Tanglefoot might help but ants are smart and could find a way around it or put stuff on it. There should be no difference between ants and no ants with peonies in your area. No scientific base but I believe that when peonies evolved, mostly in central asia, the original plants being in an area that received little rain the plants with the sweeter sap on the flowers attracted more ants to eat the substance so the flowers would open. When the flowers started moving into gardens people would select the plants with the least amount of ant attracting gunk. Over the centuries man has selectivly reduced the amount of sweet sap until the flowers can now open on their own. There are ants that do not eat sweets, another experiment. One thing that is more subjective than anything is that we have had several years where the sweet eating ants have been few. In those years the peonies have opened fully but the flowers that had been heavily rained on with the sap amount being reduced opened beyond the point of fullness. The flowers almost formed a ball on the stem rather than showing the base of the flower. Depending on where you are in New York there are several gardens that you could take your students to see. Cornell because their interest in plant development and their peony garden could be a source for your students. I do not know if they have speakers but if they do perhaps one could come to your school either for a class or public presentation on peonies. If public perhaps you could ask for small donations to offset the cost of the experiments.

This is a great thread. I'm a teacher (though I only do long-term sub jobs right now), and also GT certified and trained. I've also raised two children, one of whom passed all the GT tests as a kindergartner and is now in college. My other child passed a few of the GT tests as a third-grader, but honestly I don't see her as 'gifted.' Part of the problem is that this school district includes achievement tests in the battery of GT tests, which is completely inappropriate, but there it is. And she is an extremely hard-working kid. Anyway, I've always been hugely interested in GT education and absolutely LOVE working with these students. But I'd like to let you in on a couple of dirty little secrets.... The first secret is that there are many teachers, even GT-certified who don't LOVE teaching these kids. In fact, they often appear (to me) to be defensive and ready to shoot down these kids at every opportunity. I think it is difficult for a parent to truly realize this because they aren't in the classroom. But I have witnessed it over and over again.... It's heartbreaking, and I try to intercede when I can, but that isn't always possible. The second 'secret' is about teachers being expected to differentiate instruction for all the levels in the room. It's a joke. Not because the teacher doesn't try. It's just a ludicrous system. It is politically incorrect to group students by ability, and no longer allowed anywhere that I've found. So a typical classroom has students with IQs below 70 and students with IQs above 125, occasionally very far above. Imagine you are trying to teach 25 children something -let's say .... how to knit. Some of your students have been knitting for four years, and some could not tell you what a knitting needle looks like. While you are trying to figure out how to group them, four boys have grabbed needles and are trying to stab each other, two more have grabbed your balls of yarn and tossed them to each other, which has caused them to unravel of course. The girls are yelling at the boys to stop it. Some are crying because they really, really want to learn how to knit. So you finally bring order to the chaos, and figure you can divide them into three groups, which does not truly correlate to the levels in the room, but is the best you can do. You truly need the entire time with each one of the groups. But you only have 1/3 of the time with each of course. And what do you suppose the other two groups are doing while you are working with one? You have given them some books about knitting to keep them occupied, but they are old and have only black and white photos so that isn't terribly successful. So you start with the least experienced group because they need the most time. After you spend ten minutes with the first group, you will barely have begun your session with the second group before a few students from the first group come running over with problems. And then that happens again. So the second group's instruction takes twice as long as it should because of the interruptions. And since the third group's time was used for the second group, suddenly, there's the bell! Guess which group didn't get attended to AGAIN?!?!? You may remember that I was fairly strong-minded in the original post on this subject -and felt you needed to think about removing your daughter from a toxic environment. If she wants to be at this school and the good outweighs the bad, okay. But from the sounds of it, her educational needs are not being met. Which might be okay if you or she are supplementing them at home. The way I see it, there are two types of needs for these kids. The first set of needs is what she needs to get into a college where she will hopefully truly have her abilities matched to her environment. And the second set of needs is what she needs to feed her hungry brain. The first set of needs could be covered in one year rather than four for most of these kids. When the information is drawn out over four years, boredom and frustration set in, and many GT kids simply begin to tune out. Some lose all of their enthusiasm and interest in learning and begin to fail. And then they can't get into the colleges where they might truly flourish for the first time. As I used to tell my son, don't kid yourself -there are some extremely bright people who never made it to college. There is a whole group of gifted dropouts, mostly boys, who didn't get the first set of needs met. And Anele -it sounds to me as if your daughter IS gifted. The sheer fact that she is interested in reading what you describe is a give away. I hope I haven't offended any one here -I am passionate about the short shrift these very top students are getting in the K-12 system, all over the nation. It is a huge loss to them, and a huge loss to our country. It's mind-boggling to me that we put forth so much time, money and energy to the first-string on the football team, but not to the academic team. Okay, stepping down off the soapbox now....

That's hilarious. My grandson really loved his substitute teacher when he was in the primary grades. He loved her so much that he wrote her a note. It read "I love you, Mrs. Sex." Her last name was Seck. She probably still has that note. Shirley

I don't think a teacher has to have straight "A"'s in college. But the teacher should be required to do his or her job correctly , just like any other job. I too agree that tenure holds too much power. Even if the teacher does not teach what he or she should after tenure they still should be fired for doing such. There should be a certain cirriculum that the teachers should be held accountable for. Also if helps if you have a principal that cares that the teacher in his or her school are doing a good job. Some care, some don't. Some take any complaints from parents about a teacher's teaching with a grain of salt, others go check it out and see if the complaint is true. There are brillant, bright teachers that love their job. There are teachers that don't like their job and don't teach but hang on until retirement. Every parent knows these teachers. These same teacher get real offensive if questioned about how they are teaching your child. They assume they are the teacher, they have the degreein education, you are not a teacher you don't have a degree of any kind -or if you do have a degree it isn't in education, so what would you know? Their attitude is they are the teacher they know what they are doing (?) Some of the most arrogant teacher I have encountered in years past are the worst teachers. But as any other job, you can put personality aside. A teacher should be judged on their merit and their work. Lazy of teachers that do not teach (I have seen a teacher that got at years end to page 30 of a 300 page Math book in Grammar school) These type teachers should be shown the door- and not able to teach at all. Many times a principal will turn a deaf ear to a complaint that the teacher isn't doing his or her job, especially if the principal is very friendly with this particular teacher, other times the principal may just not want to do their job and get involved. You can not tell always by the grades your child is making just how good the teacher is at teaching what he or she is suppose to . Straight A's from a teacher that is not teaching the material mean nothing. You must keep up with what the teaching is teaching. Some of this information comes from being a parent.Some comes from knowing and talking to teachers that are friends in the teaching profession.