We live in a verysmall town with 2 elementary schools, one junior high, and one highschool, but it's a "suburb" town if you will of a large city. When mykids were small my son attended what's called a "magnet" school there.They are schools that are based on individual education plans. Eachchild in each class moves at their own pace. Some very slowly, somevery quickly. Each magnet school had a theme. Art, music, etc. Ours wasenvironmental. We loved it. We spent hours outdoors on field trips. Theclasses all had environmental issues/lessons at the core of learning.Even if that meant that the math questions meant using frogs andcattails, see what I mean? The children has much freedom to movearound, learn in the manner best suited to them, not boxed in so tospeak. They were graded on a graph according to their own improvements,not against other students. My son took off in this environment! In20/20 hindsight I wish I'd left himin thatprogramthrough out his school years. We moved and I put himinto our small town system in the 2nd grade. Hehas alwaysbeenlike Bo's son. 99%on ITBS tests all his life.Scored out of the park on all standardized tests. Honor roll throughmiddle school. By the 5th grade he was scoring at the 12th grade levelin reading, language arts, etc. He also tested at a genius level. Theproblem was, he never, ever had to study. He finished his classworkquickly, got boredwith what was happening inclassand read abook orwould sit and draw. It pissed offa lot of the teachers. Itseemed to aggravatethemeven more that he was a clean cut, articulate, respectfulkid who was so full of untapped potential and they'd only get glimpsesof it every now and then. He just wasn't interested. When something didinterest him, the papers he'd write or the projects he'd complete wouldmake mine andthe teachersheads spin. They wereamazing! He received one of the highest ACT scores in our region lastyear. Was offered tons of awesome scholarships and couldn't decide whathe wanted to do so he stayed here locally. The first paper he wrote forhis college English course was returned to him with a note that said itwas the best paper ever received by this professor by an undergraduate!Then the professor pulled him to the side and asked who his high schoolteacher had been and later called her! But the new wore off quickly inCollege too. He still doesn't know what he wants to do with hislife...nothing challenges him...everything is boring...
Now that I've gone through that long story. I'd like to mention my sonis a video game addict. He has played video games to border lineobsession from the time that he got old enough for it to becomedifficult for me to restrict it. As a young child I limited histelevision, snacks, bad word exposure, chemicals...blah, blah,blah....when he began playing video games I limited the time he playedthem. As they get older and go to other kids homes, spend the nights,you don't know what they are doing. I know as he got into middle schooland high school he was playing them for hours a day (I didn't know itthen) when he wasn't in football season. I'm telling you, too much ofthese things is a bad, bad thing. M.E. might be able to use the rightwords, I can't remember what it is but there is something about the waythe brain begins to expect quick movement to keep it's attentionfocused. When you compare the bazillions of rapid movements a minute ofa video game to the slow pace of a human voice, reading, or just normalliving, it doesn't hold the interest of that brain anymore. It's beenscientifically proven! So, you can have a genius kid from a greatfamily and do almost everything right, and still end up with someserious dysfunction from an excess of any one thing!
Raspberry
, bout ten minutes from the border. Go tochurch, work and shop in the Dover/Somersworth/Rochester area. Go toschool in Portland/Saco/Sanford/Gorham (gotta love the multiplecampuses). Volunteer and take the animals to the vet in Kennebunk. I'mall over the place! 
