Surviving NCLB

When I was an undergraduate student some 20+ years ago a lot of research was coming out about learning styles and the multiple intelligences. A few years later I was beginning my masters and getting a gifted/talented endorsement I was excited about how we would reach divergent thinkers. About the same time my own children were born and I thought how wonderful that they would be taught in new and exciting ways that might understand the creative mind. And then...

No Child Left Behind became law and one-size-fits-all high stakes testing and we were being told that every child needed to know this then and that next and I watched my children and many others not just left behind but confused and angry and turned off to school. These brilliant creative children who just don't think or learn logically/sequentially but intuitively and globally wanted to know "why" and were told "because".

A few years later my daughter was now in school and I was teaching gifted/talented in two elementary schools in a small school district south of town when I heard a wonderful presenter at a G/T National Conference speak about the gifted Visual/Spatial learner. Linda Silverman described my children to a T. A bright, inquisitive uneven student, a late reader but with an extensive vocabulary, a puzzle solver, horrific speller, understanding math concepts very well but not able to pass a math calculations timed test to save their life, artistic, musical, dramatic...

We survived elementary school but middle and high school were (are) a pretty awful. My daughter never had problems passing The Test, and, in fact, did OK in school, not great but she got through. My son has will no doubt get through the system too. But how sad that that is all I am hoping for them to play the game and get through the classes and not to learn, think, express themselves and grow as people.