3rd Grade Parent-Teacher Conference

Butterflies 

I wasn’t looking forward to this year’s first parent-teacher conference. I’m not sure why. I worked on preparing and organizing my thoughts but still felt nervous. Most likely because we had never discussed with the teacher her views on gifted education.

I don’t know why we hadn’t had the talk because this teacher is an amazing woman whose love of learning is evident. She’s kind, funny, and creative and has a classroom decorated like Hogwarts. What’s not to love?

Our daughter is the only child in class who attends the gifted program. This is a pull-out program one day a week. She’s had some challenges catching up on work that’s covered when she’s out. She’s not penalized for assignments she misses but learning does occur while she’s gone and, well, she freaks out about it. Those perfectionist tendencies rise to the surface.

 Wow!

So, we were concerned if her attending the gifted program was in any way hampering her learning in the regular classroom. Thankfully, the answer was no. Straight A’s across the board on her report card. The standardized tests her reading/language arts skills are 7 grades higher and math is 3 grades higher. More startling when I remember that she grade accelerated last year. Wow!

While the scores and grades were both impressive and reassuring, the teacher did point out areas where our daughter needs work. Specifically, writing. I was so grateful for her keeping us grounded on our daughter’s abilities. Usually we find people are either blown away by her abilities or are simply dismissive. Her teacher is neither. She looks at her as a whole person; one with many abilities and one with room for improvement.

Whew

After the meeting, we left with a list of writing prompts to work with at home, two books outside my daughter’s preferred reading genre, and an immense sense of relief that our daughter is in wise and capable hands for third grade. Whew.

1 Comment

  1. Writing: the bane of the asynchronous!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.