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 and 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 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.