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Yes, at a regular school.

No, I didn't qualify.

No, my school didn't have one.

I went to a school for gifted kids.

Other (explain below).

[jay-ell]

Here's the poll I was talking about before. 

[linnea]

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!

[KeithHernandez]

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.

[wombat]

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.

[wombat]

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?

[littlefallsmets]

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!

[jay-ell]

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. 

[littlefallsmets]

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.

[Nabubrush]

GT, honors in jr/sr high, think it is all basically hossshit.

[Victoria Waterfield]

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.

[Golfhaus]

(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.

[side_show]

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.

[theinevitable]

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.

[jaydub]

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.

[Doc]

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.