G & T

No not gin and tonics, but gifted and talented. I ran across Dr Helen's post last night regarding gifted and talented programs and after reading all the comments I want to put my two cents in on the subject.

I was a child of the local gifted and talented program "Image". Unlike many of the programs described in the comments, the local version was only a one or two half day a week program merging kids from the district. Instead of covering basic classroom subjects we had different unit exercises each year. I'm not sure exactly what were the requirements that led to my ending up in the program. I only remember taking two different tests. One in second grade with all sorts of questions ranging all over spectrum and one in third grade where you were given pages of circles and kidney beans and told to draw things with them and give them titles. Only my parents really know how I ended up in the program.

Our local version essentially took all the kids from the district of one grade level who fit the requirements and put them together with one poor instructor to create havoc. Each year we would go through different units and then towards the last half of the year we would be told to pick a subject to write our big paper on. I know it had some special name, but for the life of me I can't remember. I think in fourth grade we did a unit on the presidential election ( I think that was the 1992 election between Bush and Clinton), a big unit on sharks (even got to disect a tiger shark) and then the paper. I don't remember if we had another unit. Fifth grade we did a big unit on basic physics principles, 'think tank', and the paper again. I have no idea what we did in sixth grade. I'd have to ask a few of my friends to see if they remembered. The whole point of these units, from my perspective, was to have us learn all about a subject in every possible way we could. By building things, reading about them, writing papers, presentations, etc.

Our big papers at the end of the year were probably the one thing that I learned the most from. We had to write huge research papers with a clearly defined thesis and a proper chicago style bibliography and citations. Quite an undertaking for a ten year old, but I learned how to properly research and utilize a library, how to write a paper, how to write a thesis, how to write citations, ways to proofread, and how to deal with presentations. It was a great experience for me. I met many of my good friends through the program. When we moved on to junior high we all felt that much more comfortable because we knew people from other schools than just our elementary schools, and were able to adjust to the transition better.

The local G&T program did not really extend beyond the elementary school level. I think that a lot depended on where you were scholastically that determined your placement in the 'advanced' classes. I managed to get on the advanced track for math in junior high. I also was part of an experimental team teaching idea in seventh grade. Basically all the kids from three homerooms had classes together in particular those subjects taught by our homeroom teachers. Because of this I was placed into a science class filled with the kids, whom I still consider to this day, the brighest kids of my graduating class. Of which a lot of these kids were in the G&T program with me.

My own feelings regarding my experiences with the local education system are mixed at best. I never really felt comfortable in school until 2nd or 3rd grade. I felt really out of place in kindergarten because so many of the kids knew each other from living near one another and from preschool. My family moved into the district the year i would have gone to preschool, but for some reason I just never went. I was tested to see if I could place into kindergarden classes and passed that with flying colors so i guess there was no reason to worry about it. Looking back it is funny to remember how things worked. Our reading classes in first grade were set up so that after we read the first stupid little book we were divided based on how well we were doing so that the most able students were separated from the slower ones. I wonder if they still do that or if they make everyone lag behind with the slow ones?

Anyway, in elementary school the G & T was my saving grace. There I could relax and goof off, get in trouble and be me. I never felt comfortable doing that in my regular classes. The teachers had enough on their hands to have bored student causing trouble. By my sixth grade year I had come up with a solution to my problem. When i got bored in class, I'd pull out a book and start reading. In fact, my sixth grade class was so bad, Ithink everything I learned that year was self taught. My teacher was new to the district and for some reason they put every trouble maker in my grade in one classroom and then a lot of the G & T kids. Maybe they thought we'd help them learn better or something. Thankfully by that time we had our G & T class two mornings a week so that helped us out quite a bit. Our teacher was so incompetant that she'd give us the entire afternoon to catch up on the morning's work. We'd go out in the hall, work together, get everything done in thirty minutes, then leave our books out and start playing. we drove every teacher down that hall nuts. We didn't see any reason to go back into the classroom just to sit there and stare at the walls when we could do whatever we wanted for a couple hours and still accomplish whatever we were suppose to do. Sometimes we'd make up new games, or work on our projects for our G & T class, read, write, and talk about all sorts of stuff.

I also used to bother my teacher by going to the library a couple times a day. Our librarian was a real witch and wouldn't let us check out more than one or two books at a time. I think one time i went three times in one day. Really confused the teacher that day. She asked me if i had asked her before to go to the libary, of course i said yes, but that i had finished my book so i needed another one. I failed to mention that it was the third book of the day. In fact that year my parents decided to take the family to Florida for two weeks. During that time i did all the homework given to me by my teacher, in fact i think i did even more than she required becasue she didn't specify what i was to cover and because my parents decided to add to the list; and when i went back to school I was two weeks ahead of my classmates. How sad is that...

I could go on and on about my experiences with education, but since I have a paper due in five hours I really need to get working on it. I haven't even gotten to all the fun of junior high and high school and the fun time I had in remedial science :) I'll get to that another day. Sorry this was such a long post.