Gifted Child Underachievement in School?

Some Reasons Why.

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Poor Fit Between Some Teachers and Gifted Children

The people giving the descriptions are the mother or father of a gifted child who volunteered to work with me as I wrote about their experiences. These are all pseudonyms from my longitudinal study work. And no, things never seem to change in schools for very long and with great exceptions.

Phil Burns — On parents’ visiting day, I watched Phil’s preschool teacher asking the children various questions. When Phil didn’t raise his hand, I asked him why he didn’t. After continued prodding, he finally raised his hand, and when the teacher didn’t call on him, he got upset, tried to hide his head under the table behind him, and then pulled on and rocked the table. The teacher told Phil that if he couldn’t get control of himself, he would need to go out into the hall. She didn’t ask what the problem was. I took him out into the hall myself so as not to interrupt the other parents and found out that he had raised his hand often at the beginning of the school year, but he didn’t anymore. He…