Someone directed me to an interesting blog entry (On Giftedness and Teachers Fears...) providing a perspective on teachers that parents of gifted children should consider.  It suggests that teachers who don't provide what our children need may actually care about our kids.

Then why don't they give our kids what they need? According to the blog, there are several possible reasons. Maybe they thought they could do something, but were unable to because they couldn't persuade those with more authority or because they were overworked and overwhelmed.


Maybe they just don't understand gifted children very well.

I suppose all those reasons are possible, but when I talked with my son's teachers, I was usually able to tell if they were sincere in wanting to help my son - if not during a first meeting, then at later meetings. It always boiled down to the attitude a teacher had toward the very idea of gifted children and the respect she showed to me.

This doesn't mean that the teachers who seemed to care were able to provide my son with the services he needed; sometimes they did as much as they could or knew how to do, and that often wasn't very much. Those who didn't seem to care often didn't even make an effort, even when they promised they'd do something. The worst among them didn't even bother to pretend to care. To them, I was just an annoying pushy parent.

Still, my son did have a very small number of teachers who did what they could, and I never failed to thank them, usually more than once.

Poll: Do teachers care about gifted kids?

• Yes
  

• No
  
• Sometimes
  
• Not sure
  

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