Lisa is the mother of 3 gifted children and lives outside of San Francisco.

At my son’s kindergarten parent/teacher conference, his teacher played a game with my husband and me. She put 3 marbles on the table and asked us to close our eyes. When we opened them, we saw 2 marbles. She asked us how many she was holding in her hand. When we told her “one”, she repeated the game with 4 marbles.

Our son’s teacher told us she played this game with each student until the child no longer gave the correct answer. All the children in her class stopped at 10 marbles, except my son. She played with him until she had 20 marbles on the table. Then she stopped. She told us that he was clearly very good at math.
I left the meeting feeling proud of my son’s talent and satisfied with the teacher’s assessment. My husband wasn’t.

“Why didn’t she keep going until he gave the wrong answer?”

From that moment, “good at math” wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to know his limits. Then I wanted him to learn something new. Thus began my search for the perfect test: the one that would convince his teachers that he needed something different from the rest of the class.

I started with an . That was a terrible idea. I learned that he not only had exceptional perceptual reasoning abilities, but he also had excellent verbal abilities. When I shared this information with the principal, she was wary. What kind of parent gives her 5 year old child an IQ test? Clearly, I was one of “those” parents. I not only complicated my search, I acquired a label that would follow me throughout my son’s elementary school years.

The psychologist who administered the IQ test also gave him the Wide Range Achievement Test. His Reading and Arithmetic achievement scores placed him in 3rd Grade. I approached his 1st grade teacher with these scores and asked if she could give him 3rd grade level work. She was sympathetic to my request. She thought she could deliver an appropriate reading curriculum. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the resources to deliver a 3rd grade math curriculum in her class and the school would not allow him to sit in a 3rd grade classroom.

I decided to make alternate arrangements for math. I enrolled my son in an online math program through the Educational Program for Gifted Youth (“EPGY”). He worked on the computer at home and brought the homework assignments to school. Finally, I understood what my son knew because I saw it on the computer screen every day.

I remained optimistic when my son started 2nd grade. I gave up on the advanced reading curriculum, but I continued to advocate for accelerated math. I doubled my efforts. My son took the Sequential Test for Educational Progress (STEP) for mathematics computation. The test detailed scores in reading and whole numbers, fractions, decimals, percentages, denominate numbers and algebraic manipulation in math. He scored at a 5th grade level. Armed with the STEP results and the completed EPGY math curriculum, I tried again.

His 2nd grade teacher was hostile. Through her behavior and comments, she delivered two messages to my son. First, he is not as smart as he thinks he is. He may be good at adding, subtracting and multiplying numbers, but he didn’t understand math concepts. (Later, I would learn his conceptual math abilities are particularly strong.) Second, he needed to be quiet about his abilities, or risk being ostracized by the class. Given the teacher’s hostility to my son, I did not push . She allowed him to work on word problems independently, but that was all.

I brought out all the big guns in 3rd grade. I not only had him take a second STEP test for math, I contacted Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth for an Educational Evaluation. Two Ph.Ds wrote a 3 page Educational Evaluation that concluded: “To avoid repetition of material and the subsequent boredom and decrease in motivation, (my son) should be allowed to work on fourth grade-level math or higher.” The teachers refused. I gave up. We hired a tutor so he could learn new math concepts after school.

By 4th grade, I learned that no test was going to convince any teacher at our school that his math curriculum should be accelerated. I sat in a room with my husband, the principal, my son’s 4th grade teacher, copies of the California Education Code, the school district’s policies, and the book Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use to Meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talented, and I got mad. I got leaning-over-the table-finger-poking-red-faced-mad. My surprised husband (the reliably hot headed one) jumped into the fray and suggested that “we all step back and try to find some common ground.” It worked. We got the teacher to pre-test our son before each math lesson. If he demonstrated mastery, he was allowed to skip the lessons. We kept his tutor. When he tested out of a concept, he was allowed to work on the tutor’s assignments during class. In addition, the classroom teacher did not assign him any homework.

So, what did I learn from all of this? I learned that a good assessment (or several) can let you know what your child needs and give you the conviction to fight for it. I learned that no test will convince a teacher, not otherwise inclined, to deliver an accelerated curriculum if he or she lacks the resources or motivation. I learned that when nothing else works, righteous outrage sometimes is the catalyst to make things happen. I learned that to be productive, outrage must be coupled with a reasonable proposal. Most importantly, I learned that my son is the most accommodating child in the world to put up with all this nonsense.

What has your experience been with effectiveness of assessments in getting your children the accommodations they need? Please share with us in the comment section below.

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Lisa is the mother of 3 gifted children and lives outside of San Francisco.

When my oldest son was in 5th grade, he told me a story. He was in the jungle, swinging from vine to vine above a swamp infested with crocodiles. The teachers at his school placed the vines an appropriate distance apart, and he was successfully navigating the terrain. I, however, was moving the vines too far apart. He told me that if I kept moving these lifelines, he would fall into the waters below and be devoured by the crocodiles.

At the time he told me this story, I was pressuring him to put more effort into his schoolwork. He was daydreaming in class and making silly mistakes. He turned in papers with multiple misspellings, although he was a very good speller. He didn’t study for quizzes or even look through his text books when he had an open book test. According to the teachers, he was doing “fine.” I knew he was capable of more. If the teachers would not demand more from him, I would.

I “helped” him proofread his papers and check his spelling. I enrolled him in for math. As he advanced through the program, he became increasingly upset. If he could not answer the questions, he cried. I insisted that he continue. I was making him miserable.

I realize now that his jungle metaphor illustrated a common problem for gifted students: he thought he was smart only if he could master a task easily. He viewed his intellectual ability as something static that he demonstrated by completing tasks quickly and with very little effort. By demanding that he push himself beyond his teachers’ expectations, I was threatening his status as a smart kid. How could he be smart if learning was hard?

My son had a fixed mindset. I learned this at a gifted learning conference in the Bay Area, where I heard Carol Dweck, author of the book , speak. According to Ms. Dweck, gifted students with a “fixed mindset” will see their intelligence as fixed at birth. Their goal is to demonstrate their intelligence. They do this by sticking to tasks they do well and avoiding challenges that might threaten their self-image. Since a “fixed mindset” limits their reach, the goal is to acquire a “growth mindset” in which students believe that intelligence can be developed and improved by working hard. Under the “growth mindset,” learning – rather than performance – is the ultimate goal. Failures are temporary setbacks giving the student a chance to learn.

My attempt at encouraging my son to perform at a higher level was clearly threatening his self-image as a smart kid. Luckily, we live near a school that excels at fostering the development of a growth mindset and serves gifted and talented students. We moved our son there in 6th grade. The school celebrates mistakes and focuses on the process of learning rather than the end product. I recall attending a Physics culmination where the students presented rollercoaster designs. Each student began his or her presentation with the many ways in which the initial design failed. For many of the students and parents, this was the most interesting part of the night. Math homework was often too difficult to complete, so the teacher would use class time to solve the problems and give credit for unsuccessful attempts. The right answer was worth one point out of many. The students received narrative evaluations, accompanied by rubrics, instead of grades, so they always had the opportunity to improve and knew where they should focus their efforts. An A+ no longer set the limit to their learning.

I stopped referring to my children as “smart.” They were hard workers and creative thinkers. They were risk takers. They repeatedly surprised me.

The biggest surprise for me is how this story ends. Next year, my son will be going to a university known for its intellectual rigor. He turned down an excellent school close to home in order to attend a school half way across the country for “true intellectuals who don’t mind working hard for their degrees.” At 17, he moved his own vines.

Have you encouraged a growth mindset in your child? What has your experience been? Please share in the comments section below!

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