Waiting, Waiting, Waiting..............

Today I began Italian lessons at the local Learning Centre. I had enrolled in the Beginners level course because even though I have listened in while my children and husband have been learning at various times, I felt I had only snippets and was definitely a ‘beginner’ (a fact reinforced by daughter #1 who dissuaded me from buying an Intermediate level text over the summer)

Today I also had an experience which was a powerful reminder of the situation for many gifted children in classrooms where the degree of challenge and the pace of learning is not a good match for their learning needs.

For the first 90 mins I struggled to keep paying attention. My language skills are truly very basic (and I am not understating them) but for the majority of the lesson nothing new, nothing that I didn’t already know, was covered. I kept wondering when we were going to get on to something new, something that would make my brain focus, how much longer the lesson would run………. The lady sitting next to me (who has previously learned Spanish and also has a smattering of French) seemed to be having the same problem. At one point she commented to me that she really learns better when she has to stretch. On the whole though, everyone else looked like they were crunching their eyebrows. So I was left thinking maybe I could get more out of it, if I tried harder………… I have to admit that in the last 20 minutes there were a few new things, but it seems they were included to tantalise, dangling a little of what might be to come but came with the comment "But don't worry about that yet, we will get to it later.

I do not mean to cast the teacher in a poor light. He is a volunteer, an elderly gent who no doubt has a good knowledge of Italian (and French as it turns out). And I am sure he was presenting as he has in the past, using materials he has used in the past. And as it was the first session so perhaps he was ‘sounding us out’ in terms of skill development. Does all of this sound familiar? Remarkably like the first few days of the school year in many places perhaps.

So the real test will come next week. If the teacher is astute, appreciates that there is a range of skill development amongst those coming into his class, and senses the differing rates of learning within the group (some of the ‘crunchy eyebrow’ folk seemed to pick it up more readily than others), then some differentiation might occur……….. if not, perhaps the bulk of my learning will probably happen outside of ‘school’.

Which is, sadly, what I hear too often from gifted kids.