XP - vastly different academic abilities
J&A2008
member
So, the past couple of years we've been working with oldest SS on his schoolwork. He has difficulty paying attention in school. He wants to be social and he's not very driven to complete his work. He works better at home, and he's pretty smart, I think. He really connected with his teacher last year and got his best grades yet and best behavior reports. She was very easy for us to work with and helped us give him more time at home to complete assignments, communicated with us about his progress, and seemed to genuinely care about his success.
His teacher this year is difficult to work with, hasn't been understanding of SS's slower work habits, and he's just generally so frustrating to talk with I'm sick of him already. DH has had more success in talking with him, but I can't see why he's a teacher when he clearly doesn't take any joy in working with kids facing challenges. So, we've been taking SS to a psychologist. He has so many of the indicators for ADHD, we just hesitate to label him if it's not necessary. I think this year, we're going to do it just to get more help from his lame ass teacher and hopefully this will be a better year for him.
This whole issue is now being complicated, for me, anyway, by younger SS's progress in school. He's advanced beyond any of his classmates in reading and math and the teacher would like to give him extra, more complex math assignments. Math is older SS's biggest challenge. At p/t conferences, younger SS's teacher asked us to speak with him about the extra math work, which we did privately. We didn't address talking with his brother about it, but as soon as we got home, he immediately wanted to tell him. I interrupted before he could get it out and distracted him with something else - probably not the best way to handle it, but I didn't, and still don't, know what to say.
I just don't know how to handle everyone's feelings with these different situations. I don't want either of them to be hurt or feel badly about their abilities.
Anyone deal with this or have advice?
Re: XP - vastly different academic abilities
I think this is great advice. Maybe you can just think of a few things that the oldest is better at than the youngest and when/if he feels bad about himself just point out his strenghts. And remember that there are different learning styles, look them up and you might find some help for finding what the oldest's learning style is and it might help in dealing with this but also in helping his education too (hope that did not sound sarcastic b/c it was not meant to!)
You need an ally in older son's classroom in the form of the teacher, and you don't have one. Its time to bring in the principal. Talk to the principal, let him know you are concerned about the change in how your son is doing this year vs. how he did last year under a different style, and your struggles to make any headway with the teacher.
Has your son been evaluated for any learning disabilities? It may be time to do this as well.
He is being evaluated, by the same psychologist he's had since first grade.
The principal is an even bigger d. than the teacher, unfortunately. He's been looking for a "better" job for years since he thought elementary school would be his stepping stone to somewhere else, but apparently no one wants him.
However, we do have "teacher leaders" in our district who travel from school to school and she is already working with the teacher and has observed SS in the classroom this month. We're meeting with her after winter break to talk strategy.
Well, I guess we'll take down the charts in the kitchen showing their grades through the years. ::sigh::
No, we don't compare them at home. I just am struggling a little with the contrast and how to address it with the boys, if at all.
SS does have a tutor to help him. We try different things at home. The problem is that the school already uses a spiral teaching method, where they keep learning different ways to solve problems. For example, they learn like 4 different ways to do long multiplication problem. For SS, this is overwhelming. We tend to have him just do one method for all, even though they are supposed to practice all 4. Works for some kids, just not ours. I'm not really sure if this is what you meant or not.