This morning, I came across a post about an article talking how labeling children as “gifted” is a detrimental thing. I’ve said this at times throughout my life, and I was curious what direction this article would take (a similar one to the ones before: all children are gifted) and the thoughts of the person sharing it (giftedness is a type of neurodivergence that should have support and accommodations in the same ways that other forms of neurodivergence are receiving/beginning to receive).
I didn’t go down any rabbit holds with the article or critique, but did reflect on my own experience as a “gifted” child. And this time, I reflected with the added filter that I could be considered (potentially) in an actually identified subcategory of neurodivergent humans. Am I? I don’t know. That hits me as an existential rabbit hole that I might investigate at a later date. For today, I thought about my brief time as a “gifted and talented” student in the ’80s.
Honestly, I have no idea how they picked me to join that class. I’m sure there was some evaluation and some conference that I have either forgotten or never paid attention to. But, in 3rd grade at West Godwin Elementary School, I began leaving my regular classroom to walk to a room between the kindergarten classes and the auxiliary gym to meet with these kids who were in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. I remember how much walking it took because the rooms were on the opposite sides of the school. I remember walking around the big gym that was also our cafeteria and sometimes auditorium. I remember walking past the kitchen (I learned about that during the summer enrichment program that I went to (maybe my just younger brother and sister also went?)). I remember walking past the library. And I remember walking into a class full of kids taller and smarter than me.
But thinking back, I also know that it was in this class (not always the room) that I was able to begin exploring in a curious way and in a safe atmosphere. The mode of that classroom was to provide us with parameters for inquiry and then let us inquire. And those things that I explored have become the things that describe parts of my self. Three particular memories consistently stand out.
My first and most deeply seeded and seated memory is of working in the greenhouse. The gifted and talented classroom had an adjoining greenhouse where we grew begonias and dusty millers and oregano and tomatoes. The flowers and decorative plants would be sold later on (I wasn’t around to participate in the sale). The oregano was used on pizzas that we made right before the end of the school year. And we would dig in the dirt and water these plants and be in the filtered sunshine when it wasn’t even recess. I cannot smell potting soil or oregano and not be transported back into that place. I can’t see puddles on the concrete in the garden center of Lowe’s without revisiting the potting bench in that greenhouse. There is a plant that I keep in the living room that smells like spring soil whenever I water it, and I am able to relax into the solace of that memory.
My second and less relaxing but no less engaging memory are Spanish lessons. Our entire classroom was labeled. La puerta, la silla, el papel. I wasn’t a natural second language learner. Still am not. But the entire notion that language was a code to be decoded was implanted in my brain. The concept that so much of the spoken world was outside my grasp was not scary to my little person brain. It was as enthralling as the night sky and the ocean (that I equated to Lake Michigan). It made my world bigger but also just a little bit more understandable even if I didn’t understand the words. I was imbued with the idea that people could speak in a way that was incomprehensible to me but that didn’t make them incomprehensible or less “people”. No, my little person brain didn’t think in those words then. But a door was opened for me by those label en espanol on everything (en todo?).
My third memory is the thing that truly made school my home. No. I wasn’t the kid that fought to hang in a classroom or anything. I think that might have been my next younger sister. I wasn’t a teacher’s pet. Honestly, I don’t know if any of my teachers liked me or even saw me as anything other than yet another student. Knowing teachers now, I suspect they did. But I was very small and had a very timid life despite having a whole universe in my head and in my eye. Still, when I think about places that were safe for me, it was always school. And it was the “research project” we did in the gifted and talented class that gave me ownership of something in this world and place that was special for just me. It was during this project, a pretty big one for little people, that we got to go to the library, learn to search the card catalog, make notecards, organize ideas, scour the shelves, ask the librarian questions, and just follow our little curious whims. I did a research project on horses. Of course I did. And it spilled over. When we would go to the public library, this school project spilled over into my desire to go look in the ADULT non-fiction section for books on horses. The Ultimate Horse Book (from DK Publishing) was one of my all-time favorites. I’d open that book up right in the stacks with a kik-stool as my table (so I didn’t lose the book’s place on the shelf) and look at picture after picture and read all the captions.
Those three things in that one class in that one semester (I wasn’t in the class for the whole year – not until spring) have shaped who I am. We moved that summer to a new school system. That new school didn’t have the same type of environment. And, honestly, my third grade year was the last year of my childhood. It’s hard to actually type that out loud, but it’s true. But, that’s another story. And this story is about a little girl that got to play in the dirt and water while she was at school and learn about la puerta and el papel and eat oregano on pizza and read SO MUCH about horses. My take has always been (and still is) that ALL children should get to discover and experience those things and more from their education. My take is also that I am incredibly grateful for that time, even though it was short, in the gifted and talented class.