Re: selecting tutors

[csjhs@eiu.edu (Jeanne H. Simpson)]

Mickey

I don't envy you this decision.  I agree with Katie and others that
further interaction with the young woman is in order, so that you can get
a clearer sense of her, not necessarily filtered through the reactions of
others.  

And I certainly would carefully consider the distinctions between
intellectual maturity and emotional/physical maturity.  I suspect many of
us on this list have reared children in which there was a considerable gap
between the two kinds of maturity that widened and narrowed spasmodically
as they went through school.  What do you do when you have a 5 year old
who is obviously ready to start first grade, and then that same child is a
short, skinny, physically immature 14 year old surrounded by 6 footers who
shave in the 9th grade?  

However bright she is, she is fifteen.  And nothing is more fragile in the
world about being singled out, about being "different," than an adolescent.
Her behaviors that are problematic, are, I would guess, symptomatic of
this fragility.  And no matter what happens, that fragility is not going to
go away for a few years, even if she has a stratospheric IQ. 

Teaching someone intellectually is one thing.  Teaching them emotionally
is a lot tougher. She deserves care on this, even if she doesn't like your
final decision.   

Don't think I've offered much here, just cogitating with dismay how few
options our educational system offers to the truly gifted and how
inflexible those options are.  A young woman with great intelligence needs
that gift to be nurtured, but the rest of her needs nurturing too.  Is a
university the place for her to be at fifteen?  I have to confess...I have
my reservations.  But where else could she go?  Not many choices.

Jeanne Simpson
csjhs@eiu.edu