My elementary school had a program called “SOAR” which stood for Students On Active Research (whatever that means).
In second grade you were invited to go if you excelled enough. The program would bus you off to another location one day a week where they aggregated all the elementary schools in the area into the program. In all there were about 20-30 kids from each school.
So they send me to this thing and I can’t even remember everything we did, but I remember I thought what we were doing was too easy to really be for smart kids. The logical conclusion, then, was that it was actually for stupid kids and they had lied to me to make me feel special and willing to go.
I cried my eyes out over this. I was convinced that while they had removed the poor performers from class, the other kids were advancing unhindered by us. My parents and my teacher all tried to assure me that wasn’t the case, but for about a month I didn’t believe them.
A few years after I left elementary school I heard some minority parents accused the program of being racist (even though there were certainly minorities with me in the program). The parents yelled and screamed until they changed the program so that all kids were in the “smart” program.
unfortunately now, most kid are lumped together in the same classroom where the smart kids give up or finish too quickly and act up in class. April can tell you some stories…
I can’t remember the name of our gifted program, and i remember thinking it was funny that smart kids had to have an extra super class to go to, whereas no such thing existed when i was growing up in Wisconsin. Then again, I never made straight A’s in WI, whereas it was hard not to in GA. Hrmm….
lol, you heard some minority parents yelled until they changed things? You can’t criticize that…it’s the quintessential American way. Duh. Bitch until someone listens or they can’t stand to hear you bitch anymore.
Anyway, I got into the “gifted” program in 2nd or 3rd grade. It was called Focus in elementary school…from what I recall, I was the only minority in the group. I’ll ask my parents if they bitched to get me in.
Anyway, we would go once or twice a week all day. I’m shocked you remember the work being too easy for smart kids…cause I don’t remember a single thing we did in my elementary school Focus classes, lol. Middle School is a different story…it was actually mildly interesting.
It was basically the same deal where like twice a week we ran off to another classroom for the day…small group of us, maybe 10 to 15? Except now it was called Probe. Terrible name. That’s actually where I first met Jewbroni Hansen back in 6th grade. Two months of going to the Atlanta Zoo once a week and not having to do classwork? Yes please! Melissa, the former biologist buried inside of you would’ve loved it. :p At any rate, we didn’t do regular class work, we did a lot of projects and things that I guess were meant to “broaden your mind” or some garbage. Logic puzzles, reading, group assignments…that kinda stuff. I have to say, I had some fun in those Probe classes. Several funny stories I’ll never forget from Richards Middle and Sweetwater Middle while in Probe. Especially Richards, lol.
Tim, I know several people who didn’t go to school in GA and had similar programs in the states they lived in. /shrug That being said, I like the idea of the “gifted” program, but the implementation was messy. And Chris, I’d imagine the lumping of students that you speak of is probably a product of rapid growth of student populations coupled with not enough teachers or space to go around. Or extra funding for that matter.
I don’t recall what we did… I just remember being upset because I thought the program was for slow kids and I didn’t want to be retarded.