Proud

We recently received the above letter in the mail. And while are proud of this letter because of what it's telling us about how Duncan has is performing in language arts, it's content is so much more significant than that.

When we lived in Houston, Duncan participated in Cy Fair's Horizon's program. In Cy Fair's version of a gifted and talented program, they group off the kids that score within a certain range for either math or language arts or both. Those kids take all of their classes together as one and are provided the same curriculum regardless of what they were identified for. In Duncan's case, he was identified for math.

This method has it's benefits and drawbacks. Some kids begin to accelerate their learning in all subjects, despite their identified strength. Being exposed to the accelerated learning path can do that for some kids. For others, it may not be the case, and if those kids begin comparing themselves to their classmates and where they are, it can be a big blow to the ego.

For Duncan, he did wonderfully in all subjects and slightly above average in language arts. At the time, he was a little ahead of his peers in terms of his reading level, but not as accelerated as the other GT kids. And given how the kids were grouped off, his perception was that he was not very good at reading (when compared to his classmates) when in fact he was doing pretty well.

To top it all off, beginning in 2nd grade, he had a MISERABLE language arts teacher. She was outright wretched and frankly had no business teaching. She clearly did not have time for children who did not have the same passion about language arts that she did and made it known. I can remember Duncan even telling me at one point that he knew she didn't like him. Great. Fabulous. Just how I need my child to spend the day - with a woman who he thinks hates him. Whether she did or not was completely irrelevant. A child should never feel that way about their teacher. Period. Ever. We had a number of conferences with her over the months and nothing much seemed to change. We could not get him through and out of 2nd grade fast enough.

Once he was finally out, his feelings about language arts were needless to say a bit tarnished. Not only did he have a whacked perception of his own abilities, he had someone who taught the subject be mean to him and completely turn him off.  We have been recovering with the gift of self-doubt that that woman and the program gave him for years now.

So, fast forward a few years and to a new school district and a new GT program, and you can see why we would be so thrilled to see Duncan having some accelerated success with language arts. I wish I had a picture of his face when he saw this letter. He was dumbfounded. It was absolutely priceless. He finally got back some of the confidence that had been stripped away for several years. It was absolutely wonderful and we couldn't be more happy for him.