Last year was pretty awesome. After I quit being sorry for myself and actually stepped up, things got better. By june, not only did I have friends and awesome teachers, but I also had a lot of great memories from sixth grade. This year, I was kind of unsure about at the beginning, but now that we've had a few months to settle in, I think this year's going to be a great one too. I really like the people in my class; they all get along well with each other and everything and that's a really key thing to have in a good classroom community I guess. My teacher's so far really nice too, not that I doubted her or anything, but she's been a pretty awesome teacher. I think that november and december are good times to actually report about school in general. I mean september, you're just meeting people and doing introduction things. Then in october you actually ease into the learning, and getting to know your classmates better. So by the november-december time, you practically know everyone a little bit and you actually get into the projects and actual routines. Plus, at this time of year is usually when you get your report cards/progress cards and all those other evaluation marks that have been collected up to now. And besides, at this point, you've had the chance to introduce yourself your class and teachers, so they finally get a sense of what you are REALLY like, that they will most likely stick with for the rest of the year/
Anyway, this year, I feel that gifted has kind of lost it's meaning a little. There are a lot of fourth graders that came in this year (and last year) who all passed the gifted test the year before that. It seems that maybe the gifted test is getting too easy or maybe that something in our regular habits or nutrition has affected our minds so that being 'gifted' is not as hard as it was before. But if you actually talk to most of the kids, for most of them, you can definitely tell that they should be in gifted. I guess another reason might be that this year, I am in the gifted 6/7 split class, and there is also a mainstream 6/7 split. As a result to recent polls done at our school last year, they have been trying to mix the gifted and mainstream even more. Sooo, for our science and history/geography classes, it has been decided that because we have more 7th graders in out split and they have more 6th graders in their split, we will be mixing in those two classes. For those periods, our few sixth graders will go with the mainstream sixth graders to, say, science, while the mainstream seventh graders will join us gifted seventh graders in the opposite class which would be history/geography. It works and it's pretty clever, but it seems that if we are both learning the same thing at the same time, that there never really was a certain "gifted" teaching method or anything. Just that we were branded and stuck in a different classroom.
Then again, there are totally times where I still do feel very gifted and very... different. And it's mostly a very good feeling. I really like this school, my class and the gifted program, though I do still miss my old school friends. I actually just talked with one of them the other day and I realized how much I miss them. We're hoping to get together soon anyway. Haven't seen most of them in like two years. Well, I'm here now until graduation next year and then who knows if I'll see any of my friends in high school. Oh well, I live for the present I guess.
Wish me luck again this year! Hope it's a good one. :)
-Alex L.
