<p>How does everyone on here feel about them? Are they necessary or just ego-boosters for students and their parents?</p>
<p>Gifted programs can be anything from awesome to useless! Some programs include lots of field trips and activities not normally available to the kids. Most have the advantage helping your child get into the most advance/rigorous classes (though it’s never required). </p>
<p>We had one child go through the program, while another did not, and we can’t tell much of a difference (other than DS did like getting out of class and going on the field trips!). </p>
<p>We had one friend who had her child tested several times (paying for each test out of her own pocket), until he could pass the test and get into gifted. We really didn’t understand the point…</p>
<p>But again, not all gifted programs are the same, and there is some value to boosting your child’s ego (for those that need it!), or at least his/her expectation for themselves.</p>
<p>My daughter’s personality traits ( ie intensity level, perfectionist) drove her 3rd grade teacher crazy. The gifted program was helpful because the teacher who ran the program understood my daughter and helped educate the classroom teacher ( who was new) about these kids. The classroom teacher used to tell me that my daughter gets very frustrated sitting in the classroom and for that reason she may not be a good candidate for the gifted program (?). What she did not realize is that this frustration made her the perfect candidate. </p>
<p>I do not understand parents who try and push their way into these programs.</p>
<p>Agree with above. It depends. </p>
<p>Older son was in programs which were good for him more socially than academically. The program put him in touch with other kids like him, and in new schools, that was really helpful. He had very very high scores and some unusual interests. I did appreciate the field trips and the ability for kids to do more creative work. I wished that every kid could have had the opportunity to do some of the independent creative work that gifted kids got to do.</p>
<p>Younger son was not immediately tapped for the program and that hurt his ego. He was happy to be chosen when he got in the program, but at the same time he didn’t enjoy the extra work. I guess you could say for my kids it was a matter of personality. Older son liked the extra creative projects, younger son thought they were a pain and would rather be outside playing. </p>
<p>I did think by high school it really didn’t matter much. Kids would self select what classes to take. Some of the gifted kids graduated in the top of the class and took the hardest courses, and some of the nongifted kids did the same.</p>
<p>We found it MUCH more rewarding for our two kids to find things to enrich their learning outside of school…ourselves! Our kids were not gifted across the board. DS was well within the TAG guidelines for literacy, but NOT math. His first elementary school recognized this and had him doing really good literacy enrichment at an early age. His second elementary school only put you in the TAG program if you were brilliant all around. Stupid, in my opinion. Our daughter was very smart…but flew under the radar screen. Because she was a quiet kid, who happened to excel, she got no recognition.</p>
<p>Both of our kids were talented musicians. If you think academic enrichment is tough…try the arts…totally ignored (unless you have a fabulous teacher…which our kids had). They both played in precollege orchestras, took private lessons, and went to summer music programs…on our dime.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for anyone else but my son. The GT program was a life saver for him(us). He came home from a parochial kindergarten and said he didn’t want to go to school anymore. The teacher’s means of differentiating was to put my son in a hallway with worksheets at the age of 5 and have him sit by himself and work. In 1st grade, my son started at a public school for GT kids. This was not a pullout program. One of the few in the U.S… Aside from the academics, I think there where two main benefits of this program: 1) In general, the teachers were more accepting of the idiosyncratic behaviors of many if the kids. 2) The kids were more accepting of each other. In traditional schools, many of these kids would be the ones who would be picked on for being “different”. I have a good example. We were on the playground when my son was four and he was talking about the various rock formations that he could see. The other kid looked at him and said, “Dude, let’s play.” My son would have been happy to talk about rocks the entire time he was there. In his school, he found kids who were happy to talk rocks. :)</p>
<p>One of my kid’s sanity in middle school and early high school was pretty much saved by a gifted program (summer) and a talent search group she linked up with online. Honestly, she was miserable without intellectual peers in regular school, and statistically they are just few and far between for a kid with a very high IQ. I wish her school had had a gifted program, but like Thumper we did our best with supplemental activities outside of school. Looking back, I actually wish we had moved across our city to a suburb that has a gifted school for K-8 that would have been a much better fit for her. </p>
<p>I look at it this way… as an adult, how would you feel if you were required to sit in an entire year of math class and do full homework assignments, group projects, test, etc. on math subjects you already know? I would be bored, annoyed if the homework had a lot of problems I already knew how to do, and wishing I could be spending my time doing something more interesting (learning math that is new to me, reading about a subject that interested me, etc.). Then multiply that by several subjects, and have it go on for years. That was my D2’s experience for all of middle schools and much of high school. Some people would say a kid in that situation should take satisfaction out helping other kids, or just “wait patiently” for their peers. But it is grinding for an extremely bright kid to experience this day in and day out for many years… our schools ought to be set up to allow kids to move ahead in subjects WHEN THEY ARE READY, not when their peers are ready. And that goes for faster and slower kids. If your school is really good about that and allows acceleration when a kid is ready, then maybe a formal gifted program isn’t needed, though. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and some schools do a better job in their regular programming to support gifted students.</p>
<p>Socially it is also pretty miserable when no one else around you shares your interest. First & second grade, D2 was reading Lord of the Rings and passionate about it. She could find adults to talk to about it, but her peers… not so much, unless their parents had allowed them to watch the PG-13 movies at age 6-7. She was quite introverted, partly because she knew her peers didn’t want to talk about what she was interested in. And sometimes she would blow them away with her intensity and deep interest when they did find something in common, so she just started to tread very carefully all the time. But she bloomed when she met kids at her summer program and online that were more like her, finally met a few kids in high school who shared her intellectual interests, and is absolutely reveling in her college experience with a lot of other kids like herself and tremendously challenging academics.</p>
<p>So… can a gifted kid get along with out them? Yes, they usually can, but it can add to the difficulty of being different from peers. Are they just “ego boosters”? Maybe for the kid who just squeaked in score-wise – but for kids who really need and crave more than the regular classroom offers, a well run gifted program can be a huge benefit.</p>
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One reason I can think of for parents to try to push their kids into a gifted program (though you may be on to something, twogirls, when you say they try to push their way in :D) is if their perception is that the better, more creative/engaging teachers are in the gifted program. Because really, wouldn’t every child learn more from a creative, engaged teacher and stimulating subject matter?</p>
<p>One of my kids didn’t make it in to our district’s gifted program until middle school because she was one I.Q. point shy of the threshold. She eventually hoisted herself over. (Skip this sentence if you don’t like bragging: she went on to earn a lot of academic recognition - val, PBK, summa grad of a top 20 school, etc.) I remember how excited we all were when she got the nod, and how disappointed we were when the program turned out to be … well, disappointing. As in, and I kid you not, “model a portrait of a US President from fruit.”</p>
<p>My daughter would be a very close minded person if not for the gifted programs, esp. considering where we live, and she wouldn’t have the ambition she has and drive she has. you need to be careful choosing them though. ask for recommendations.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen anything great from pull-out gifted programs at neighborhood schools. Magnet schools, on the other hand, can be very valuable because they create the critical mass necessary to offer more advanced coursework or other opportunities.</p>
<p>Perhaps it was because I was only identified as “gifted” so late (grade 8) but I personally found it rather useless academically. I did not find the gifted level courses that different, with the only major change being that the section of weaker (C to D) students that is in pretty much every class wasn’t really present in a gifted class. The gifted courses weren’t worse, they just weren’t all that different from the non-gifted courses. The one and only really significant advantage “gifted” status really provided me is that it let me go to a really good “out of area” public high school (out of area applicants were accepted based on lottery, but since the school had a gifted program, gifted students were automatically allowed in), as opposed to the god awful high school which was close to my house. </p>
<p>Anyway parents really love it when their kids are identified as “gifted” so expect lots gushy answers from parents on this thread. Expect to see “it changed my son/daughter’s life” a lot in the replies.</p>
<p>It so depends on the child. Lots of talented students do their best when surrounded by other students who work at a higher level. But it is not for every bright child.</p>
<p>After D was noticeably academically ahead in elementary school, she did a gifted program for middle school… and was uncomfortable there. She disliked the intensity of the program and the feeling of being pushed. Plus she missed being with all sorts of students. </p>
<p>For high school it was back to a “regular” school. D was much happier being in a more relaxed atmosphere that allowed her time to concentrate her energies in things that interested her. The “regular” high school allowed her to blossom in away that may not have been possible in the local gifted program. </p>
<p>Interestingly enough, her personality carried right through in college choice. She was accepted into several big name engineering schools, but chose a less prestigious institution where she felt comfortable.</p>
<p>The gifted program was better than nothing for my older son, but he was still way way ahead of other kids in math. Reading he was probably just as far ahead, but it was far less obvious since he didn’t enjoy writing. When we got his 7th grade SAT results from CTY I finally understood why he never fit in. He was way over on the right hand side of the bell curve in the group of gifted students. Middle school and high school were better when he was allowed to skip ahead to more advanced classes.</p>
<p>The program was a great fit for my younger son, especially in 4th grade when the teacher and the class seemed to be on the same wavelength. They extended a poetry unit because the whole class got excited about it. And one term she had them separate into different groups to do projects. I volunteered to help a small group put together a school newspaper. They did a great job. They wrote an article about what was behind various locked doors of the school, another where they compared pizza from several different local pizza joints, my son wrote an editorial about why kids shouldn’t be forced to wear coats on the playgrounds…</p>
<p>I don’t believe in gifted programs that give gifted kids goodies like field trips that are withheld from other kids.</p>
<p>It is interesting how variable these programs can be. For my eldest, the in-school elementary program was useless. Because so many parents pushed their kids into the program, it was not a haven for gifted kids. As soon as the teacher started to introduce truly challenging work, my daughter came to life and the rest of the kids fell apart. A mob of parents breached the principal’s office door and presto! the challenging work was gone. The gifted kids ended up defecting from the program which had become just more of the same. In middle school and high school, the only accelerated programs were advanced math classes and a few humanities APs. These were geared not so much to gifted kids but to high achieving kids who came in all stripes. </p>
<p>When this same kid headed to summer programs, she came back recharged and excited. Even though one of the teachers there told me that the program really wasn’t drawn narrowly enough to focus on the kids like my daughter, the teachers were aware of kids like her and did their best to nurture them. It made all the difference to her. </p>
<p>My youngest is the kind of kid who was lucky enough to go to elementary and middle school with a tightly knit group of gifted kids and talented teachers. I counted my lucky stars every day. When she reached high school, she was stunned at the slow pace of the work, even in so-called “advanced” classes. She still looks back with fondness, and some wistfulness, to the de facto gifted program she’d had in earlier years.</p>
<p>I’m more in favor of programs that go for broad enrichment, rather than just teaching advanced topics. That gives them a break from the tedious review in class, without teaching material that will get boring when encountered a 2nd time in regular classes.</p>
<p>It depends on the program and the teacher. I was in the gifted program in middle school, but I was in a mixed class of students in the program and students not in the program. At the beginning of the year, our teacher told us that sometimes students would be working on different material depending on what program we were in, but we never actually did anything different than the other students in the class. I had other friends who were in classes with all students in the gifted program, and they actually did different projects and learned different material. But when we went to high school, we took all the same classes, did just as well in them, and all went to good colleges after (and did well in those colleges, graduated at the same time, etc). Whether or not, we were in the “gifted” program really made no difference in our situation. But other programs may be better or it might matter for different types of kids.</p>
<p>My offspring attended a stand-alone public G&T program.</p>
<p>I think the benefits were 4 fold: (1)kids who were interested in things beyond the normal range of activities for their age group weren’t social pariahs. One kid (not mine) could calculate the square root of 3 digit #s in his head in kindergarten. Kids understood that he was beyond them, but that didn’t make him “weird.” There was no need to “act dumb” to make friends; (2) kids stayed with their age-mates–I didn’t want my kid to be skipped just because (s)he was reading “chapter books” before starting kindergarten. Even in high school, when the young math genius was taking his math courses at Columbia U, he was taking all his other courses with kids his own age; (3) as a result of (1) and (2) kids had friends; most people make their closest friends with others who are of roughly the same ability level; and (4) kids realized very early that they had intellectual equals in the world; I think it really warps people to always be the big fish in the small pond and I’ve seen absolute disasters when some people from that sort of background did meet real competition for the first time in college or grad school. </p>
<p>In my offspring’s NYC public magnet high school, the kids who had gone to G&T elementaries used to joke that you could tell who had/had not. The kids who had were, in the aggregate, much more social and just plain happy than the kids who hadn’t. After a few years, it tended to even out, as the kids who always been socially isolated realized they no longer had to keep a low profile to avoid being picked on or fawned over.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. While some were like you described, others ended up having severe adjustment problems because they were competing in a much larger concentrated pool full of G & T kids just as/more G & T than they were or had issues accepting that some kids they knew/perceived to be coming from non G & T backgrounds were overtaking them academically/achievements-wise…and failing to accept a large part of it was due to their own lack of work-ethic and assuming they could coast on the work ethic committed during their junior high years. </p>
<p>While I also hit the academic wall and crashed and burned in 9th and first part of 10th grade, I didn’t have the high expectations some of the G & T equivalent kids did when we started our first two years precisely because I wasn’t one of them. </p>
<p>To be fair, the ones who were like what you described were a joy to be around and ended up being some of my closest friends in our HS social circle…even if I was the “laggard” by their academic standards. They were more than happy to help me academically and enjoyed my company. </p>
<p>The ones who weren’t ended up being some of the most obnoxious and miserable classmates I’ve encountered during my HS years including a few who ended up with stress related ulcers and other symptoms of high stress because they could no longer “be #1” and/or had serious issues with kids from non-G & T equivalent junior high/homerooms overtaking them in HS because the latter had superior work ethic, time management, and organizational skills…and without much parental help due to family/lower-SES circumstances.</p>
<p>It completely depends on the teacher, the program, and the kid. </p>
<p>But let me ask YOU something: are travel teams and varsity teams really necessary, or are they only to boost the ego of the parents and players? </p>
<p>How about special education? Do those kids really NEED those services, or are they just being babied to make their parents feel better?</p>
<p>Pervasive anti-intellectualism strikes again.</p>
<p>Anybody here remember the Cleveland Major Work Program from back on the 60’s. There were classes in various schools and students were selected to attend. I was only in the program for four years grades 3-6, but those teachers were fabulous. It was a classroom based program. Even though I moved during 6th grade, I still am in contact with several students from my class.</p>
<p>I should add, however…I moved to a suburban school district with a very rich curriculum. I never felt shortchanged there because they didn’t have a TAG program.</p>