A third lesson was to use information with the teacher in an informing and a supportive way. Teachers are major direct service providers to children and influencing the educational experiences of my sons was not to be accomplished with a parental emotional wish list fraught with anxiety, but with concise, well defined, appropriately placed, factual information. And fourth, we watched in amazement how the consistent use of information over time creates geometric effects upon its intended purposes. Information on curriculum compacting given to the first grade teacher was used with our younger son, resulting in his mastery of the fifth grade mathematics curriculum without gaps in his knowledge. The availability of research had changed attitudes and classroom practices among the staff which paved the way for Matthew's particular needs and other children's as well.
Informed teachers can be fearless advocates despite central office policy.
Our youngest son entered sixth grade in the Fall of 1996, although he has completed the 6-8 curriculum and high school courses of algebra, geometry, algebra II, and chemistry. He loves school and the options he has now, one of which is to use the time made available from curriculum compacting to reduce his schedule and manage a fish farm breeding project at the high school. In retrospect, the process my wife and I went through appears so very simple because an informed viewpoint clarifies a plan of action. It is not simple, however, because the process of becoming an informed parent or a teacher about high achieving students is fraught with sources offering good intentions, ineffectual empathy, misinformation, and little direction. And, two, do not presume the application of information in the classroom to be as easy as access to that information.