Third grade was not an easy year for the Cupcake.
No, you're not in a time warp and no I'm not rerunning old posts. You're right -- she did just finish fourth grade, but I have a point here.
One of her teachers, the poster child for the phrase salt of the earth, had recently moved up from teaching second grade and was accustomed to having to repeat each instruction eleventy times to guarantee getting through to the kids in the back who were busy shredding their shoelaces and drawing on their hands. Cupcake couldn't stand it. She didn't need to hear variations on the same instruction for the benefit of audio learners, visual learners, hands-on learners, and learners who learned only by being screamed at. She didn't need to drill third grade spelling words like grass, smell or kitten. She became frustrated to the point of nearly screaming in class (she saved the screaming for the ride home, bless her shrill little heart) because she rarely got called on even when she totally knew the answer.
By second semester Cupcake moaned every morning about having to go to school, and implored me to teach her at home, which would have been fine with me except that the state might have cocked a few suspicious eyebrows upon discovering how well versed she was in art and literature and how non-versed she was in math and gym.
I tried to help her. I asked her teachers to have the best spellers learn some of the vocabulary words in French or Spanish. I asked them to call on her more often or try to give her more class responsibility or recognition; they swore all students were treated equally but I knew they were lying, the fiends.
Cupcake's frustration endured and intensified. She could hardly stand it when other students dilly-dallied. She began to lash out and blame it on everyone else. The low point came when she punched her on-again off-again BFF and then claimed it was the other girl's fault because she didn't get out of the way of Cupcake's oncoming fist.
Misguided? Perhaps. A little full of herself? A bit. Somewhat justified? Decidedly, at least the frustration part, not the punching.
By spring break I was becoming desperate. If Cupcake was this unhappy in third grade, what was I going to be able to offer her for fourth? Stay in the same school situation and expect different results? Keep her where she was but hire tutors to give her the stimulation she needed? Move her to a public school where she'd be entitled to special services for gifted students? Take out a deluxe library membership and dump her there every day, hoping her evolving interests would eventually even out her education?
I began to investigate various local options for gifted students because there was not way I was going to survive all the whining and complaining for another academic year.
And I didn't want to hear it from her, either.
Next: weighing options
