You Don’t Want To Get His Hopes Up.
In my quest for private schools, I found one for grades 6 through 12 that specializes in teaching students with “learning differences,” including processing disorders (Shane) and attention disorders (Dylan).
The website on this school was vague, so I scoured the web for more information, while I waited to go on my tour of the school. I found almost nothing, except one generic school site listing the population of students as 9.
That can’t be right, I thought. There can’t only be 9 students in the whole school!
But indeed, there are. Well, actually, two students just graduated so with Dylan, there would be 8.
The school is located inside a church that was having Vacation Bible School, so there weren’t any classrooms to tour. But I was able to sit with the school’s principal for an hour and get a good grasp on what the school is like.
While the small size concerned me, it was the principal’s comments that knocked me nearly across the room – and right out the door.
“We do have some gifted students,” she said, in response to Dylan’s brilliance. “It often boosts their self-esteem that, when they are done with their own work, they can help the students who are not as high-performing.”
I could imagine Dylan sitting with his three-day project finished in 20 minutes (although he probably forgot to put his name on it). Then I imagined him spending the next three days helping someone else finish that project.
Then there was the story of the incredibly gifted boy who, in spite of his learning differences, excelled in science.
“We had to buy him a new textbook,” the principal said, as if that would really help the gifted boy go far.
I pictured Dylan with his new textbook, bored to tears. Dylan wouldn’t ever open a new textbook, even if someone said it contained the secret to life itself.
But the creme de la creme – and the final straw – came when the principal said to me, “I noticed you mentioned Dylan wanting to go to MIT. You really shouldn’t do that.”
After some story about a kid who dropped out of high school because he couldn’t play college basketball, she said, “You don’t want to get his hopes up.”
I DON’T WANT TO GET HIS HOPES UP?!?
Actually, Miss Principal, I do want to get his hopes up. I am well aware of the MIT reputation for admissions – only 8.2% of applicants were accepted in 2014. But if Dylan wants to work toward the goal of acceptance by MIT (which he actually does not), then he has every right to do that – whether or not he has “learning differences.”
I expect great things from my boy – most especially happiness and the ability for him to do whatever the heck he wants to do. If the kid wants to go to MIT, he will apply to MIT. You will not squash his dreams – any dreams – even if his dream is to be a world-famous quarterback in the NFL, or a taco truck driver, or a heart surgeon or a ski instructor or a door-to-door lava lamp salesman!
So.
Dylan will NOT be going to school at Private School Option #1.
Unless, of course, he really wants to, because that would be his choice.
But, he says, he does not – and I didn’t even tell him about the whole MIT thing.