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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Topic: GT Program Survivor Support Group (Read 13415 times)