My daughter Anja was tested several years ago in the school and the tests showed she is at the top 3-5% of her generation regarding several aspects – creativity, logical thinking, math skills, leadership… And as such she is entitled to have personalized program to enhance and develop those skills and abilities.

First we (I) have to fight with school authorities as they did nothing about it. They tested her and that was it. I know I was really annoyed when the results was not known for several months. Or at least we were not informed about it. I really didn’t care about the results but I believe if they were doing the tests, we should know about the outcome. At that time my husband was (and still is) the president of the PTA, and he raised the issue several times. And to my surprise there were parents who wait silently for the results for over a year.

When we finally get the results and learned about the obligations the school have and possibilities there are in the school system, we managed to devise some sort of plan,  how we can enhance Anja’s abilities. Nothing special, as she is top athlete and it takes her quite a lot of time, but small things she can do beside her normal school homeworks and studies, like preparing the presentation about swimming, attending math and science competitions, make her own webpage and so on. And one of the things she really likes to do is photography. Her father is a photographer and we have all the equipment so it was quite an obvious choice. So Anja agreed to prepare the photo exhibition in the school.

At first she was all for it, but gradually she lost the drive and we have to push her to go out and do the shooting. And she was all mad on us, because we get her those extra obligations she really doesn’t need or want. But somehow we get through it and she picked her best 16 photos. We get them printed and laminated and she put them up in the school hall, where she had opening ceremony, with teachers and her schoolmates attending. She was really proud and happy to finish the project. And we were proud as well.

Wanna see her photos? Click here.

But makes me wonder:

Are some parents so ignorant, afraid or what to stand up for their child rights?
Do they still believe that the child will get bad grades if you “fight” with the teachers?
That in the school the teachers are always right and you have nothing to say about it?
I really don’t support laziness and ignorance by my children, but when there is an injustice I always stand up for them and speak with the teacher (of course I don’t fight with them:).
And aren’t they curious how their child did on the tests?

I will never understand that. But that’s why I am no ordinary mom:)