Allegedly Hot-Housing Stella

Stella has now returned to school for a third term. While she seems to enjoy her friends there more and more, her school experience has been quite a different one for her parents. They are not happy with the ‘service’ and I think (I have a strong feeling on this) that Stella will switch to another school if not next term, then she will likely start afresh in the first term next year.

Stella has been coming home with readers that are way too easy for her for more than two terms now. Her teacher is aware of Stella’s abilities but for some reason the Supergirl keeps coming home with readers that are for beginners. The school can’t possibly be under resourced. The fees that they charge for Preppies are one of the highest in the country. I am not implying that the teacher did nothing. After Stella’s parents spoke to her in first term, she did make some changes in the classroom. For literacy, she organized for Stella to work with a reading buddy who is more or less reading at the same level. This same issue to do with super easy readers was brought up again when Stella’s parents met up with the teacher in the final week of term 2. They were told afterwards that Stella apparently needs plenty of practice and the readers that Stella took home were chosen to ensure success to boost confidence.

Stella is still reading the readers she brings home dutifully but it is obvious that she seems to enjoy her own books or books from the library much more. She seems happy to go along with the literacy program at school but it is quite a different story when it comes to the maths on offer. The Supergirl, as well as her three other maths buddies, are simply bored beyond belief. I knew long ago that this was going to be the case for Stella. Learning about shapes, patterns, sequences, basic addition and subtraction, sorting, grouping and counting from 1-10 are simply no longer challenging to a little girl who has already been doing work like this for the last two years. The teacher did organize for Stella to work with 3 other children. She offered the children extra work but it was pretty much the same kind of work the rest of the class was doing. When given the opportunity to work together, the children worked diligently all through the 2nd term. The friendships between the children grew. In this blog, I call the group ‘The New Gang of Four’. This term however, the children are getting restless. They no longer enjoy doing the extra work. Even Stella is beginning to whinge about doing the same thing over and over. She doesn’t have a habit of whingeing and I wonder if she is influenced by the others in the group. There were plenty more choices when she was at Kindergarten. Now that she is at school, she has to do pretty much what the teacher has planned.

Stella is at least enjoying the social aspect of going to school but her parents (especially her mum) doesn’t seem to have as much luck when it comes to some of the other parents. There have been a few unpleasant experiences. During one fundraising evening, the topic of ‘Hot-House Kids’ came up in one of the many conversations that was going around, and one mum ‘jokingly’ made Stella’s mum feel uneasy by asking how she managed to get Stella to learn so much. The plans to allow children of similar abilities to work together also caused resentment. The parents of one of the new gang of four heard that parents were asking if their children miss out if the teacher is paying more attention to the ‘gifted’ children. In one birthday party that Stella attended, the mum hosting the party went around ‘introducing’ the child to everyone, telling them that she is the ‘gifted’ one and that she doesn’t know who Diego is. Gee, I didn’t know it was a crime to not know who Diego is. There are no rules stating that each and every child from the birthday child’s class has to be invited to the party. Why did they invite Stella?

I can honestly say that no one is ‘hot-housing’ Stella. The child is just inquisitive and eager to learn anything that fancies her. If Stella is ready and willing, why stop her from learning? We, her parents and I do not force the little girl to complete hours of paperwork. She learned a lot of things through play and games. As I have said before, if something is no longer appealing or fun to her, there is no way we can make her stay and learn the rest of the lesson. Many children of Stella’s age are already enrolled in many after school programmes. I read that some children who aren’t much older than Stella have something scheduled outside school for up to 5 days a week. Now that’s scary! Other than two terms of toddler music programme when she was really little, and swimming lessons in the warmer months, Stella’s parents have not signed her up for extra curricular classes outside her school. This is not to say that they didn’t entertain the idea. They had wanted Stella to learn an instrument but she was not very interested. They eventually agreed that the little girl should enjoy at least another year free from such commitments. Parents who do hot-house their children will not make such a choice. They are obsessed with scheduling something ‘educational’ for every minute their children is awake. That is suffocating.

(Note: Stella’s parents never describe their daughter as ‘Gifted’. The tag was used by some parents to describe the groups of children that were selected to work together and Stella happened to be selected for both the literacy and mathematics groups. Stella’s parents have declined to have her tested.)