The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => People & Places => Topic started by: jay-ell on January 22, 2008, 12:37:03 am
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Here's the poll I was talking about before (http://touamb.com/index.php/topic,4214.msg112647.html#new).
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Here's the level of incompetence of the administrators where I went to school. I was enrolled in GT classes very early on. They would pull me out of certain classes and I would get to do fun GT stuff instead of having to help all the idiot kids in my normal classes. After my parents moved to a more affluent district, I got made fun of for not having the right brand name clothing and was an easy target for bullies. Anyway, the genius administrators decided to put me in remedial classes because I was depressed and unable to focus on schoolwork due to all the bullying. BRILLIANT!
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Alright, I was in GT classes 4th and 5th grade (or 3rd and 4th, can't remember to well now), remedial math 5th and 6th and in 7th grade moved up to 8th grade math. Beat that.
I am pretty sure I was in remedial math in 5th grade because they were trying to get us ready for middle school by making us switch classes (haha) and my home classroom was the "smart" one. Then when we went to middle school they just kept me in the dumb math before they realized what they were doing. I remember this happened to another guy I had math with throughout highschool.
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Isn't 'gifted' an annoying word? I never thought about it before, how we need a euphemism for 'smart' just like we need one (or many) for 'not smart.' Because there's something wrong with being either way, perhaps? I doubt it's just because "above average program" doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely.
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Alright, I was in GT classes 4th and 5th grade (or 3rd and 4th, can't remember to well now), remedial math 5th and 6th and in 7th grade moved up to 8th grade math. Beat that.
I'm not sure if it beats that but here's another thing that never occurred to me before... so what does it mean if you're in a school for the 'gifted' and you flunk some of your classes?
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All through elementary school and then I was in many of the advanced classes in high school too... and the honours division in college as well.
And now I'm a laid-off PA starting a courier job Wednesday at the age of twenty-eight!
Yay expectations!
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Isn't 'gifted' an annoying word? I never thought about it before, how we need a euphemism for 'smart' just like we need one (or many) for 'not smart.' Because there's something wrong with being either way, perhaps? I doubt it's just because "above average program" doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely.
I was thinking about this yesterday, actually, when I was considering the possible grade-school fate of my son. He's got some incredible abilities that would no doubt land him in a GT Program if he didn't also have this little problem learning what we mere mortals call "communication skills." In some ways, he's so very, very "gifted". (His speech therapist almost fell out this afternoon when he correctly identified a pentagon.) In other ways, he's markedly behind where other kids his age are in some very basic ways. (Like forming sentences.) Pedro and I both went to GT pull-out programs, and right now we're fighting to get Little P included in a regular classroom with pull-out for remediation. How different his school experience is going to be from ours! And that seems so silly when you think about how we measure intelligence.
My nephew, being older, is a better example of this. He's in first grade, he reads at a fourth-grade level, and is far and away the best reader in his class. He also tests above average -- though markedly less so -- in math skills. Are they considering him for a GT program? Skipping a grade? Any kind of special treatment because of his incredible ability? Well, no. He's autistic. So he gets an IEP and is part of the "special education" program. There's no overlap between the two -- special ed and "gifted." As if kids perform at uniform levels of achievement across all subjects. Keith's example is perfect -- the way he was bounced around from remedial to advanced math classes because he didn't seem to fit the mold. (I had a similar experience, BTW -- GT program 2nd thru 5th grade, regular math in 6th, remedial math in 7th, advanced math in 8th.)
The idea of kids having varied levels of ability and achievement across different subject areas is a concept that my Dad worked for when he was the coordinator of the G/T program for our small suburban school district when I was a kid. He developed this theory that even kids with high levels of ability in a subject (like math) may have low levels of achievement for a variety of reasons. These "high-ability, low-achievement" students -- HA/LAs, he called 'em" -- needed to be included in GT programs even more than the HA/HA kids (high ability, high achievement) because the additional enrichment and relative freedom of most "gifted" classrooms usually motivated the kids to perform better in GT classes than they would in their regular classes. HA/HAs would succeed no matter what class you put them in. HA/LAs, he argued, typically got better grades in harder classes because they responded positively to the more challenging curriculum. This theory led to a massive overhaul of the criteria used for students to enter the GT programs in my school district in the '80s to allow more HA/LA kids to take advantage of them.
Sometimes I'm really proud of my Dad.
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Yeah, this was definitely one of my problems.
My language and social-studies skills were better than many adults halfway through elementary school... my math and science skills were merely above-average and... socially, I was like two years behind the curve in that kinda development.
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GT, honors in jr/sr high, think it is all basically hossshit.
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I got put in the gifted program at my first school in Grade 3, then three quarters of the way through the school year, we moved. At my new school, they didn't put me in the gifted program until Grade 5, because it took me filling in a bunch of circles on an aptitude test correctly for my new school district to realize I was gifted.
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(I had a similar experience, BTW -- GT program 2nd thru 5th grade, regular math in 6th, remedial math in 7th, advanced math in 8th.)
These "high-ability, low-achievement" students -- HA/LAs, he called 'em" -- needed to be included in GT programs even more than the HA/HA kids (high ability, high achievement) because the additional enrichment and relative freedom of most "gifted" classrooms usually motivated the kids to perform better in GT classes than they would in their regular classes.
Did you ever have to convince people that you ain't no HA/LAback girl?
I'm sorry. So very, very sorry.
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I was in GATE straight through high school plus a variety of honours classes, an independent mentorship program and participation in every non-sporting extra curricular activity I could fit in to my schedule. I could have graduated a year early, but instead stuck around to take a combo of fun classes and university level ones. When I went to university I didn't bother to get any of the university level classes I'd taken in highschool acknowledged because I want to take more classes, not less. I also graduated with an honours degree from University and paid for most of my post secondary education and living expenses via awards. In the end none of that shit matters though. It was all shit I hid behind so I wouldn't have to acknowledge how bad my home life was. Don't get me wrong - I'm grateful that I fell in love with education and had some outstanding teachers over the years because it could have just as easily have been sex or drugs I could have turned to for my gratification. In the end I'd have rather been a D student who had good parents. Still I ended up in a good place, and life is pretty sweet now, so yah know, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have... the facts of life.
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hmm. I was at a private school which supposedly was for kids who were Smart and Gifted and Motivated and all that stuff... but there were some kids in there who were more like... White and Rich and Got Accepted in Kindergarden when the entrance exam was "fill in this square with the color red."
They almost didn't accept me because of my ridiculous amount of ADD and apparently other learning disability crap. My parents didn't tell me this until pretty recently.
In fourth grade I got the lowest score in the class on the ERBs because I just raced through every problem so I could turn in my exam and read my book. I was always reading, always stuff that my parents thought was really advanced and all... to the point that they expressed disappointment when I started reading mostly books about rock music in high school.
In middle school, I hated math, and I had always been horrible at it, so I chose to be in the lower math track. Once I was in 9th grade, I realized that math was pretty easy and logical and like doing a puzzle. I went through the rest of high school getting As in math without really trying. So now I am in college and have never taken calculus... most of my friends think I am kidding when I say this, as they all took calculus in high school. I basically went through high school being told I wasn't doing as well as I should have been, mostly due to laziness and procrastination. Always tested really really well. I guess that is why I got into this school... although being surrounded by kids who are disappointed that last week they got their first C is weird. so weird.
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I was probably a textbook case for jl's dad. My parents would tear their hair out over me - all progress reports coming back saying "if he'd just apply himself". I really could have cared less for education and my supposed aptitude for it. All I wanted was to read, look at bugs, go to museums, maybe the beach, and play with my friends. When I got back to the US, all the GATE business had passed me by, and whatever the standard 6th/7th/8th grade curriculum was - it was even more boring and Lowest Common Denominator than my earlier grades. It took 2 years of high school before the system finally engaged me.
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Yeah I did a few of these things but I don't think it was ever as big a deal at my school. Also on reflection it is odd that a lot of the stuff we did in those classes was generally high minded conceptual stuff that I think was in a lot of ways easier than the normal classes. It's like we covered more advanced complex but at a much more superficial level, would have been better to be learning more complex stuff in detail but less of it.
Also on terminology: My guess is that 'Gifted and Talented' implies this is a basic state of the person and not something they have to work hard for and for some reason everyone is a bit more comfortable with that.
I've been down on primary (elementary to you guys I think) education for a while now though, I keep hearing people putting forward these theories about what would work better (very few of which seem to be tested in a controlled way of course, just argued over until they choose one and then we cannot deviate) the old 'back to basics' vs. 'huggy feely' bs and it seems to me that so long as kids reach a certain age and are able to read and write to a respectable level it matters not one whit whether they did it by analysing king lear or by writing about their feelings. A lot of primary education to me seems to be simply teaching children to not devolve into animals and this is a respectable goal.
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In the end I'd have rather been a D student who had good parents.
I was a C student with good parents (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmcd9/519257572/). Whoo hoo, I'm living the dream.
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I was that D student. I got yanked out of the program because I wasn't doing my homework in regular classes.
Which was kind of nice: The program was called "Tessera" and the other kids decided that was for "Test Tube Babys".
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I copy LFM's story -- in GT for the duration, despite some social/fine-motor problems; in 7th grade, I even went to GT in the mornings because I couldn't get the real class into my schedule. (This, perversely, helped my social issues immensely, because it turns out that if you go somewhere with a ton of dorky kids much like you, those dorky kids will want to be your friends.) Then I moved to a district that actually had advanced-level classes and not just a "GT class," although I eventually did stuff like language mentoring that continued to take advantage of the program. This eventually segued into an education at the best liberal-arts college in the nation, although I was not in the top echelon there (graduating with a 3.3, whooo!).
Now, I'm 24, unemployed after a brief grad-school flameout, and I have no idea what to do with my life. So, so much squandered potential am I.
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I was in honors classes after grade school but I don't think we had an organized thing. Either that or I wasn't invited after I was moved to advanced math?
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Wow. Not a single "didn't qualify," and so, so much trauma.
Basically the reason I'm not a grad school dropout is because I'm married to a man who thinks smart chicks are sexy.
That's where all my fancy G/T education got me.
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Just to counter-act some of the trauma:
I slid a bit in my academic stuff in the last couple of years at high school, didn't get into the advanced first year courses at uni and just scraped through managing to keep my gpa above 5 due to majoy flakiness in my second and third year (actually in the end I think it was 4.9 or so). I then hit the jackpot with my honours supervisor, got a great project and finished with first class honours and am now gainfully employed doing a job I find very rewarding and already planning on advancing my academic life further.
So I mean, I did kind of well, got through mostly untraumatised and am happy with my place in life.
Do I get kicked out of the club now?
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Wait, I forgot all about this other part of my story... I am so old, that when I was in grade school, they didn't have these newfangled special gifted programs. So instead, me and this other kid, they gave us extra work to do, and then skipped us a grade.
BUT, what they didn't realize was, I was advanced in reading but not in math. In fact, I couldn't multiply. Instead, I was just smart enough to know that you could get the answer to 3 times something by adding it together three times.
Yeah, it apparently didn't occur to anyone to tell me to memorize the multiplication tables. I mean I know this doesn't make sense, but I think all they did was put us at a separate table together and give us different work to do. And since my answers were correct they assumed I knew what I was doing.
The result was that I was behind in math for the rest of my life. I somehow still passed the test to get into the gifted school in seventh grade - I don't really know how. It was an all girls school at the time, so maybe they didn't expect much in math and science? I have no idea.
Hmm, I wonder whatever happened to the other kid. He actually knew how to do the math.
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I was a C student with good parents (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmcd9/519257572/). Whoo hoo, I'm living the dream.
Oh, that poem is a doozy. Tell your dad he made an imaginary person on the internet all misty eyed.
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Don't get me wrong - I'm grateful that I fell in love with education and had some outstanding teachers over the years because it could have just as easily have been sex or drugs I could have turned to for my gratification.
Eh, I don't know. I had absolutely no drive. I kept getting put in the gifted program, and wouldn't do anything but the tests - just enough to get Cs or Ds. Then, of course, I tried the solutions you lined out above and did that for ten years or so. Eventually I wandered back into college and got a degree I don't even use, and I'm doing ok.
Kids, take this to heart. Go ahead and smoke up, you be a'ight.
Disclaimer: You may not, in fact, be a'ight. You may end up dead.
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See, I'm in this weird phase in my life where... like... "failure" is meant in kinda a positive way. As if I am saying it the same way a minority would turn a slur against them around as a point of empowerment.
Such as "yeah, I have failed a lot and here I am still and I probably even learned something from it!"
Such as "yeah, I have failed a lot but I am pretty sure that if you don't fail enough you ain't trying!"
It's a little hard to get across online, though, definitely.
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Basically the reason I'm not a grad school dropout is because I'm married to a man who thinks smart chicks are sexy.
He's not alone.
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He's not alone.
Word.
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Smart chick Hi-5!
::slap::
Did I ever mention I married a material engineer? Not an accident!
I married a chick smart enough to marry me, so . . .
After asking her about 500 times.
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the brain is the sexiest organ, that is for sure. mmmm.
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the brain is the sexiest organ, that is for sure. mmmm.
And the most tasty, coincidentally enough.
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also, wombat-- I never could memorize the multiplication tables. They would never stick. Now I know most of the important ones, I guess, just from having to use them... but it was rough times in elementary school.
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Just coincidentally, one of the reasons I'm a grad-school dropout is that I was dating a guy who tacitly made it clear that women educated above his level were not sexy to him, and that he was disappointed I had not moved to his city after college. I mean, it was just one factor in the Big Ol' Honkin' Depression Train, but it was there. Anyway: I'm trying to take an "it ain't over 'til I die" approach, but I am basically anxiety-prone and fear very much living in a van down by the river.
Back on subject!
About the only GT-like thing I didn't have was skipping a grade. My first school district made it more or less impossible to do so and had a very stringent cutoff date for school entrance; as such, I was actually one of the oldest in my grade throughout elementary school. I planned on making it up by doing high school in three years... but then, as it turned out, I got into clubs and electives, and I had no desire to leave early. (After all, if I had, I would have lost a year of speech eligibility, and that would have been like death to 17-Year-Old Me.) Which brings me to my real point: I think that not being skipped was in some ways the best thing for me, because it allowed me to do some social and emotional catch-up by the time I got to high school. Most of the people I knew in HS who had skipped a grade were pretty emotionally stunted, and I think the extra time might have helped them out.
Then again, as a counterexample, I knew a dude in college who came in at 16 (!) and was cool, emotionally mature (well, as emotionally mature as any college freshman), and awesome, so it's hard to say.
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Just coincidentally, one of the reasons I'm a grad-school dropout is that I was dating a guy who tacitly made it clear that women educated above his level were not sexy to him, and that he was disappointed I had not moved to his city after college. I mean, it was just one factor in the Big Ol' Honkin' Depression Train, but it was there. Anyway: I'm trying to take an "it ain't over 'til I die" approach, but I am basically anxiety-prone and fear very much living in a van down by the river.
What a fuckin' cock. Jesus. Fuck that fuckin' guy.
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We interrupt this thread for a repetition of wombat's curmudgeonly speech for people under thirty who are afraid their lives are a total failure: Unless you want to be an Olympic ice skater, there is still time for you to do anything in your life. And in fact, to do it, then give it up and do something else entirely. I speak from specific experience that I will not bore you by repeating.
Anyway, think about it. First, think just how annoying you would be if you were already rich and famous and at the pinnacle of your chosen field. And then, think about how, since you'd already met that goal, you'd be in the same position you are now - trying to figure out what the hell to do next.
You realize of course that I harp on this because it's not really about you guys at all. It's about the fact that if it were too late for you, then I would be really screwed.
Back slightly on topic... The more I watch my friends' children go through school, the more flawed the whole idea of school seems. I was the sort of person who fit into the whole school thing so well that I actually grew up to be a teacher - basically I didn't get out of a school environment till I was over 40. So I didn't really see it. But, school is so horrible for people who are good at other things instead, even though many of those other things are equally or more important for success in real life. And from the thread here we see that school is often also horrible for exactly the sort of people who are GOOD at school. It couldn't be any more depressing if it had been designed to be.
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I like to think that I can turn up the power on the cell towers near the homes of the people that tormented me.
Sweet, sweet, non-ionizing sterilization.
Then I realize that would hit a lot of people that had nothing to do with it, but really it is too late for that.
Sorry.
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As the TOUAMBie who probably lives closest to you, I am happy that I am not planning on having kids. However, the clumps of hair falling out thing? Not cool, smick.
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... a material engineer?
As opposed to a non-corporeal engineer?
Also, smart chicks rule.
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I am all about bein' with a lady with more practical education than me.
...someone's gotta buy food while I try to be A Writer.
...I'm...
I'm just sayin' here.
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As opposed to a non-corporeal engineer?
Like me: I engineer vibrations.
People who read quickly through here will see "I engineer vibrators". That would take a lot more schooling than what I have.
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So for starters I went to a private school (Presbyterian) which already was more advanced than most schools. Basically the "really good schools" in the area were my school, one of the Catholic schools, and the public school in the richest suburb of the city.
I was in the advanced/honors track there starting in third grade, which in grades 3-6 just meant that for math and reading/English we would go to different classrooms and be taught by a teacher the next grade up. From Junior High up (where you changed rooms for every class) we just went to advanced classes.
I got a lot of the "doesn't apply himself" stuff, because I can't force myself to memorize things with no context, and that's what bible teachers and bad history teachers do. I had exactly one history teacher who knew what he was doing in my 12 years there. Also I probably have hella ADD, but I wasn't ever diagnosed. I ended up figuring out how I have to learn things on my own, which in the end was a far better prospect than being tied to a stimulant for the rest of my life*. And, as it turns out, I haven't needed to be able to recite Corinthians in my adult life, ever.
Because our school was small and my class was the smallest of all of them, there wasn't really a "smart kids" group to get excluded with. All of the normal social groups crossed over enough to make cliques difficult to form. There was jealousy, of course (Football players get out of school early and ride charter buses! Band members stay the full time and ride the leftover yellow bus!), but none of the real damaging/fight picking/oppression stuff.
All in all it seems like I had the least traumatic advanced classes. About the only thing it did was let me skip one English composition class in college (a 5 on the AP test and just one comp class?) and not have to do calculus again. That seems to have been where I hit the limit of what I could easily understand, and I honestly have no idea how I passed that class.
*Note: This was my experience. Not all cases of ADD/ADHD are alike, and drug therapy is useful for some people. Just not for me.
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I always wonder what would have gone on at my school if it had been bigger. As it was, I knew every single kid in my grade, and they were all nice enough I guess. But, you know, beneath the surface... some of those kids totally would have beaten people up.
The only person at my school who I ever saw being harassed is a pretty good friend of mine now... but at the time, he was one of those kids that was just begging for people to hate him.
I don't know, I pretty rapidly figured out that being a know-it-all was not appreciated, and being a dick about it even less so. This guy... he just kept on doing it. Oh, you stole my boxers from my PE locker and put them in the shower last week, but now you want me to meet you somewhere for a party? that sounds awesome! i'm glad you guys are my friends now! (oh my gosh, I am so surprised and upset, it was a trick) and then he would come in and act like a complete douche in class again...
I remember being really bothered by it at the time, but then he was such an obnoxious dick in classes that I stopped caring. Now he is my friend and I am kind of sad that I just ignored that shit.
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There were no AP classes in my small semi-rural high school. None.
I knew kids who came into Syracuse with three semesters of pre-reqs knocked outta the park allowing them to... graduate early or... go abroad for a semester with no concerns or... basically take the minimum credit hours for their entire undergrad experience and have a lot more extracurricular fun as... as I probably would'a done with it.
I had an English class I took through the community college as a senior. Woo-uh-hoo?
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There were no AP classes in my small semi-rural high school. None.
So why not join me in the "My school didn't have one" category? Or - your high school didn't have AP, but your elementary school did have GATE?
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Right. My elementary had programs, my high school did not.
And fuck them in the ear for fixing that right after my younger brother graduated.
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Ok, I guess I'm ready to do this.
I started reading at 3, which lead to my parents having me tested. This testing lead to me starting school at 5 (November birthday) which was probably a mistake.
I started first grade in the fall of 1971 in a small southern rural school system that had only just been integrated. While there was no formal "gifted" program, we were sectioned into ability based groups at least as early as third grade. By 5th grade there was an official "Smart Class" in my school, made of mainly of the same people I'd been grouped with for the past four years (and our counterparts from the other two feeder elementaries.)
I moved to a different city at the beginning of 6th grade, then again at the beginning of 7th. There weren't any formalized gifted programs available in Jr. High, but there was some "advanced" classes and some independent study. Moved back to where I started from at the beginning of 10th grade. Went to a very small private college prep school (12 in my senior class) which allowed for much individual attention on top of the already academically accelerated curriculum. I was Valedictorian (see class size above) and a National Merit Scholar.
At this point in my life I try to give those things the proper perspective. There are some things that I am very good at, other things not so much, yet other things I absolutely suck at. I'm at a pretty lousy place in my life right now, but I've also done some pretty great things over the years. This too shall pass.
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At this point in my life I try to give those things the proper perspective. There are some things that I am very good at, other things not so much, yet other things I absolutely suck at. I'm at a pretty lousy place in my life right now, but I've also done some pretty great things over the years. This too shall pass.
Everyone who is having shitty times, please know that I am pulling for you.
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At this point in my life I try to give those things the proper perspective. There are some things that I am very good at, other things not so much, yet other things I absolutely suck at. I'm at a pretty lousy place in my life right now, but I've also done some pretty great things over the years. This too shall pass.
You ain't get this kind of wisdom from no GT program.
I tell you whut.
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I, like V, coulda been skipped, but my parents declined. I am forever grateful for that, because I needed all the help I could get social-wise, and it wasn't great as it was. My best school-friend through grades 1 - 8 was The Kid Who Skipped Kindergarten.
Like AW, I was able to read by the age of 3, but my kindergarten teacher didn't know this. I remember her handing out coloring pages with the instructions printed at the top. "Color the house red. Color the sun yellow." etc. I would have the picture half-done before she finished passing them out, and then I'd flip the paper over and draw my own pictures on the other side. This apparently irritated her to no end. She actually called my parents in for a conference and told them she thought I should be held back because I needed to learn to follow instructions. (Apparently the fact that the pictures were always colored to spec was lost on her.) My parents said, "uh, you know she can read, right?" She patted Mom's arm and said, "oh, lots of parents think their kids can read, but really they're just memorizing their favorite books." My dad, not to be proven wrong about his own kid, picked up a note to the parents announcing the school's annual open house, which had been distributed to us that afternoon to take home. He asked, "Did you read this to the kids before you gave it to them today?" She replied in the negative, and he called me over -- I'd been playing in the blocks center -- and said, "J, read this for me." I picked up the paper and read the first line perfectly.
According to Dad's recollection, the teacher blanched, swallowed hard, and promptly suggested I be moved to second grade immediately.
They declined, but I had a series of IQ tests that qualified me for the gifted pull-out program. I don't think they did pull-outs for first-graders, though, so I didn't actually start GATE until second. By third grade, the discrepancy between my language and math skills was so pronounced that I had to miss part of GATE so that I could participate in the remedial math group. It was...odd.
Also, my arch-rival was in GATE with me all four years. He was good at sports as well as school, and he was the most popular guy at my grade school. His dad was the principal of the school where my dad taught, and he never let me forget this. I found out when I was in the fifth grade (my dad told me this because he got so angry at this kid's constant teasing) that this guy's dad had kept him back a year in school so that he would be more advanced academically and better at sports than the other kids in his grade. I never told anyone else at school that, at my dad's request, but it always made me feel better when he'd pick on me. This little sense of superiority that my parents valued my happiness over my accomplishments.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
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Also, my arch-rival was in GATE with me all four years. He was good at sports as well as school, and he was the most popular guy at my grade school. His dad was the principal of the school where my dad taught, and he never let me forget this. I found out when I was in the fifth grade (my dad told me this because he got so angry at this kid's constant teasing) that this guy's dad had kept him back a year in school so that he would be more advanced academically and better at sports than the other kids in his grade. I never told anyone else at school that, at my dad's request, but it always made me feel better when he'd pick on me. This little sense of superiority that my parents valued my happiness over my accomplishments.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
I visualize this person as the monobrow baby from the Simpsons.
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...I don't think they did pull-outs for first-graders, though...
Sounds like there might have been other problems around your school...
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He sort of looked like Zach from Saved by the Bell.
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According to Dad's recollection, the teacher blanched, swallowed hard, and promptly suggested I be moved to second grade immediately.
My dad had the same situation--
"Bobby is flunking math."
"really. how did he do on those state exams you just got back."
"oh, let me check... hm. he scored highest in the class on the math section."
"really. well."
"yes, I think he should be put in remedial math."
"really? it seems to me that... if he got the highest score in the class on that math section, and he's failing, he isn't the person doing something wrong here."
she had the same reaction, basically.
Weirdly, it took me freaking forever to learn how to read. i was that kid at home crying and saying "i'll never be able to read! it's just too hard!"
It ends up this is because I was basically incapable of reading phonetically... so I ended up going from "I'll never be able to read!" to just reading whole sentences straight through.
I was also That Kid in regards to talking. That little kid who makes long sentences and creeps people out.
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Another story about fucked up school system:
Alright, my pride as an elementary student was spelling tests. In second grade I remember never missing a spelling, though I am sure I missed a couple. Anyhow, I no doubt was near the top of the class in those but my teacher tried to hold me in from recess because of my writing. My mom was hell of pissed the first day it happened and it never happened again.
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Handwriting grades are quite possibly the stupidest measure of scholastic aptitude ever. Especially in this day and age.
Pedro got a D in handwriting once, and his dad told his teacher point-blank, "I don't really care. By the time he's in middle school, he'll be required to type everything anyway. As long as he can sign his name, he'll be fine."
Of course, Pedro's handwriting is about as legible as your average fourth-grader's, basically frozen in time as it was the year his family got a computer.
But he types 70 words a minute, so who cares?
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Actually my hand-writing is really good now and my spelling is horrible.
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Today I was proud, because my writing teacher told some kids that they had to type their assignments from now on, and I was not one of them.
I have always had horrible handwriting. At this point, it's legible, it's just that the letters are inconsistent and ugly.
My Arabic professor, on the other hand, mentioned my Arabic handwriting as being very neat and nice.
I think this was because I didn't practice enough for it to come out naturally... I had to think hard about making the shapes. Later in the semester it got really horrible.
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Yeah, I got lotsa awful cursive grades in elementary school and when I got to the seventh grade, the teachers just said "just print until you learn how to type" and... I did! It all worked out.
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To echo previous stories...
My parents were called in to a conference with Mrs. Williams, my first grade teacher. I neglected to do things in class, and would sometimes ask inappropriate (she felt) questions. I remember once asking how to spell "of", I also seem to recall getting a sheet and being asked to color it, as well as write the letters (The letter I). I was never a fan of coloring, and chose not to.
What my teacher was unaware of, my mother had been teaching me to read for several years. At this point I was able to sound out the words in her legal texts, one of which she sent me to school with the next day.
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Ech Handwriting. I remember my year 7 teacher making these vaguely veiled threats (I have to imagine out of desperation as she was actually one of my favourite teachers and usually above stooping to this sort of thing) about how I might have to do a summer semester or stay back a year or something if my handwriting didn't improve. Telling this to a student who topped his class the previous year seems a bit silly in retrospect.
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We should write things and post pictures! I took a picture, but cannot find the cable for my camera... I might have left it in Charlotte.
This has my handwriting at its neatest on it. (http://flickr.com/photos/theinevitable/192061323/)
but... I almost never write like that. Normally it is more scrawly and uneven? although sometimes it is weirdly neat. who knows.
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You make your "D"s the same way as my brother-in-law, who is also a Daniel. (He goes by Danny, though.)
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Man, does everyone have a terrible handwriting-teacher story? For me, it was my third-grade teacher, who would regularly send assignments back with requests to correct the handwriting ("write ten 'e's"). That was the year we were learning cursive, too, so it already stung.
I still write in cursive, albeit intentionally made terrible to infuriate her from afar.
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I am intrigued by Inev's H's. The little serif at the beginning is a form I haven't seen before.
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Oh, see... at some point in a math class I wrote a 7 followed by an H, and was like "huh." And so when I was thinking about I was writing, I wrote my H's like that. I don't actually write them like that normally. I just thought it looked cool for a while. That was from almost 2 years ago, I guess. Weird.
What is interesting to me is that I write my b's clockwise and by 6's counterclockwise.
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We should write things and post pictures! I took a picture, but cannot find the cable for my camera... I might have left it in Charlotte.
This has my handwriting at its neatest on it. (http://flickr.com/photos/theinevitable/192061323/)
but... I almost never write like that. Normally it is more scrawly and uneven? although sometimes it is weirdly neat. who knows.
Yo (http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y181/lprkn/DSC00309.jpg)
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Oh, that poem is a doozy. Tell your dad he made an imaginary person on the internet all misty eyed.
You tell him. He reads my comments.
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Criminy, what a G&T bunch we are here. Our G&T program was called "Seminar," capital S, and I was in that from 3rd to 7th grade. It was like what Linnea described way back--we got pulled out of regular class one afternoon a week and got to do much cooler shit.
What's curious is I think about the kids who were in that with me, and while most of us are doing what mainstream society would call successful jobs, I know one girl who quit all her extra-curriculars senior year to "be with her boyfriend" and was pregnant before we graduated, and a guy who got heavily into drugs. (No idea what they're doing now, and of course none of that prevents them from being happy and productive now almost 20 years later.)
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sucks to your assmar, computers.
YES
just now, I was looking for my calculator, and I asked my roommate if he had seen it. He said no. Then I found it, and said "aha! here it is!"
on the back, I had a sticker-- it is like a bar-code thing from when I had AP exams.
And he said "holy shit! one second..."
and went and pulled out his identical calculator, which had his AP bar-code stickers on the back.
I feel like that is some kind of Thing.
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The gifted and talented program in my school district was called SOAR: "Students on Active Research". As best I can recall, it covered grades 3-5 and 6-8; in other words, most of elementary and all of middle school. In elementary school the kids in SOAR got pulled out of their regular classes one day a week, for the entire day. In middle school it was just another class.
My memory of those times is pretty bad now, but I think I was in SOAR for third, fifth, and sixth through eighth grades. I have vague recollections of being given some kind of test between second and third grade, the results of which presumably determined my suitability for SOAR, though they didn't tell me that at the time (or ever).
Looking back, I really don't remember much of it at all. I know in third grade, it was pretty unstructured; I recall spending a lot of time playing one of the Carmen Sandiego games on the Apple II in the classroom (which was actually in a trailer). There were also shelves full of puppets in the classroom and we occasionally put on puppet shows for kids even younger than ourselves, most notably at a local public library. In retrospect it seems kind of silly, but I thought then and I still think now that it was probably a better use of time being in regular classes.
I don't think I was in SOAR in fourth grade, but I don't remember. All I really remember from fourth grade is being in a more advanced "reading" class which was hell for me because it required more class participation and then, as now, I was paralyzingly self-conscious (which is why I have only 62 posts in nearly two years of membership!). Also the woman teaching it also taught my Sunday school at least once. I feel weird talking about "my Sunday school" because I am somewhere between agnostic atheism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism) and atheistic agnosticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheistic_agnosticism) today, and haven't set foot in a church except for weddings and familial obligations in years and years. But I suppose I was something approximating a Christian back in fourth grade. I went to church with my parents, at least.
In fifth grade SOAR was a bit more structured than in third grade, and it focused mostly on critical-thinking exercises. I recall one time we had to solve some kind of murder mystery. I'm pretty sure all the characters had terrible puns for names; the only one that remains with me today is "Felix Navidad". It's funny how I can remember such trivial details, but I can't remember the bigger picture.
I found SOAR in sixth through eighth grades far less enjoyable. Among other things, we were required to do National History Day (http://www.nationalhistoryday.org/) projects (though I never did, or did them poorly). And it was just another class, so I had to spend the rest of the day in classes that didn't interest or challenge me much if at all.
It was around that time that my fate as a chronic underachiever was sealed. I sometimes wonder how things would be different today if my parents had had the money to send me to a private school -- I have a friend who went to a private school until high school and he said he did much better there than in he did in high school -- or if I'd merely had the ability to force myself to do things that didn't interest me. Maybe I wouldn't be a 24-year-old college drop-out who's farting around on the Internet instead of working because he called in sick today to his shitty part-time job that he hates because he just couldn't stomach the thought of going.
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I assumed that you infrequent posting had more to do with your day job as a medical examiner and your hobby as a serial killer of murderers.
But that works too.
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I assumed that you infrequent posting had more to do with your day job as a medical examiner and your hobby as a serial killer of murderers.
But that works too.
Ahahaha. Actually, I picked this name because of this Dexter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter%27s_Laboratory). It was on TV in the background when I was trying to come up with a name, because I decided, rather arbitrarily, that I didn't want to use the same name I use everywhere else. I'm kinda regretting that decision now, or at least wishing that I had picked a different different name. Maybe we could have some kinda "rename Dexter" thing like we did for A-CAP.
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I assumed that you infrequent posting had more to do with your day job as a medical examiner and your hobby as a serial killer of murderers.
If its any consolation - your 62 posts have been quality.
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The gifted and talented program in my school district was called SOAR: "Students on Active Research".
Can we please institute the death penalty for people who name things with stupid acronyms?
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Can we please institute the death penality for people who name things with stupid acronyms?
Sure. I'll write to my congressman about my support for the RETARD (Righteously Exterminate Tons of Acronyms Retroactively Devised) Act.
Edit: It occurs to me that this could be interpreted as me calling you a retard. I would like to make it clear that this is not the case; that contrived acronym was just the first one that came to mind.
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my favorite is when comedians or just funny people do like... joke acronyms?
like maybe I could say....
no, man, don't hate on acronyms! I am going to create a group called the National Acroynm Association for Continued Prevalence (??)
or like how The Daily Show used to say "the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (or, NAMBLA)" or whatever.
Do you get what I mean? I cannot remember an actual example.
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I did the GT thing and also went to a summer camp where we took 3 hour classes every morning. I really pitied the suckers going out in row boats or sitting it crappy tents while I was in a nice air conditioned university classroom learning to write my name in Mayan or reading e.e. cummings or whatever.
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I was a spontaneous reader at 3. Bored all through elementary school (also, to carry the trend forward, lousy at math and especially times tables, and crappy handwriting to this day.
I did take AP classes in HS and successfully tested out of a year of core classes in college. I managed also to get a degree with two major concentrations having taken not one math class in college. Yay me.
Now I'm 40 years old and in the worst shape of my life financially. Like AW, I'm taking it philosophically and one day at a time.
I wish my family was around, though. Even Hawaii blows when you're pretty much alone all the time that you are not at work (and even more so when you pretty much hate your job...)
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Inev: That is a Thing for Jon Stewart he always says it when there is a long name.
The most recent example I saw was when he was talking about the American Motion Picture... (whatever the writers are striking against) or NAMBLA.
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I'm pullin' for ya, Dawg, if that means anything.
Lord knows I'm kinda in a similar situation, just tryin' to start a Just-A-Job-Job, nearly broke. Be strong, man, and in the very least you will be hanging in there in case the luck-winds shift.
I don't know if just nose-to-the-grindstoning it actually works or not, hasn't worked for me lately, but I know that everyday we're breathin' is another day that some luck can fall in your lap.
Maybe the point of life has something to do with getting to the point where just bein' strong is where the joy and the meaning flows from, not whatever we're working for but... I don't know, I sure as hell have not gotten there yet.
I hold up my fist in solidarity with you, Dawg. I hope that, in some cosmic way, it helps.
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I got street smarts.
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Sure. I'll write to my congressman about my support for the RETARD (Righteously Exterminate Tons of Acronyms Retroactively Devised) Act.
Edit: It occurs to me that this could be interpreted as me calling you a retard. I would like to make it clear that this is not the case; that contrived acronym was just the first one that came to mind.
No, this was interpreted as you being the sort of person who ought to come around here more often.
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No, this was interpreted as you being the sort of person who ought to come around here more often.
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No, this was interpreted as you being the sort of person who ought to come around here more often.
See what I mean about the paralyzing self-consciousness?
Either way, even if you didn't think that, someone else might have. Which would be almost as bad.
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Forgiveness/permission
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Sure. I'll write to my congressman about my support for the RETARD (Righteously Exterminate Tons of Acronyms Retroactively Devised) Act.
Edit: It occurs to me that this could be interpreted as me calling you a retard. I would like to make it clear that this is not the case; that contrived acronym was just the first one that came to mind.
Uh... http://www.citizensunitednottimid.org/