::giggle:: Avi's famous :D Oh well, he's not actually named, so maybe not, but I'm still amused by the fact that the unnamed parent in the last line of this article is Avi :D

As soon as I read that, I thought "That sounds familiar. Oh yeah..." We were at the town hall thingy with the superintendent because Wheaton is our home high school and we'd like it to be fixed up some time before Yael is old enough to go there. Also, as Avi noted, sad to say, but it was important that a white person also point out that Wheaton gets screwed. The problem is that, for some strange reason, it seems like schools in the very wealthy and very white areas always seem to get fixed first. Weird, huh?

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What else has been going on? I've been busy. Duh. I need to get started on the Purim shpiel narration. I've managed to get two of my I-have-no-idea-how-many articles for Transformative Works and Cultures edited and posted. Trying to keep up my hours at work this month, especially now that I have a babysitter back.

We're rearranging the house, which is eating up some of my time. The good news is that we probably don't have to buy a new stove. Whew. Avi's pretty sure he knows what's wrong and it can be fixed with a $40 part.

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Oh! Yael's p/t conference was yesterday and unsurprisingly she's doing wonderfully and is a pleasure to have in school. One funny note for those of you who know her in person: The teacher was shocked when we said that she tends to get very very loud and boisterous. "Really? I've never heard her raise her voice!" ::snicker::

I'm pleased with what she's learning and I think the teacher and school are doing a good job of keeping her learning new things. The teacher is a bit held back on the math front by certain aspects of the new curriculum, but she says she's taking the opportunity to teach the kids problemsolving and working in teams, and I think that's something Yael needs to work on anyway, so I'm content.

We also spoke to the teacher about the Christian book that was sent home the other day and she apologized profusely. Apparently the mother handed the books out right at 3 pm, which is exactly the moment of the most chaos when all the kids are getting ready to go home. The teacher said it carefully, but she seems to think the mother did it then on purpose. ::coughs:: Anyway, she's spoken firmly to the mother and explained why it was a poor idea.

The teacher noted we weren't the only ones to complain. There are apparently a number of other families that feel very strongly that if someone is going to teach their kids about religion it's going to be them :D She also noted that over the Halloween time, a couple of kids told her if she celebrated Halloween, she worshiped the devil. ::coughs more:: There's apparently also a surprisingly large contingent of Jehovah's Witnesses in our area, who can't stay in the classroom to celebrate birthdays.

As the teacher said, in Montgomery County, there's a large contingent of everybody. To say we're a multicultural area is putting it mildly. There are a few pockets of white people (see: Bethesda, Potomac) but otherwise...

Okay, I spent the morning snuggled in bed with my Kindle and a warm sleeping boy, but now it's time to get some work done!

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How do you know when your kid is truly gifted and talented? I mean, we all think our kids are perfect and wonderful and the smartest things ever on the face of the planet, but how do you know whether you should fight to get your kid into a GT class/program/whatever?

Okay, it's a little early to be worrying about this, but I was just looking at the MoCo website and the site for Yael's elementary school, and they've got a lot of great-looking GT stuff. There's an early identification program for K-2, a competitive admissions program for 4th and 5th graders at a different school, etc and so on. And I find the whole thing a bit bewildering.

Let me be honest: I think my kid is smart. But that's not necessarily the same thing as academically gifted and talented. Avi is smart. And he sucks at all things school/academia related. Not because he's dumb, but because that's not how he learns or thinks or whatever. I did fairly well in school and I would have done a lot better if I'd given a damn. Should I have been pushed more by the school or by my parents? I don't know. Knowing me, that might have made things worse! (Me? Stubborn? Perish the thought. ::looks innocent:: I have no idea where Yael gets her stubbornness.)

Now, if Yael takes after her Aunt Naomi (as she seems to be), it will all be slightly easier, because Naomi was obviously quite academically talented and not lazy like me :D OTOH, Naomi had some moderate OCD/perfectionist tendencies that my parents had no idea how to handle, but I know what to look out for, so that shouldn't be as much of a problem. (I kid you not, I remember her pulling all-nighters in middle school because she had to get an assignment just right.)

But back to the schools, as Yael gets closer to starting school, I'll need to read up on what her options are, because I want to know. And then I need to take a serious look at my sproglet and try and figure out what will be best for her, not for my image of her.