Gifted and Talented

In My Humble Opinion
61

I was “Gifted” in school as well. For the first couple of years (tested in third grade, around age 8) we were bussed to another school with other nerds of our type and allowed to be creative for six hours, then bussed back.

Then they got the bright idea to isolate the three or four gifted kids from each school and give them each a teacher, which led to depression and stagnation on our parts, as we had then lost contact with the only friends we had up to that point.

Junior high (age 13 and 14) was Odyssey of the Mind, which it turns out, was for slow kids, but it kept us busy most of the year.

62

When I was in third grade, we lived in Flint, Michigan. I was placed in a school for the gifted and talented. I was only there about a year before we moved, but I remember it being self-paced learning. We’d get cards with assignments on them, and we had a certain amount of time to get those assignments done, on our own.
After we moved, I went back to a regular school but had “gifted” classes in English. And right after my gifted English class, I’d have my remedial math classes, which consisted of me and one boy going to the library with our special teacher. I still suck really bad at math.
The fact that I was labeled as “gifted and talented” put very high expectations on me by my father. Then he couldn’t understand why, if I was so smart, I was so bad at math. Then I was labeled (by him) as lazy and underachieving. Hmm.

63

I was both, and went through the Gifted program in high school after going to a private school.

I liked it better. The classes were more interesting and intellectually challenging, the teachers were more competent, and it really prepared me well for university. On the whole, it was a success. :slight_smile:

(Of course, the Gifted people got razzed the most in assemblies and whatnot, but that’s another story…)

64

On my fourth college. My twenty year high school reunion was this year. This time I will get a degree (education is wasted on the young!) around the time I turn 41.

Junior Great Books was very cool - they are still around! So were some of the G&T summer programs I got to attend. There were some very cool mentoring programs. A really intense and fun science seminar. While none of it (except perhaps Jr Great Books and the science seminar) provided enough of a challenge to prepare me - every program I participated in was better than learning what a verb was for the tenth time!

65

Oh my god. My firstborn has come back as a zombie!!

This is just like The Monkey’s Paw.

66

I was in the Gifted & Talented program in my elementary here in Houston. I was in something similar in middle school, though I’m not sure if it was called by the same name or not. We got some more creative/challenging assignments outside of regular classes, but that was about the extent of it. In elementary school, they organized a few extracurricular field trips for us, and as a group it helped us band together since it seemed to be they just rounded up all the nerds that were always getting picked on for the G&T program.

I think the program as a whole was useless, except for possibly getting me more socialization than I otherwise would’ve gotten (I wasn’t allowed to go to other children’s houses to play, my parents were control freaks, don’t ask.) I would be more supportive of something equivalent to an entrance-exam for college, but for children starting school, instead. I could well read by the time I was four years old. They need some kind of pre-school aptitude test to determine at what point and level kids should start their formal education. I should’ve been started in the second grade, first at least. But instead I spent a year in kindergarten being bored and making puppets out of paper lunchbags rather than being challenged or learning to apply myself to learn difficult subjects. It caused me a lot of problems down the road when I got into advanced classes in high school.

My parents forced me into community college when I graduated high school, but I dropped out after six weeks. I’d like to go back to school in some form or another eventually, but I can’t even afford a car right now, so it will be at least two or three more years most likely before I’m in a position to do that. (I’m almost 25 now.)

So… yeah. I think the quality of the G&T program and what it accomplishes varies as widely as teaching methods and the budgets the schools allow them (including quality of teachers.)

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:smack: I didn’t notice this was a zombie thread. I was sitting there wondering why, if you’ve been a Doper since 2000, this was your first new thread. Duh.

68

I wasn’t part of a Gifted program per se but I was in a situation somewhat similar. There’s a private school in my area set up to accelerate students taken from fifth grade into a five-year high school level curriculum. I have to say it was probably one of the most worthwhile things I did. The school was rigorous and cut very few corners in ensuring we got the education they considered necessary to be a well-rounded person, rather than giving everyone a feel-good “you’re all special snowflakes” routine. If you didn’t get something then you got help from teachers or other students until you did. If you never grasped core concepts then you flunked. If you flunked then you could take summer courses (up to two IIRC) or repeat the year once. If you flunked again then you obviously weren’t suited for the program and you were asked to leave. No ifs, ands, or buts. It didn’t matter who your parents were or what kind of clout they had in the school.

It sounds more like a boot camp than anything else now that I read the above paragraph, but it really didn’t seem that way. Yes there were boundaries set and expectations to meet, some quite intense and frustrating at times, but the teaching staff was brilliant at never talking down or assuming you couldn’t do something. If you wanted to pursue something on your own then you certainly would find eager help. The most crucial point, however, was being surrounded by other intelligent people and the environment that fostered. You get knocked off the pedestal while still being reassured. Yes you had a powerful intellect but so did the other 199 students roaming those halls… and guess what? Some of them were majorly smarter in one subject or another than you were.

I don’t think I would be half as well rounded or empowered had I stuck to a more integrated environment. Covington Latin was, overall, a godsend.

69

I was in a magnet school for middle school.
Now, I’m part of the “Gifted Advisory Board.” I really do not enjoy it in the least; however, I’ve held (and currently hold one) offices that will look good on my college resume (secretary, treasurer, VP, chair of several committees).

70

I was neither Gifted nor Talented I was written off as “not college bound” My grades were average to below average, except for those few classes that inspired me.
In college (yes, the one I wasn’t supposed to be able to survive, I has a 3.8 GPA (I got a C in beginning piano)
The difference? In highschool I had bad teeth. I had them fixed and went to college at age 21 after 2 years in the Air Force.
I am now gifted [iand* talented. :smiley:

71

Kindergarten: For whatever reason, they had me take some tests. I was reading at something like a 5th grade level, my math was about the same. “Hey, she’s gifted!”

First grade: I entered the TAG program. Three days a week or something we’d be pulled out of class and do logic problems in a converted storage closet. In later elementary years, we also entered competitions (and won 3rd place at the state level, I’ll have you know, when I was in 6th grade).

7th grade: middle school started. TAG ended. The only compensation the school made for us ‘gifted’ kids was having two levels of language arts: ‘advanced’, and ‘regular’. There wasn’t any practical difference.

8th grade: Switched to the brand-new magnet middle school, which was running the IB middle-years programme. It wasn’t really any better academically.

High school: Finished MYP, entered IB. Hated school, so never did my homework. Did fairly well on average on my exams and stuff, managed to pass all my classes despite sometimes having a 15% for my homework grade. Ended up doing decently on my IB exams, despite everyone assuming I’d do miserably. I have the distinction of being the only (thus far) IB diploma recipient from my high school to also nearly flunk out of school.

Summers in between fifth grade and tenth grade: Nerd camp, for 3 weeks a year. Absolutely loved it, did excellently, cried when it was time to go home.

72

I was Gifted and Talented as well. Well, I still am. Tee hee. I kid. Or do I?

I remember the day they sent the letter home, I wasn’t supposed to open it and I didn’t know what was inside, I thought I was in trouble and I considered throwing it away.

I admit I skipped to the end of the topic to reply without reading all the posts, because some hit home and I had to say what I wanted to say before I forgot it.

I have NO study skills (or social skills), I have a degree in something I don’t care about (Psychology), and recently I moved across the country to study make-up artistry for TV and film. It took me 6 years to get the psych degree because I took time off to work, and because I didn’t care enough about it to know if I was taking the right courses. I wish that the Gifted and Talented program had taught me how to work. I was used to getting awesome marks for nothing and I suffered for it in university!

But other than what I wish I knew how to do, I loved the class itself. It was such a relief to get away from those other kids who spit on me and called me Walking Dictionary. :slight_smile: And I liked those logic puzzles. The enrichment class and its trips are some of my fondest memories of an otherwise traumatic junior high experience!

I revise my posts 293 times as I write them until they don’t make sense anymore. It’s a habit!

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Oh, NinjaChick, funny you should say that, because our class was in a storage closet as well. :smiley:

That was my 200th post, wheeeee. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Don’t you love that? We care about our above-average students. Here, have a table and an Apple II (up through 1998!) in a broom closet. Wait, why aren’t you happy?

75

Well, since we haven’t been reprimanded for reopening a four-year-old thread, I’ll put in my story.

This ought to be a cautionary tale. My mother taught me to read when I was still a toddler. By the time I started kindergarten in 1963, at the age of 4, I could already read at high school level and had been playing the piano for a year. Consequently, I got A in everything, except math, and the rest of the time I was supremely bored. In grade 2, the school board sent me to the Ontario (mental) Hospital to be tested. They must have been impressed by the results, because they then created a program in which I could go to the other school across town and take grades 3, 4 and 5 in two years. What else they discovered, that I didn’t find out about until I was an adult, was that I have what is now known as Aspergers Syndrome, which my father then tried to beat out of me. I don’t remember much about those two years in the accelerated classes. But when I got back to my old school for grade 6, I was lost. I was a year, in some cases two years younger than everybody in my class, and I wore glasses and was smarter than them. So I got tormented and beat up until high school. Whatever I was being taught from grades 6 through 8 was not the same as what I’d learned in the other school, so my performance suffered incredibly. There was no follow-up, nothing. I was cast adrift in this hick-town educational system with teachers who saw me as little more than a nuisance. I was the first and last person to be put into that position by the school board. They had no idea what they were doing, no idea what to do with me while I was under their care, and no idea what to do with me afterwards. So they did nothing.

I went into grade 9 at 13 years old, and high school was one of the worst experiences of my life. Nothing I had learned in public school prepared me for what they were teaching in high school, and I failed miserably some more. I had no studying skills, and had to drop Electronics, Drafting and Physics after a week because I had no concept of the math involved. I ended up having to leave high school part way through grade 12 to escape the rumor that I was gay, and the accompanying beatings, hosing downs and whatever else they threw at me.

And that’s how much I loved being gifted, and how very grateful I am to the visionaries at the Haldimand-Norfolk Board of Education for allowing me the opportunity to advance so early on, the fuckers. My consolation is that they’ll die before I do.

If you’re going to be gifted, don’t do it in a small town in the 1960s.

76

Wow-blast from the past.
We liked to mix it up in Georgia-it was called TAG. (Talented and gifted).
Way cool in high school. Ours was the type of high school that actually celebrated smart kids-homecoming queen was the geeky do-gooder sweet valedictorian, not the head cheerleader, etc.
I don’t remember a thing about the program but we went on several backpacking trips (Cumberland Island, Joyce Kilmer mountain). Such fun.

In elementary school in Florida, I went to “gifted”. I remember being bussed (bused? Why does it look wrong no matter how I spell it?) to another school once a week. We did cool things like make chocolate fondue with orange zest, headstone rubbings in a cemetary, played lots of some sort of mah jong-like tile game, etc.
I cannot IMAGINE they still call it “gifted”. How cheesy.

77

I know this doesn’t apply to me as I failed both first and ninth grade (and just went ahead and quit after that), but my daughter is in TAG now. She’s in third grade this year, and has just been having a weekly pull out since kindergarten. Her TAG class had a new kid join this year and now there are a whopping three of them.

In fourth and fifth grade, she will get to choose areas of interest and then be transferred to a different school one day a week to examine that interest. The area of interest will change every semester. In sixth grade, she will decide if she wants to attend a TAG magnet school (there are three in our immediate area- one does immersion in 6 week mini-courses, one is a science magnet and one is an arts magnet), continue pull outs, or drop out of TAG altogether. It seems like there was anohter option I’m forgetting here.

That’s what they are up to these days in out area.

78

I was in a small rural school district during most of my childhood. In the elementary school, they grouped classes roughly by ability level. So, for instance, at each grade level, there would be an advanced class, an advanced average class, an average class, and a slow class. This worked really well for me. I could really tell a difference when I hit high school, and was forced into a couple of classes that weren’t ability grouped; my 9th grade history was below the level of what I’d been taught in elementary school. Fortunately, you could choose advanced English classes, and the math classes and higher level science classes were by default more advanced if you chose higher level classes.

Cut to today, when I’m a Mom of two. Our school system uses magnet schools to attempt to get socioeconomic diversity in the schools. (In other words, they don’t want too many low-income students dumped in the inner city schools.) In order to do this, the place magnet schools in the inner-city, and use the nifty programs there to attract higher-income suburban families into them.

This is good in theory, but highly inequitable in practice. Our county is 865 square miles in area. That means that the Gifted and Talented magnet schools my children are eligible to apply for are more than 18 miles from our home. In addition, only about 40% of students who apply to these schools each year get in.

In order to make the magnet schools attractive, the school system specifically forbids the traditional schools to offer much in the way of electives. For instance, at the middle grade level, they recently mandated that the traditional middle schools stay at a 6 period day to minimize their opportunity to skirt around the system. The complete list of all schedule options students have at his school fits on one page. For the GT magnet school, however, it takes 23 pages to describe their magnet options. Since my son is in band, band is the one and only elective he will ever have the opportunity to take. Additionally, the traditional schools are forbidden to track academically gifted students separately from the other students. If your child is identified as academically gifted in the 3rd grade, they are eligible for “enrichment.” In our school, this means your child gets pulled out of class for 45 minutes a week of enrichment activities. If he is identified as AG in only one subject — say only in math, but not language arts — he is pulled out of class only for that subject. Thus, he would get 45 minutes every week for only half the year.

I’ve run the numbers on enrollment figures for the magnet vs. traditional schools. In a school system with 114,000 students, approximately 29,000 are in program magnet schools. About 17,000 are given base assignments to these schools, meaning they don’t have to apply; about 10,000 are applicants to the magnet program. In other words, we are holding back the elective and programs for academically gifted student offerings for 85,000 students in order to attract in 10,000 students to the magnet programs. There are gifted students here all right — it’s the wealthy students who happen to live in the center of the county who live close to the magnet programs, and/or get automatic assignments into them. For those of us in the outer edges of the county where they magnet programs are too far away to be practical, it’s just too damned bad.

79

In Atlanta, where I went to school, the gifted program was called Challenge. In elementary school, if you had been deemed smart enough, you were pulled out of class for an hour and allowed to do what–IMHO–was lots of fun stuff.

Challenge kids got to go on field trips to museums and see plays. They got to write books and learn French. They got to do cool science projects. They got to learn typing! In other words, things all kids should really experience, but only the Challenge kids got to do.

Because I wasn’t in the program, I was completely envious and resentful that I had been excluded. I knew I had some special abilities. I had mostly As and rarely struggled with homework. My writing skills had always been praised, and I was always the best artist in my class (I was the illustrator for the school newsletter for three years solid, and whenever the Challenge kids needed artwork for their projects, they solicited my assistance). In my spare time, I’d read the encyclopedias my mother had bought for my sister and me. I was also a goodie-two-shoes who all the teachers loved. So I was a nerd, no doubt about it.

But year after year, I was always shy the few points I needed on my standardized tests to be judged as “gifted”. Which pissed me off! It didn’t matter that my grades were excellent or that my teachers would have recommended me in a heart beat. I wasn’t deemed smart enough. My parents would tell me I was smart, but it would only take seeing the Challenge kids leaving without me for me to figure they were wrong.

Most of the kids in Challenge was good students, but some of them weren’t. Some of them were plain out lousy. I now know that grades–just like test scores–don’t determine whether someone is smart. But as a ten-year-old, it sucked seeing slackers getting rewarded with field trips and special assemblies while I doodled in the margins of my paper, bored.

When I got to the fifth grade, I had an awesome teacher. She managed to slide me (along with my twin sister) into the program for just a couple of months so that we could participate in a story-writing competition with the Challenge kids. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I thought it was ironic that out of all the Challenge kids in our grade, my sister and I–both supposedly non-gifted and talented–were the only ones who won prizes at the citywide book fair. If our teacher hadn’t been brave enough to bend the rules that one time, we may have never really appreciated our talents.

I think gifted programs should be based on the fact that giftedness is much more than being “book” smart or “test” smart. A kid who knows how to write and communicate real well, but is perhaps only above average when it comes to arithmatics, is still gifted and talented. I feel like the administrators at my school didn’t really understand that and ended up ignoring genuinely smart kids.

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I come back from a great party and what do I get?
Night Of The Living Thread

Please do not revive old threads-link to them if you must, but leave the necromancy to us experts.
Thank you.