the 3rd grade and Intermediate building's open house is scheduled at the same time. I'm supposed to attend both, which begin with meetings in the gym for the parents.
How can I?
I have to choose which is more important? Meeting my 3rd grader's new teacher who is also new to the district OR to find out what the Hell the Intermediate Principal has in store for us this year. We are talking about 5 and 6th grades here.
She has done away with general music classes deciding, instead, that if the kids are involved in band or Choir, that's good enough. I'm not clear on what the kids who don't do either one will be doing or when the choir will occur. "exploratory" is all that's listed in the letter. What exactly they are exploring, I haven't a clue, but I'm guessing dodgeball will be involved.
Her latest letter involved the ACES classes. I received it yesterday in the mail.(school begins tomorrow) She has , once again, decided to play around with it. According to the letter, my daughter will be attending the ACES class on Friday afternoons. If she's involved in choir or band, she'll leave ACES to go to those classes. So, instead of having ACES one whole day a week or 2 hours a day, she's going to be getting it (roughly) one hour a week.
What? My daughter can't be gifted AND musical?
There's a real misconception about the need or purpose of the ACES program. It's not an extra class or if it is, then so is the classes for the slower kids. We are born with the intelligent levels we are. If someone has an IQ of 80, it's not their fault and they'll need help to get through a school program set up to teach to the average. ACES is set up to accommodate those at the other end of the spectrum. Just because, for the most part, these kids are well behaved, doesn't mean their needs are met in the classroom. Education is all about meeting the needs of our children.
Gifted kids are different from the average. A friend explained it to me once like this:
If you look at a classroom full of kids, you will see that the kids who are slower, less intelligent are not readily accepted by the average. I'm not saying the kids are mean to them, there's just a barrier because there's a difference in how they interact with the world. If a kid doesn't understand the joke, then it's not much fun telling it to him. The same thing happens at the other end of the spectrum as well. Gifted kids perceive the world in a vastly different way from the average students. They are expected to sit in a class with those who are much slower and don't get THEIR jokes. A good ACES program addresses this issue. It is a place where they can all be together and get each other's jokes.
Now, ACES kids have things in common with other kids, afterall, they ARE kids. They are interested in having friends, being popular, fashion and what's in. They do need instruction. I's not that they know everything, it's that they learn it faster. But my daughter also counted all the overpasses from where we live in Mo. To Cleveland, Oh. This summer. She also has to be precise about time. It's not, "8:30" it's "8:32". I don't know what she gets out of it, I just know it's important to her. She just perceives the world differently.
Now, if there is an issue with HOW the ACES program is being done, then the Special Ed coordinator needs to take up the issue with the teacher of the classes. I do have some issues with how it went last year. How much of that was the Principal's failed experiment and how much was the teacher's personal issues, I can't know. I do know that it was not the program it had been, nor what the principal hoped it to be.
Anyway, I am thinking here about how best to address this issue. I'll need to be able to state my thoughts as non-emotionally as possible, yet, firmly stating my displeasure with the tinkering again.