I Am An American...Therefore I Outsource

A few months ago, the mother of my child was pulled aside by the principal at our daughter's school for a conference. By the time their little chat was over, she was livid and our daughter had been pulled out of school altogether. It wasn't a complete surprise since we'd been doing battle with the school for about a month over, of all things, our daughter's intelligence. The problem is that our daughter is smart. Not in a genius, enrolling at Harvard at age ten kind of way, more like a Jurassic Park velociraptor clever girl kinda way. She figures things out, and very quickly. From her first week of school it was evident that she was bored with the curriculum and when she tried to do things on her own level instead if with the class, letters were sent home (letters home at age 4? She really is gifted. God help us through the teenage years). Her mom was always the one to go into these little conference because the one time I went, I almost threw a tiny man through an even tinier window. They made it sound as if our child was disrupting the entire class, like she was some kind of delinquent for already knowing the things they were trying to teach her. I felt terrible because she loathed going there everyday but her mom and I had agreed to stay the course. At least, we did until that last conference. It was communicated to us that there would be "action taken" if our daughter didn't fall in line and learn at the sane pace as everyone else. Basically, she could either dumb herself down or she could leave. We chose the second option.
My mom was very amused to hear about all this because it took her back to when my sister and I were denied entry into pre-school altogether because we were too smart. They wanted to bump us up to kindergarten right off the bat but that would've separated us from our cousins and friends (who was not smart apparently. I kid, I kid!). Mom didn't want to do that and had to fight the school for a month before we were finally allowed in. In the end, we spent all 12 school years with our friends and graduated with our friends and it all worked out fine and dandy. But according to mom, that's because the teachers did not try to reel us in and keep us from learning new things. There were no ultimatums issued or anyone telling her what was best for her kids. Unfortunately, the situation turned ugly when it came to my child and so we departed traditional schooling in favor of homeschool. Since the year turned over, our daughter has been either tagging along to homeschool with a friend or, more recently, being taught by my best friend's neighbor's mother (there's a mouthful), who has been a teacher for 35 years. She retired and has been up here visiting her daughter so we're looking at all this as a temporary fix while we find a permanent teacher. My sister's kids are homeschooled so we have quite a bit of folks to choose from. But it's still a bit of a daunting process. I adore the kid but an expert in edumicatin', I am not. And so the scouting of potential teachers falls to her mother and now to my best friend. That's right, I have outsourced the decision (and to an Indian, no less). The two of them ask these teachers questions I've never even thought of so I'm sure we'll end up with someone great.