Remember back in Post #2 when I shared that one of the three things I remembered from my experience with gifted testing as an 11th grader was my parents’ response(s) on the questionnaire about their observations of me at home? What I remember was that other than my demographic information, they could only answer one question about me on that questionnaire. It was something to the effect of, “Does your child ask any sophisticated questions for his/her age?” Their answer was, “My daughter asked us why all animals’ eyes are brown.” I remember asking that question when I was little, and as a gifted educator (who may also be slightly biased, I admit), I agree- that is a pretty sophisticated question! The problem was that my parents only had one example to share with school, even though I remembered other questions I asked when I was little (like age 5 little), such as:
- How does Santa get into our house when we don’t have a chimney (to my mom)?
- Where do babies come from (to my babysitter)?
- Why doesn’t my brother ever get punished for not doing his chores, but I do (to my parents, admittedly at age 14, but I had a strong sense of justice)?
Had the school followed up with my parents with a phone interview, they could have helped them complete the questionnaire by explaining the questions better or giving examples to them to help them think of their own observations. In my 30 years as an educator, I have never met a parent who didn’t want the best for their child at school. It takes a little extra effort on the part of gifted personnel, but that effort can help a parent who is stumped on the questionnaire fill in the gaps for the school in order to get the most accurate picture of a child’s academic needs as we can.
Well, it sounds like we might now have enough information on the referred student to share with the Identification/Placement Committee. Not so fast! It sounds like it, but there are two other things that gifted personnel should collect for the committee, which we’ll go into in the next post. First, share with us any other ways you have used to gather more parent information on your referred student(s)!
Teaching for Talent 