Gifted 10-year-old Excels and Accelerates

By Leslie Cranford, section manager

What do you do with a child who should be a 5th grader (according to age), will be enrolled in 7th grade in the fall and will be taking 9th-grade algebra?

That’s what Theresa and James Ellington’s challenge is – and has always been – with their daughter Evie, who we first met in 2020 when she whizzed through first grade as a full-time student in Texas Tech K-12.

 

In the State of Texas, a child has to be five by Sept. 1 to attend kindergarten. Being born in late October, Evie missed that deadline, and since then it’s been a struggle to keep her challenged enough in school. Theresa was aware of Texas Tech K-12, and the COVID-19 pandemic was the perfect time to get acquainted with its online, self-paced style. Without Texas Tech K-12, Evie making the leap from a full year in kindergarten to a full year in 2nd grade at five years old would not have been possible.

Even then, knowing Evie was going to return to public school for socialization with her age group, Theresa also knew there was a chance Evie could come back to the online school they’d both grown to love, as she gets bored easily.

Fast forward five years, and Evie is enrolled in sixth grade gifted/talented (G/T) classes and accelerated programs in public school. But she also is back with Texas Tech K-12 as a part-time supplemental student. Her school district approved her taking 8th grade math concurrently with her 6th grade-advanced course, which adds about 65% of 7th grade curriculum. This allows her to accelerate yet again to Algebra 1 (9th-grade level) as a 7th grader.

Theresa said she and her husband both went through this in school, taking the most rigorous courses including Advanced Placement and G/T, but they never had to crack a book. That did not serve them well in college.

As students themselves, she and James were both in the top 99.9% of everything. They never learned to fail and to persevere until they both struggled in college. They didn’t know how to “do school.” Things eventually turned out OK, but they saw similar traits in their children from a very young age.

Theresa explained that for her and her husband, the goal for both of their daughters is to keep them in the “academic middle.” Their older daughter Katie will be going into 8th grade a week before her 12th birthday in August. The typical age for that grade is 13 to 14.

“We didn’t want the girls always getting A’s – we didn’t want them to fail, but we wanted them to learn how to take a B and be OK with it,” Theresa further clarified. “I taught gifted middle schoolers for 10 years before our girls were born, and I saw high-achieving kids taking algebra – one in the 8th grade who got an 88 – under their desk in tears; I didn't want that for my kids.”

Fourth grade for Evie yielded two revelations. According to her mom, it was the first hint from her of “oh my gosh, I hate school.” And they discovered “mean girls” come out about then as well, or at least in their district, Theresa indicated, shaking her head.

Theresa says Evie is more mature and responsible than her big sister and even most 7th and 8th graders, describing her as “very much a mother hen,” which her peers dislike because they feel they’re being told what to do. She gets along much better with older students, even adults. For example, when they have indoor recess, Evie would rather go play Uno with a teacher.

Working through her second experience with Texas Tech K-12, Evie says she definitively prefers online school to a traditional classroom. In fact, when asked, she indicated she’d prefer going back to Texas Tech K-12 full-time, starting in 9th grade, for high school. And at this pace, Evie will graduate high school at 16.

She appreciates that she gets more time to work on a lesson because there’s not a due date until the end of the course. She can go at her own pace, which helps her learn to deal with challenges instead of just zooming through everything, giving her time she wouldn’t normally take to actually learn the material.

“I also like online school better because most of the time it’s a smaller group – and they wouldn’t know that much about me, so they couldn’t make fun of me,” Evie says matter-of-factly. “While in public school, they know more about me, so they just pick on me over and over, which is what is going on now.”

However, core academics don’t consume all of Evie’s time; after all, she is a 10-year-old. At her school she’s involved in choir, singing alto and band, playing saxophone.

Outside of that, she’s teaching herself American Sign Language via books and online videos. She’s highly involved in gymnastics, including vault, uneven bars, beam and floor. Evie is an American Gymnastics Academy junior prep level 5 and goes to the gym Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, comprising a minimum of eight hours of practice weekly. If she continues beyond this level, the practice time is only going to increase, which makes self-paced school in the future that much more important.

Even at this young age, Evie is fairly well-focused on her future, with an interest in becoming a veterinarian or vet tech despite not currently enjoying science. She was surprised and happy to learn Texas Tech University has a School of Veterinary Medicine that will graduate its first class this spring.

Having been a teacher for nearly 20 years and now teaching virtually, Theresa loves that Texas Tech K-12 is approved by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) – it’s accredited and not a private school. But other aspects of the program keep Texas Tech K-12 top-of-mind and an open option for the Ellington family. Theresa says it offers all the things they need and want for Evie’s education, with flexibility being another key component.

“We can work online or offline, in the house or on the road; we can take a full grade level or a single subject,” Theresa said enthusiastically. “We can move quickly past topics already mastered or slow down and even supplement with extra practice on more challenging topics. It’s the content, format and delivery system combined that work well for us.

“Evie has said many times since her first experience with Texas Tech K-12, ‘Mom when can I go back to online school so I can just do my school and move on with life?’ We know that time will come soon, but until it does, we know, whether it’s K-12, dual credit, college or now even vet school, this program will continue to support her ever-changing learning needs.”