Comments about ‘Raising a prodigy: How to accelerate the gifted child’

Good luck getting your children into an Accelerated Learning School in the Canyons District. Just been announced they are cutting the number of schools from four to two. Glad I don't have children in the Utah school district.

If you are going to title an article as a "how to" shouldn't the article actually contain the "how to"? This article is the exact opposite. It says "not" to accelerate the gifted child, not "how to" as the headline exclaims. Do the copy editors or those in charge of the titles not read the article?

This article quotes the "New York Times" as saying: ""That whole child, a child who skipped happily along through elementary school, becomes profoundly and heartbreakingly vulnerable in adolescence. ... Between the onslaught of hormones and rapid physical growth, middle school is an emotional and physical gauntlet. These challenges are difficult enough to navigate for the age-appropriate middle-school students, but when students are forced into middle school before they are ready to handle the challenges, it’s a miserable experience."

It's worth noting that this was actually written by Jessica Lahey, a former English teacher at Rowland Hall in SLC and currently a New Hampshire teacher and contributor to the NYT Motherlode blog.

I agree with Fred Vader. The "here's what worked" section is more or less missing from this article.

Teach children that learning is fun. That boring essay can be the best thing a kid has to do all week, if they have the right attitude about it.

Everybody's got got some gift. Sadly we approach gifted programs as giant competitions, when we can turn most assignments into "gifted programs" by simply divorcing ourselves from the scores and grades, and focusing on the opportunities each subject is for learning.

Kids need challenges, success in overcoming them, and coping skills in the face of many failures.

I should write an article about this... :)