PDA

View Full Version : Westmount/Hillhurst GATE program



Pages : [1] 2

suntan
08-20-2015, 11:05 AM
So it turns out my oldest child is gifted.

Anybody send their kids to Westmount or the Hillhurst GATE program? We've heard that it's nigh impossible to get into either school. Any tips? Should I be sucking someone's dick sooner than later?

sexualbanana
08-20-2015, 11:14 AM
Is that the jr high or elementary program?

benyl
08-20-2015, 11:18 AM
You have to get a psychological assessment done in order to get into Westmount.

After that, you apply.

They will do their own assessment in January.

Cut-off for application is 95th percentile range or an IQ of 130ish IIRC. Generally kids that low don't get in.

No dick sucking required. If you need a psychologist, I can PM the one we used for our oldest.

I would suggest attending an open house. However, be patient as it seems that most parents of "gifted" students are really stupid. They will ask the same questions over and over and do not pay attention.

People have this notion that being gifted is being smart. It isn't. It is actually special needs. It is just on the opposite spectrum of "special needs." Westmount is not focused on academic excellence.

benyl
08-20-2015, 11:20 AM
go to slide 36 of this presentation.

http://westmountcharter.com/pdfs/Open%20Houses%20K-4%202016-2017.pdf

suntan
08-20-2015, 11:21 AM
We got her assessed by a psychologist.

Her numbers were much, much higher than the cutoff. We're planning to go to the open houses but my main concern is simply the number of students they take in.

We certainly understand the "not just smart" bit. It explains a lot of her behaviour.

benyl
08-20-2015, 11:30 AM
It isn't as competitive as you might think, especially if she is "much, much higher" than the cut-off. They also make exceptions for the rules. My son is past the age cut off (Feb 28) and he still got in.

My SIL worked with someone who applied at the same time as we did. That person's child was right at the cut-off. That kid didn't get in.

The main thing they look for in their own assessment is how well they take to instruction and how they interact with other kids.

killramos
08-20-2015, 11:31 AM
I wouldn't recommend the GATE program. A bunch of my friends were in the program at Hillhurst and it really didn't set them up very well for the future. Most of them entered in grade 7 and by grade 9 they had definitely gotten a bit ahead in various subjects ( math in particular, they were past grade 10 level by then) so when they entered high school they were ahead of the pack and largely they just took spares to make up for the course credits they had ( which did not give them a very good work ethic for harder math and science courses to come). Which ended up turning most of them into slackers. There were only 2-3 Gate classes offered past grade 10 so they basically got thrown back in with the rest of us. Except those of us who had been in "community" were used to the system, grading styles etc. I knew a few guys who failed courses over not being able to adapt. That and the gate kids ended up with a huge chip on their shoulder over the program and didn't integrate back very well.

I was tested in elementary and recommended for the program as well, my parents opted me out after they saw the kind of crazies who had their kids in the program. I was also retested when i came to hillhurst in grade 9 and while i was accepted I opted out again. Glad i did in hindsight tbh.

Anywho that's my 2 cents.

The only real good thing about the program was they got additional funding so had better equipment ( first ones in the schools to have smart boards in every classroom, which was a big deal in 2007).

sexualbanana
08-20-2015, 11:38 AM
Are the Westmount and Hillhurst programs different than the QE programs? I imagine it is with the first two being charters, right?

benyl
08-20-2015, 11:40 AM
I don't know about Hillhurst and QE, but with Westmount, you have to apply. You can live across the street and you still can't go to Westmount.

killramos
08-20-2015, 11:41 AM
Originally posted by sexualbanana
Are the Westmount and Hillhurst programs different than the QE programs? I imagine it is with the first two being charters, right?

I should note that i went to QE so when i read Gate and Hillhurst I assumed that people were talking about QE.

riander5
08-20-2015, 11:44 AM
I was in it (jr high only) - You get more chances to do things self directed as opposed to a super strict schedule.

Only trend i can see from kids that were in it is all the super rich kids went to uni in the states and work for tech startups or banks in san fran, NY, London etc. For all the regular peasants like me :dunno: didnt have much of an effect on how i turned out.

You end up doing grade 10 science math and such in grade 9....

Its not a black or white choice but in terms of getting ahead in life.... the only kids that did were set up whether they went into GATE or not.

riander5
08-20-2015, 11:53 AM
Sorry just on my last point there I meant the rich kids got ahead and would have either way - everyone else's successes or lack thereof I believe was independent of being in gate or not.

So to sum up from my POV it makes little difference in where your kid ends up in life.

suntan
08-20-2015, 11:56 AM
Westmount is K-12. Two campuses though (K-4) and (5-12).

Hillhurst GATE is 4-6.

QE GATE is 7-12.

suntan
08-20-2015, 11:58 AM
Originally posted by benyl
go to slide 36 of this presentation.

http://westmountcharter.com/pdfs/Open%20Houses%20K-4%202016-2017.pdf Thanks for this. She'd start in grade 5. This year will be an IPP at her present school.

Guys, it's not just about being smart. There's stuff around emotional behaviour that aren't dealt with at a normal school.

sexualbanana
08-20-2015, 12:02 PM
GATE's not totally indicative of people's successes. The people I went to GATE with are into all kinds of different things, and it depends on your definition of success.

Some work at mega huge tech companies or do advanced STEM at a university, some are still bartending and I know some are just labourers.

suntan
08-20-2015, 12:03 PM
Yeah, I'm not really concerned with her academics. It's about having an environment that caters to her learning style and her personality.

She was being disruptive last year in class because she'd finish her work so quickly that she was bored. So she'd start running around the classroom. Her teacher did try to challenge her with more difficult work but she'd also breeze through that. She hopefully the IPP will help her out in that regard.

jwslam
08-20-2015, 12:03 PM
Unrelated but only kinda:

I went to Calgary Science School for Jr. High. One of the more vivid memories is that we were taught Trigonometry in Gr 6 (Public school program taught that at Gr 9). Learning higher grade math at a younger age got my entire class much further ahead (I feel).

Personally, I agree with the above that when I got thrown back into public high school, I slacked my way off through all the math courses since most of the concepts were quite familiar (may be just me and not all kids). Having a grasp on all the concepts ahead of everyone else (whether or not I fully understood or not is a different issue) was a major advantage since everyone else was learning it new and I was on a refresh.

Not sure how the GATE program teaches concepts, and it's probably also different from teacher to teacher. I know our teacher was very keen on applied math which helps with the understanding, we also had the pleasure of growing through 3 years of Jr high with the same instructors so they figured out how to cater to each of our individual learning styles.

Going into University, I know of at least 7 of my graduating class of 50 (2x25 classes, they were keen on smaller class sizes) coming out as engineers. Yea yea I know you're gonna say that that's what we get for going to a "science" school but I personally was not heavily interested in the sciences prior to being enrolled in the school. The method of education definitely changed the way we think from a young age, setting us up for success. I believe only 2 or 3 of the class of 50 didn't make it through a Bachelor's degree.

suntan
08-20-2015, 12:07 PM
The expectation is that if she starts in GATE, she stays in GATE for the rest of primary school.

killramos
08-20-2015, 01:03 PM
Originally posted by suntan
Thanks for this. She'd start in grade 5. This year will be an IPP at her present school.

Guys, it's not just about being smart. There's stuff around emotional behaviour that aren't dealt with at a normal school.

Something any parent should know about IPPs is that for every student that gets put on an IPP in a school they get additional funding from the board. I believe it was around 500 dollars per student when i was in school. As such there are a lot of schools who pressure teachers into classifying marginally different students into an IPP( be it gifted or special needs). In reality almost none of the money the school receives ends up going to make the students lives better.

An example of this was when I was in grade 9 and i opted out of GATE to stay in community they forced an IPP on me. They had to struggle to find someone legitimate to write onto it to justify the IPP. They eventually landed on " needs computer resources to complete assignments more effectively" Why? Because my handwriting was atrocious. Still is. And my science teacher was my IPP advisor so i got forced into attempting to complete all of my science assignments on a computer and handing them in typed up all year. Yea.

All so they could write down that they granted me access to computer resources and added flexibility to complete my assignments in a different way on the IPP signoff sheet at the end of the year. And they got their 500 dollar cheque.

It actually ended up making this way more difficult and stressful for me ( science assignments on a computer guys, come on). After that they completely forgot about me ( they only had to justify the funding in year 1) and i didn't show up to another IPP meeting for 3 years and i was open with my parents about that.

GATE students similarly received higher funding than community students, even more than IPP students.

So to be back on topic, OP be careful what the school is telling you. They will blow smoke up your ass to try and get this done and it isn't necessarily for your daughters benefit. I'm not saying she isn't gifted, but that maybe this isn't as big a deal as you think. If your daughter runs around the classroom distracting people she might just need a stern talking to about appropriate behavior in school.

Sources: My personal experiences and my wife is an elementary school teacher with the CBE.

suntan
08-20-2015, 02:00 PM
It wasn't the school that told me about the extra funding. I was aware of the funding model beforehand, and its issues, as there was a family whose child had a severe speech problem but received almost no direct help in spite of the extra funding.

IPP is shrink's idea. It's too late to get into Westmount/GATE for this year.

The CBE actually does have a person that deals strictly with helping create IPPs for gifted children, so she's being asked to part of this process.

We got her a psychological assessment. Yeah... even the very experienced psychologist (this is all she deals with - gifted kids) was amazed.

benyl
08-20-2015, 02:15 PM
Originally posted by killramos

If your daughter runs around the classroom distracting people she might just need a stern talking to about appropriate behavior in school.


I don't think stern anything works with highly gifted kids. As I said, they are "special needs."

High gifted kids actually have learning disabilities in certain areas of their life. It is a holistic issue and not specific to academic issues.

Gifted kids (not just bright ones) are likely to be OCD and are likely to have OT issues (requiring Occupational Therapy) that needs a lot of assessment to figure out. It's not as simple as a stern talking to.

For instance. When our second kid was born, we ask the first one if he was willing to give up his high chair (Stokke Tripp Trapp), that adjusts as he grows, to his sister and to sit in a regular chair. He said that his cousin sits in a regular chair and he could do it too. Well, he can't. He was constantly standing and laying on the chair and really started to piss us off. Lots of yelling was done with no change (4 years olds on hear about 50% of what you are saying to them).

I talked to my cousin about it and her son had the same issue. The issue is that they both need to be grounded. A regular chair has their legs dangling in the air. The tripp trapp allows for their feet to touch the "floor" (of the foot stool). I went and bought another chair a few weeks ago and guess what, he sits still and eats his food. No yelling required.

The hope is that his teachers at Westmount will recognize these things and be able to help him through these types of issues. It has nothing to do with doing Grade 10 math in Grade 9.

killramos
08-20-2015, 02:23 PM
You make it sound like your kids are borderline autistic?

As a note you ( and your psychologist ) might have a different opinion on the term gifted than the CBE accommodates.

The reality of the gate program is pretty well spelled out by the CBE themselves:


Students receive an enriched curriculum in Humanities (Language Arts and Social Studies), Mathematics, and Science, with an emphasis on cross-curricular themes and activities wherever possible. Starting in Grade 7, Math and Science courses are successfully compacted so most JH students have completed Grade 10 requirements at the end of Grade 9. This allows opportunity to take a wider array of academic courses in Senior High, or to have time in their timetables to successfully enrol in Advanced Placement courses in High School, or to complete high school one semester early (a gap semester) by taking a minimal number of complementary courses and concentrating on core subjects.

Junior High GATE students are grouped as a cohort for core academic subject strands, and are integrated into the whole school community for complementary courses and Physical Education. This ensures a balance of academic challenge for intellectual stimulation, and mainstream opportunity to interact and develop social competence with a wide variety of people.

Thats straight off the QE Gate description page. Basically its about finishing high school faster, nothing about accommodations for students with certain needs.

Maybe Westmount is different, i have no experience with them. But somehow i doubt the GATE program varies so significantly school to school.

benyl
08-20-2015, 02:40 PM
Originally posted by killramos
You make it sound like your kids are borderline autistic?

He isn't. He just has quirks. All kids do. Many parents either don't notice, ignore it or assume it an age related thing that they will grow out of.

The OP's daughter is walking around class because she bored out of her mind. I would bet that some teacher would say she has ADHD or is autistic and try to medicate her.

Here is something that might help.

“The young gifted child may appear to be many ages at
once. He may be eight (his chronological age) when riding
a bicycle, twelve when playing chess, fifteen when
studying algebra, ten when collecting fossils and two
when asked to share his chocolate chip cookie with his
sister.”

The challenge is the last part. He looks 4. He talks like a 6-7 year old. He's teaching himself to read, but he has issues that 2 years olds should have.

The problem with the grade school system is that it assumes that kids of the same age learn the same and have the same needs.

I truly don't know if Westmount is the answer, but we are trying it.

We tried to put him in a Montessori school. He dropped out after a couple of weeks. He was fucking bored.

Many people say to me that I must be proud to have a "gifted" child like it is something that is so great. They have no idea and assume it is about being smart and academically excellent. It isn't. Truth is, I'd rather him be normal.

suntan
08-20-2015, 02:41 PM
^^ Just so you know, many kids prefer their feet to planted on the ground or something equivalent when sitting, because their legs can fall asleep quickly.

My kids aren't at all OCD, they both have laser focused attention and concentration. Unfortunately that also means that they can finish tasks quickly, since understanding and comprehension happens fast for them.

suntan
08-20-2015, 02:43 PM
Originally posted by benyl
I would bet that some teacher would say she has ADHD or is autistic and try to medicate her. Yup.

“The young gifted child may appear to be many ages at
once. He may be eight (his chronological age) when riding
a bicycle, twelve when playing chess, fifteen when
studying algebra, ten when collecting fossils and two
when asked to share his chocolate chip cookie with his
sister.”Yup. Asynchronous development.

Doesn't help that she's a SJW. Social justice and the perception of "fairness" is extremely important to her.

killramos
08-20-2015, 02:44 PM
I edited my post above while you guys wrote yours. I think you might find it interesting.

I really am trying to be helpful btw, even if i don't come off that way.

I was mostly being critical of the school system and how they classify children as gifted or special needs rather than arguing that his kid isn't. Just that she might not be due to my skepticism with the CBE.

benyl
08-20-2015, 02:47 PM
Originally posted by suntan
Yup.
Yup. Asynchronous development.

Doesn't help that she's a SJW. Social justice and the perception of "fairness" is extremely important to her.

My kid will get in fist fights. It's awesome (I'm being sarcastic).

benyl
08-20-2015, 02:49 PM
Originally posted by killramos
I edited my post above while you guys wrote yours. I think you might find it interesting.

I really am trying to be helpful btw, even if i don't come off that way.

I was mostly being critical of the school system and how they classify children as gifted or special needs rather than arguing that his kid isn't. Just that she might not be due to my skepticism with the CBE.

I wanted to say earlier that the mention of GATE is confusing this thread a bit.

I look at GATE like AP or IB. Basically a higher level of learning for your grade. As you said, finishing school earlier.

suntan
08-20-2015, 02:52 PM
Originally posted by killramos
I edited my post above while you guys wrote yours. I think you might find it interesting.

I really am trying to be helpful btw, even if i don't come off that way.

I was mostly being critical of the school system and how they classify children as gifted or special needs rather than arguing that his kid isn't. Just that she might not be due to my skepticism with the CBE. The CBE's web material is lacking and somewhat obtuse.

Read the Westmount PDF. It has a more thorough explanation of what giftedness brings.

suntan
08-20-2015, 02:55 PM
Originally posted by benyl


I wanted to say earlier that the mention of GATE is confusing this thread a bit.

I look at GATE like AP or IB. Basically a higher level of learning for your grade. As you said, finishing school earlier. Well the GATE program is what the CBE offers for gifted students, so I wanted to ask about it.

The psychologist did say that she prefers the Westmount program.

benyl
08-20-2015, 02:57 PM
Back to the OP.

We have found the administration at Westmount a little frustrating.

You will get instructions to call or to email. When you do, you will get told to email, not call or call not email. Just be patient and you will get sorted.

I recall them saying that they sometimes take kids mid year (January intake). Might be something to look into / discuss with them for your daughter.

killramos
08-20-2015, 02:59 PM
Originally posted by suntan
The CBE's web material is lacking and somewhat obtuse.

Read the Westmount PDF. It has a more thorough explanation of what giftedness brings.

Yea again i wanted to share more of a experience with how it worked, Even when i was in school it was all flower and rainbows " GATE students learn differently etc. etc."

The reality was it was a lot of asian helicopter parents who needed their special little angels to be the top of the top of everything and would keep binders with photocopies of every assignment done all year and would try to argue their grades up come parent teacher interviews :rofl:

If your child really does need help i think it would be best not to rely on the CBE to provide it.

benyl
08-20-2015, 03:00 PM
Originally posted by suntan
Well the GATE program is what the CBE offers for gifted students, so I wanted to ask about it.

The psychologist did say that she prefers the Westmount program.

Westmount is funded by the CBE and you can tell. haha

It interesting because they are in this old run down beat to shit school. It's hard when you go and look at the likes of CFIS or Webber. Those are such nice looking schools. haha.

suntan
08-20-2015, 03:01 PM
killramos, I appreciated everything you wrote about your experiences. If you have more that you want to share that'd be great.

suntan
08-20-2015, 03:04 PM
Originally posted by benyl


Westmount is funded by the CBE and you can tell. haha

It interesting because they are in this old run down beat to shit school. It's hard when you go and look at the likes of CFIS or Webber. Those are such nice looking schools. haha. Yeah I know, it's a charter school.

There's only like one private school for gifted kids here in town (Banbury), we're going to look into that too. Fuck, there goes all my money.

suntan
08-20-2015, 03:06 PM
Originally posted by benyl
Back to the OP.

We have found the administration at Westmount a little frustrating.

You will get instructions to call or to email. When you do, you will get told to email, not call or call not email. Just be patient and you will get sorted.

I recall them saying that they sometimes take kids mid year (January intake). Might be something to look into / discuss with them for your daughter. Thanks for the last part. Good to know that little tidbit.

KRyn
08-20-2015, 03:10 PM
Originally posted by killramos
You make it sound like your kids are borderline autistic?


Usually people with extremely high intelligence are autistic.

benyl
08-20-2015, 03:10 PM
Originally posted by suntan
killramos, I appreciated everything you wrote about your experiences. If you have more that you want to share that'd be great.

Yeah. Don't get me wrong (if I come across like I don't appreciate people's experience), I just hate the notion that people have about gifted kids being really smart and that being the only thing.

baygirl
08-20-2015, 03:11 PM
I was considering Westmount for our 10 yr old, but after talking to a friend who sends her daughter there(she's a uear older), I am not overly impressed. I can't say what it is in particular, just didn't get a good vibe.

And I am getting fed up with people assumimg because a gifted child struggles that they are autistic. My daughter struggles socially, mainly because she senses she is different. Being a parent to a gifred child sucks some days.

killramos
08-20-2015, 03:14 PM
Originally posted by benyl


Yeah. Don't get me wrong (if I come across like I don't appreciate people's experience), I just hate the notion that people have about gifted kids being really smart and that being the only thing.

Hey don't worry, according to the CBE and psychologists I'm gifted and yet i think at least half of the member base on here will confirm that i am usually fucking retarded :rofl:

:D

suntan
08-20-2015, 03:16 PM
Originally posted by KRyn


Usually people with extremely high intelligence are autistic. Yeah no. So wrong.

suntan
08-20-2015, 03:17 PM
Originally posted by killramos


Hey don't worry, according to the CBE and psychologists I'm gifted and yet i think at least half of the member base on here will confirm that i am usually fucking retarded :rofl:

:D Fuck man we're all called retarded on here. It's what makes this place great. :rofl:

Fuck on CP we'd have all been banned by the idiot mods on there on the first day.

KRyn
08-20-2015, 03:26 PM
Originally posted by suntan
Yeah no. So wrong.

I shouldn't have used the term usually. It has been identified that people with high intelligence are recorded to have a greater chance of having AS which falls on the autism scale.

rage2
08-20-2015, 03:39 PM
Originally posted by killramos
I wouldn't recommend the GATE program. A bunch of my friends were in the program at Hillhurst and it really didn't set them up very well for the future. Most of them entered in grade 7 and by grade 9 they had definitely gotten a bit ahead in various subjects ( math in particular, they were past grade 10 level by then) so when they entered high school they were ahead of the pack and largely they just took spares to make up for the course credits they had ( which did not give them a very good work ethic for harder math and science courses to come). Which ended up turning most of them into slackers. There were only 2-3 Gate classes offered past grade 10 so they basically got thrown back in with the rest of us. Except those of us who had been in "community" were used to the system, grading styles etc. I knew a few guys who failed courses over not being able to adapt. That and the gate kids ended up with a huge chip on their shoulder over the program and didn't integrate back very well.
Partially true. I was in the predecessor to the GATE program since grade 3 and by grade 11 I've pretty much completed high school requirements for U of C. Grade 12 I just took 1/2 a year off and worked, while taking the filler courses needed for my HS diploma (missed Social 30... oops). My stress level during Jr High and HS was 1000x less than others because I was so ahead and it was just cruise control. Spent a lot more time enjoying myself.

Re-integration wasn't a problem for me or others I knew in the program, like I said, everything was so easy it wasn't even a challenge. Where you're right is that we turned into a bunch of slackers on the school side, but picked it up on the work side. The hard work ethic (for those that had it) went into work instead of school.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the program, I would've never been introduced to my first experience with a computer (an Apple IIc, no fanboy jokes please), first experience programming on it, dropping out of U of C, started my own company, and ended up where I am today.


Originally posted by riander5
Only trend i can see from kids that were in it is all the super rich kids went to uni in the states and work for tech startups or banks in san fran, NY, London etc. For all the regular peasants like me :dunno: didnt have much of an effect on how i turned out.

You end up doing grade 10 science math and such in grade 9....

Its not a black or white choice but in terms of getting ahead in life.... the only kids that did were set up whether they went into GATE or not.
Funny, I went to the program in the ghetto. We were all poor as fuck. Falconridge elementary! NE baby haha.

max_boost
08-20-2015, 07:18 PM
I'm glad I'm not autistic.

sexualbanana
08-20-2015, 11:09 PM
Originally posted by max_boost
I'm glad I'm not autistic.

9xTvn0Ob3xo

riander5
08-21-2015, 09:01 AM
Originally posted by rage2

Honestly, if it wasn't for the program, I would've never been introduced to my first experience with a computer (an Apple IIc, no fanboy jokes please), first experience programming on it, dropping out of U of C, started my own company, and ended up where I am today.


Funny, I went to the program in the ghetto. We were all poor as fuck. Falconridge elementary! NE baby haha.

Haha yea - I was from the NW so not poor by any means but definitely far from rich. All kids from the North were average middle class, it was the kids who were bussed in from the south who were loaded. I think eventually they started a GATE high school program down there so majority went there.

To OP - i wouldnt let this thread keep you away from putting your kid in GATE. I think i definitely got to do some cool projects and different types of curriculum's during my time there... maybe being in it for only 3 years was too short to see a major benefit? IDK.. in the end i really only left to go to highschool closer to my house and wish all my friends from elementary and sports teams id played on.

Update this thread in 12 years with your experiences haha

suntan
08-21-2015, 10:14 AM
A lot of it is simply trying to keep her engaged and interested in school. Also to keep her challenged and "uncomfortable", so that she doesn't breeze through school and then do poorly in post-secondary (if she decides to do that).

Her friend that was in her class last year is also probably gifted, her reaction to being bored was to withdraw and she also stopped listening to anyone (her parents included). Not sure what's going to happen with her because her mom is an anti-vax freak and the family doesn't make too much money.

Also I only need to get back to you in 8 years :)

benyl
08-21-2015, 11:19 AM
I thought you had to be vaccinated to attend school in Calgary. Religious exemption?

suntan
08-21-2015, 11:49 AM
Hell no. No requirement at all. The school even had a small measles outbreak.

Cos
08-21-2015, 03:37 PM
.

ExtraSlow
08-22-2015, 08:28 AM
Not an expert, but this topic is of particular interest to me due to some things we're seeing present in my kids. Basically, I'm hoping like hell she ISN'T gifted, as like all "differently-abled" children, giftedness is often correlated with a lot of bad things like depression, anxiety,

Not the same this as IB or AP at all. When I think of it, Giftedness is more of a curse than a blessing, more similar to a disability, and an inability to fit into a regular program. Not surprised lots of GATE children have problems integrating back into the regular program for high school. They probably had problems in the regular program in Elementary too. They'll probably have problems fitting in for thier whole lives.

Cos
08-22-2015, 10:19 AM
.

ExtraSlow
08-22-2015, 10:25 AM
***not an expert***

I'm no expert on IB or AP programs, but it's my understanding that they are appropriate for students that excel at one or more subjects due to some combination of strong work ethic and high intelligence. I think both programs are designed to prepare the student to succeed in post-secondary and the business world.

I thought the GATE program was less about preparing a kid for the future, and more about accommodating their "disability of giftedness" in the hopes that they'll be able to complete secondary education without dropping out.


***not an expert***

ExtraSlow
08-22-2015, 10:28 AM
Also, clearly I'm viewing these various programs through a particular lens. Your view may vary.

riander5
08-22-2015, 10:29 AM
Originally posted by ExtraSlow
***not an expert***

I'm no expert on IB or AP programs, but it's my understanding that they are appropriate for students that excel at one or more subjects due to some combination of strong work ethic and high intelligence. I think both programs are designed to prepare the student to succeed in post-secondary and the business world.

I thought the GATE program was less about preparing a kid for the future, and more about accommodating their "disability of giftedness" in the hopes that they'll be able to complete secondary education without dropping out.


***not an expert***

:rofl: cmon man

Cos
08-22-2015, 10:30 AM
.

killramos
08-22-2015, 10:40 AM
Originally posted by ExtraSlow
***not an expert***

I thought the GATE program was less about preparing a kid for the future, and more about accommodating their "disability of giftedness" in the hopes that they'll be able to complete secondary education without dropping out.


***not an expert***

Maybe that was the original theory but the reality of the program is very different. I think that little blurb I quoted on the QE Gate website makes that very clear.

The main driver for kids being GATE coded is the IQ test where if they score above 130 they are eligible. There is no other hard and fast criterion outside of that for the CBE calling you gifted and recommended for the program. The indicators of disruptiveness etc. might be the drivers for you taking the test but that doesn't mean they are really testing for giftedness.

It should also be clear that even in psychological circles the term gifted has many meanings depending on the research used to justify their case. CBE's term gifted does not nessecarily correlate with what your psychologist is telling you about your kid. That's just an unfortunate reality of the state psychology, you can go to 5 psychologists and potentially get 5 opinions. None of them any less valid than the other.

The harsh reality is that the CBE is not well equipped to deal with the varying spectrum of cases of psychological deviation with children and kids end up getting grouped into boxes that don't nessecarily wholly represent them.

ExtraSlow
08-22-2015, 10:49 AM
Originally posted by killramos
The harsh reality is that the CBE is not well equipped to deal with the varying spectrum of cases of psychological deviation with children and kids end up getting grouped into boxes that don't nessecarily wholly represent them.
Amen that the brother. People joke about parents wanting to believe that their kids are little unique snowflakes. I can say that in my case, I wish to hell that she wasn't.

Also, can someone who is more knowledgeable than me confirm or correct this assumption I have about the AP and IB programs?
I assume they are for kids who are already high achievers in the "normal stream" prior to high school.

benyl
08-22-2015, 10:57 AM
Originally posted by ExtraSlow

Amen that the brother. People joke about parents wanting to believe that their kids are little unique snowflakes. I can say that in my case, I wish to hell that she wasn't.

Also, can someone who is more knowledgeable than me confirm or correct this assumption I have about the AP and IB programs?
I assume they are for kids who are already high achievers in the "normal stream" prior to high school.

I was partial IB at western. Math and sciences. I could have done the rest, but wasn't interested.

The only criteria for getting into AP or IB is your grades. Intelligence doesn't matter.

I can't speak for GATE, but Westmount is about what you know and not what you can recite in a given time frame.

baygirl
08-22-2015, 02:24 PM
Originally posted by ExtraSlow

Amen that the brother. People joke about parents wanting to believe that their kids are little unique snowflakes. I can say that in my case, I wish to hell that she wasn't.

I hear you. And with me it's not only because of the struggles she has with other kids, but also because of the adults she encounters. Every new teacher, brownie leaders, random people who have to spend more than 10 minutes with her(sorry about that rage...). You worry so much more about gifted kids.

sexualbanana
08-22-2015, 03:05 PM
Save for the few eccentrics that exist in just about every class, pretty much all my classmates in GATE weren't disruptive or exhibited any type of exceptional behaviour. So I'm not sure I get all this 'gifted is a form of disability' stuff.

As much as I hated it the program at the time, it was just a regular jr high class with just nerdier people, and there was no problem with integrating into the regular programs and their students.

riander5
08-22-2015, 03:48 PM
Originally posted by sexualbanana
Save for the few eccentrics that exist in just about every class, pretty much all my classmates in GATE weren't disruptive or exhibited any type of exceptional behaviour. So I'm not sure I get all this 'gifted is a form of disability' stuff.

As much as I hated it the program at the time, it was just a regular jr high class with just nerdier people, and there was no problem with integrating into the regular programs and their students.

Agree 100% and is exactly like my experience. Pretty normal kids with a slightly higher % of nerds haha. Everyone in this thread is over analyzing this shit too much

Cos
08-22-2015, 03:55 PM
.

suntan
08-22-2015, 05:06 PM
Originally posted by Cos
Man according to this thread beyond is actually where the majority of Gate kids go after they can't keep in touch anymore. That's why I didn't bother asking over at CalgaryPuck.

ExtraSlow
08-23-2015, 06:30 PM
Originally posted by sexualbanana
Save for the few eccentrics that exist in just about every class, pretty much all my classmates in GATE weren't disruptive or exhibited any type of exceptional behaviour. So I'm not sure I get all this 'gifted is a form of disability' stuff.
Originally posted by riander5
Agree 100% and is exactly like my experience. Pretty normal kids with a slightly higher % of nerds haha. Everyone in this thread is over analyzing this shit too much I'm really happy that you two don't recognize my descriptions in your past experiences. As I said, I'm looking at this through a particular lens, and that's for sure changing how I see it.

I guess the fact that you don't even recognize that description in any of your former classmates should be encouraging to me.

bcylau
08-25-2015, 12:17 PM
lol i didnt know this was such a hangout for gate and by extension ib/ap.


i think the only problem with GATE is that you tend to go GATE -> IB. That makes your circle of friends very very small compared to normal classes where you see new people in all your classes and options. That was definitely one of those things I noticed. so that "loner" mentality is kinda a product of circumstance as well, because, as your child will soon learn, that the higher iq you have, the smaller number of peers and friends you have.

I was on all the school teams in jr high, but when high school, I wanted to fit in with the full ib kids and skipped out on the sports teams. in hindsight, that was a big mistake.

suntan
10-19-2015, 02:29 PM
So Westmount is full for gr 5-12. Fuuuu... They're still take applications in case people leave though.

ExtraSlow
12-07-2015, 12:22 PM
Wondering if anyone has any further thoughts on Westmount for the Elementary school years? If you'd prefer to discuss in person, I can meet up for a coffee. Still trying to figure out our little snowflake, but some form of gifted educational stream is certainly on the radar.

Compared to the tone of my previous posts in this thread, I'm feeling much more optimistic about this subject.

suntan
12-07-2015, 12:44 PM
You missed the GATE open houses.

Anyhow, last year, GATE took in every child that qualified.

Get your child assessed NOW. You're running out of time.

ExtraSlow
12-07-2015, 12:51 PM
I'm aware of the deadlines and open house dates. We have had my child assessed, and it's not clear Westmount or other GATE options are suitable. We may be in more of a "dual exeptionalities" situation.

suntan
12-07-2015, 01:29 PM
There's a FB group about Calgary gifted kids. Lots on there with 2E.

Both Westmount and GATE have lots of 2E kids.

After checking out private school options, I have been less than impressed with them (private schools, that is).

benyl
12-07-2015, 02:04 PM
My kid isn't twice exceptional, but I am more than happy for you to buy me coffee. He is only a Kindy this year, but I can share the experience at Westmount.

The application deadline for Sept 2016 is past, is it not?

benyl
12-07-2015, 02:11 PM
Originally posted by suntan
There's a FB group about Calgary gifted kids.

What's it called? Facebook search is failing me.

ExtraSlow
12-07-2015, 02:14 PM
Originally posted by benyl
The application deadline for Sept 2016 is past, is it not? Yes it has passed.

suntan
12-07-2015, 03:24 PM
Originally posted by benyl


What's it called? Facebook search is failing me. Good question. I'll ask the wife, she's the one that's in it.

Penis McNickels
12-07-2015, 04:40 PM
My two kids (grades 1 and 3) are in Westmount. Both started in kindergarten. If you've any questions about the school or the application process (been through it four times, each time was different) feel free to PM. And I do coffee.

benyl
12-07-2015, 04:44 PM
One crazy thing I heard was that each child had to re-apply every year. I am glad that this year they have done away with that. Must have been stressful for parents and the kids. One year you are in, the next you are out and all your friends have to changes.

Penis McNickels
12-07-2015, 04:46 PM
No, you only had to apply for kindergarten and Grade 1. Once your kid is accepted into grade 1 you're done.

Getting into kindergarten didn't guarantee you a spot for grade 1; hence, why I had to do the application process 4 times.

That being said, I think the fact that they require a educational-psychological assessment makes things a lot easier than the previous application processes.

Every year they keep tweaking the process to hopefully streamline things and get the kids who deserve to be in there in.

suntan
03-14-2016, 10:50 AM
Update: She has been accepted into Westmount. Problem: They're full, so she's on a waiting list.

ExtraSlow
03-14-2016, 06:52 PM
Congratulations?!!??!!

Good luck I guess.

Penis McNickels
03-14-2016, 07:27 PM
Hang in there.

My son's friend was on the wait list but eventually got in as people decided not to send their kid there.

Good luck!

suntan
03-14-2016, 07:38 PM
It's like getting frozen yogurt with sodium benzoate.

suntan
03-16-2016, 06:50 PM
Well, she got offers for both. Have to decide soon.

benyl
03-31-2016, 09:13 AM
My wife sent me this article.

http://calgaryherald.com/life/swerve/gifted-children-are-frequently-misunderstood

We are starting to see some tendency to emotional issues with our son.

RealJimmyJames
03-31-2016, 09:17 AM
Any link to that article that isn't behind a paywall?

benyl
03-31-2016, 09:27 AM
It isn't for me. Maybe you have read too many CH this month. Cut and pasted below.


Reed Ball started playing Monopoly with his family at age three—and beat them. In the early 1980s, he was one of the first kids to have a “portable” computer, a 10-kilogram Amstrad PPC512. Reed brought it to class until one of the school’s bullies knocked it out of his hands and down a stairwell.


Reed was a math whiz, and used to correct his teachers’ science errors. When they warned him he would get lead poisoning if he kept stabbing at his own arm with a pencil, Reed replied, “actually, it is graphite.” Just before he graduated from high school in 1991, Reed developed software for a major oil company that converted old blueprints into working documents. He began his studies for a degree in mathematics that September, but flunked out a year later. Then, when he was 21 years old, Reed Ball swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. He died quietly with his pet kitten, Solis, beside him and his computer still on.

“Reed never fit in,” says Jennifer Aldred, one of his longtime schoolmates. “My heart broke for him.” Aldred recalls Reed’s math skills and his heavy computer, but what she remembers most about Reed was how he used to twist his slender body around the legs of his desk. He would tie himself into such knots that the caretaker would be summoned to rescue Reed by taking apart the desk with a screwdriver.

Reed’s entanglements serve as an apt metaphor for the school life of severely gifted children. For those who feel weird and wrong and struggle to find like minds among their peers, school itself can be a contortion. Reed’s exceptional life and early death inspired Aldred into a career in gifted education. She and her colleagues work to help children like Reed untwist. His tragedy reveals what can be at stake for these kids. Our most brilliant children are among our most vulnerable. The challenge of teaching them is finding a way to nurture their souls and ease the burden of their extraordinary minds.

“Giftedness is a tragic gift, and not a precursor to success,” says Janneke Frank, principal of Westmount Charter School and a local guru of gifted education. “The gifted don’t just think differently, they feel differently. And emotions can ricochet out of control sometimes.” To speak of giftedness as a disability seems counterintuitive. Part of the problem is simply semantic; the word “gifted” suggests an advantage and does not conjure up the intense challenges these children can face.

Intelligence test results also fail to tell the whole story. Quantitatively, giftedness is rather easy to define. A child is considered gifted with an IQ at or around 130—about 30 points higher than those of us with average brains. But IQ scores alone don’t reflect the range of psychological issues that trouble many gifted students. Gifted children might express heightened physical sensitivities to light, touch and textures. Parents of some gifted children have to cut the tags out of their kids’ clothing, for example, or buy specially-designed socks with no seams. More serious, though, are the emotional challenges. Gifted children are more prone to depression, self-harm, overexcitability, and learning deficits. A gifted student might be so paralyzed by her own perfectionism, say, that she refuses to hand in any assignments. The same 10-year-old who can set up the school’s computer system with the proficiency of a college-educated tech might also throw a tantrum like a toddler if she’s not invited to a birthday party. Another child might be so affected by a piece of music that he won’t be able to focus on anything else the rest of the day. For these “twice exceptional” children, emotional intensity is the evil twin of high intelligence.

Aldred, too, was an eccentric and gifted child. She traded her eraser collection for a classmate’s cast-off eyeglasses, and fashioned herself a set of braces from metal paperclips she pilfered from her teacher’s desk. “I was delighted with the look,” Aldred says, even though the glasses made her eyes hurt and the paperclips lacerated the inside of her mouth. “When I smiled, blood dripped down my teeth.” Eventually Aldred modified her design to include eyeglass frames without lenses and plastic-coated paperclips that didn’t cut her gums.

Aldred believed with heart-pounding certainty that her school was the sort of enchanted forest or magic kingdom she read about in the books she loved. In addition to the glasses and fake braces, Aldred wore gowns, crowns and glitter-covered wings to school to be ready when this magic revealed itself. Aldred had absolute faith the dream world she yearned for was perpetually at hand. Looking back, Aldred wonders if this fantasy represented her own contortion. Like Reed’s twisted body, Aldred’s belief in magic was her way of coping with a real world that made little sense to her. “It was an attempt at resiliency—to somehow scream ‘but this is what I see’, even when a thousand forces tried their best to tear it from me.”

Those forces succeeded eventually. Aldred’s teacher confiscated the glasses and banned her from raiding the paperclip jar. Aldred started to leave the wings and crowns at home. “Parts of me died in those early years,” she says. “When I started teaching, the only thing I wanted to be sure of—especially working with gifted kids—was that no part of them died.”

In Aldred and Reed’s time, schools offered little programming for gifted students. Aldred briefly attended a “cluster group” at Prince of Wales Elementary. The school administration yanked the smartest kids from each grade out of their regular classes and grouped them together for special learning. No doubt the developers of the program meant well, but the effectiveness of the pull-out class seems rather dubious. “We sat in dark rooms where we imagined different ways to build stuffed animals and played chess for a while,” Aldred remembers. Colin Martin—Aldred’s cluster classmate who used to play Monopoly with Reed, on multiple boards at the same time, in Reed’s parents’ basement—says the program aided the school bullies by assembling all their favourite victims in one convenient location.

After graduating from high school in the early ’90s, Aldred left Calgary for Queen’s University, where she completed honours degrees in English and fine arts, followed by a bachelor of education with a focus on gifted learning. She returned to Calgary for her practicum and, by coincidence, ended up teaching back at Prince of Wales. By this time, more sophisticated programs were available for Calgary’s gifted students. Prince of Wales was one of five schools running the Calgary Board of Education’s Gifted and Talented Education program, or GATE. In addition, Westmount Charter School offers “qualitatively differentiated educational programming” for gifted students. Both programs require potential students to undergo psychological assessments and score high on intelligence tests to identify their giftedness.

At Prince of Wales, Aldred was charged with teaching English literature to GATE students. She’d taught Shakespeare’s plays to “regular” teenagers in Ontario, and suspected she’d have to find simplified versions for her younger charges at Prince of Wales. She was wrong. “They just got it,” Aldred says. Her gifted students took to the poetic language immediately and grasped the metaphorical elements in the text better than students 10 years older. When Aldred taught a unit on Arthurian legend, her students showed no interest in the illustrated children’s anthologies Aldred brought for them. Instead, they looted the stack of academic treatises and primary source material on Aldred’s own desk. One nine-year-old girl hauled away a 900-page copy of The Mists of Avalon. She read the entire book that night and returned it, exhausted, the next morning.

What delighted Aldred most about her first gifted class was that despite their sophisticated grasp of the material, the GATE students were still children. They believed in magic the same way she used to. “Intellectually, they were at a university level, but they were trapped in these little kid bodies that still believed in unicorns,” Aldred says. Their enthusiasm for the material astonished her. The day after she read aloud the first three lines of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of her students came to class dressed as the Queen of the Fairies. Some of these kids acted as if they’d been waiting their whole life for Aldred to bring them Shakespeare, or Sylvia Plath, or Margaret Atwood. “For me, as a teacher, it was a dream come true,” Aldred says.

After her practicum, Aldred earned a master’s in gifted education at the University of Calgary. By then, her experience convinced her that gifted students should have their own classrooms and not be scattered among the general school population. “I believe hugely in a congregated setting,” she says. To argue against integration also feels counterintuitive. The separation of the gifted may seem unfair and discriminatory; parents of “regular” kids often wonder why resources and special classrooms are devoted to gifted students. Kathy Stone, the mother of gifted twin boys, remembers an irate father standing up at a meeting with a school superintendent to protest funding a gifted program. “I am so sick of hearing that elitist crap,” Stone remembers the man saying. He called gifted kids arrogant, complained that they already have everything, and rejected the idea that they needed ‘country club programming.’ “Kids are all the same and should be treated the same,” he continued.

Nearly all teachers and parents of gifted students, however, consider congregated classrooms essential. “People say it teaches the kids not to get along in the real world,” Aldred says. “I believe it is about survival.” Gifted kids need a place where they can feel safe and accepted for all their various intensities. A place where they can be themselves, quirks and all.

Janice Robertson agrees: a congregated gifted program may well have saved her son’s life. Janice had long been concerned about Mark (both their names have been changed). He was an exceptionally smart kid who taught himself to read by the time he was two years old. But a darkness always hung behind Mark’s brightness. “He would say things like, ‘I’m just going to hurt myself,'” Janice remembers. He used to bang his head on the floor and once, when he was three, pointed to a digger on a construction site and said, “I’m going to ask that digger to dig a hole and put us in it and bury us.”

Mark’s early schooling in Saskatchewan proved difficult. He behaved poorly. Mark threw things around the classroom, made animal noises during quiet reading time, and hurled snowballs at cars at recess. The school principal called Mark’s parents with reports of misbehaviour several times a week. A doctor wrote Mark a prescription for Zoloft, an anti-anxiety drug, but the medication had no effect. “He was driving himself and everyone else crazy,” Janice says. She decided to have Mark tested for giftedness.

These tests are expensive. The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), one of the most common tests used to determine giftedness, costs anywhere between $800 and $2000 to administer. In most cases, individual teachers will identify a child who should be tested and recommend the school cover the cost. But without a teacher’s referral—or if the school’s budget for testing runs dry—parents must foot the bill. Mark’s family was fortunate that they could afford the tests, but many lower-income families cannot. Gifted-education advocates like Aldred and Frank worry that many gifted children are not being identified at all.

Mark scored well into the gifted range and was eligible for special programming, but the gifted programs in Saskatoon’s public school system did not start until Grade 5. Mark’s parents decided they couldn’t wait. The whole family moved to Calgary and Mark started the GATE program at Hillhurst Elementary. After about a year into the program, Mark settled down and his grades improved. “He wasn’t as bored. There was not as much need to create chaos to keep himself entertained.” Most importantly, though, was that Mark had found his tribe. “People understood him better. He made more intellectual connections.” Occasionally, Mark clashed with kids “outside his little clan,” Janice says, but never with his fellow GATE classmates. These were his people.

Mark continued with the GATE program until Grade 11, when he enrolled in a hockey program at Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. (A true eccentric, Mark played goal.) Now he studies engineering at Queen’s University. As it turns out, his roommates in Kingston are old classmates from the GATE program in Calgary. Without that program, Janice says, Mark would have fallen apart. “I honestly believe if we hadn’t gotten him into that segregated program he would have dropped out and started dealing drugs somewhere,” Janice says. “Mark would have ended up killing himself or someone else.”

Not all students feel saved by gifted education, however. Alyssa Morgan needed to be saved from her gifted program. Morgan had always been an odd kid. For as long as she can remember, she has never been able to stand tags on her clothing and can’t wear anything made out of corduroy or polyester. “I’ve worn jeans and a cotton T-shirt for basically my entire life,” she says. Morgan started to notice her own giftedness in Grade 3 when she started to find school unbearably dull. Morgan often snuck out of her classroom to read books in the library. When she did attend class, Morgan pestered her teacher with constant questions. “It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch,” Morgan says. “The thirst to know and understand everything.”

Morgan’s parents didn’t worry too much about their daughter’s eccentricities until Grade 4 when a substitute teacher—and mother of two gifted children—recognized something exceptional in Morgan’s misbehaviour. The substitute teacher suggested testing Morgan’s IQ. She scored a 137 and started in the GATE program at Nellie McClung the following year.

In a way, Morgan was lucky she was such a pain in the ass. Gifted boys tend to act out much more often than gifted girls. Young males tend to combat their boredom by disrupting the class. Often their frustrated teachers send them to be tested for behavioural problems only to discover that the little monsters have off-the-chart IQs. Gifted girls, however, are more likely to turn inward. Their silent brooding may be interpreted as nothing more than feminine coquettishness, and their giftedness may be overlooked.

Initially, the GATE program was everything Morgan wanted. “The first two years I was in that program were incredible,” she says. Her teacher assigned expansive projects to the class. They discussed concepts, shared ideas, and approached each piece of curriculum from several angles at once. “Every single day I was coming home bursting at the seams with all of this,” Morgan says. At the family dinner table, Morgan rambled on about how she learned about pi. About Archimedes. About the pay system of the ancient Incas. “It got to the point that my parents said ‘You need to stop and let everyone else talk about their day as well.'”

The GATE teachers at McClung knew how to manage the various excitabilities and sensory issues of their students. Morgan’s Grade 6 teacher, Michelle Odland, gave the students regular “body breaks.” Allowing them to get up and run around the class a few times a day helped their concentration. Odland also wrapped everyone’s desk in sheets of paper so that they could doodle nonstop if they needed to. When some of the more sensitive kids complained about the constant buzz of the fluorescent tube lighting, Odland strung up Christmas bulbs everywhere to provide a calmer, quieter light. “She would constantly ask ‘What’s bugging you?'” Morgan says. “This was a teacher who understood we weren’t just a bunch of kids that were really, really smart. She offered us emotional support.”

But Morgan’s dream education ended when she left McClung and started junior high at John Ware. In an effort to tend to their diverse learning needs, the administration divided the GATE students into two groups Morgan termed the “Perfects” and the “Clods.” The Perfects were all high-achieving gifted kids—those who could sit still and listen to their teacher and, therefore, scored higher on tests. Morgan, on the other hand, was a Clod. The Clods, Morgan says, “were all over-excited. All hyper-sensitive. There were sensory issues running wild.” Chaos reigned in the Clod classroom. “No one could sit still. We were all talking back and yelling over each other.”

The Clods’ teachers lacked Mrs. Odland’s talent for teaching gifted kids. Instead of assigning big projects, most teachers handed out worksheets. Students were not encouraged to debate concepts anymore, and were expected to simply sit, listen and behave. “We did not have enough teachers who actually understood what gifted is.” Before long, the students turned on each other. Gifted students are rarely bullies, but without an outlet for their various intensities the Clods of Nellie McClung vented their frustration on Morgan. The teasing and abuse escalated throughout junior high and into high school. Morgan hid most of what was happening from her parents. “They were aware there was bullying, and would give advice and pep talks, but they were not aware of the levels I was being attacked,” she says. Morgan did not elaborate on the details of all she endured, only that the incidents culminated in something she calls the “Terrible Awful.” She finally fled the GATE program altogether in Grade 11.

Now 21, Morgan is studying journalism at the University of Vancouver Island. Her gifted eccentricities endure. She hauled 400 books into her tiny dorm room when she moved in, for example, and recently spent an entire night reading all the case files and grand jury testimony in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson. The “Terrible Awful,” though, still haunts her. Morgan’s doctor recently diagnosed her with PTSD. “I did not handle what happened to me the appropriate way,” Morgan admits, but she believes much of the blame lies with her GATE teachers. “The people who failed us were those who didn’t know what gifted was,” Morgan says. “Had my teachers been better, none of this stuff would have happened.”

Mercifully, Morgan’s story is an anomaly. Most gifted students thrive in the programs designed for them. But her experience exposes the vital role of the teacher in gifted education. Congregation, though essential, is not enough for some of these students. They need educators who possess a holistic understanding of giftedness. In Canada, no specific training is necessary for gifted-education teachers. In the U.S., teachers of the gifted need to have special certification. “Here you just have to be alive,” Frank says. Very few teachers possess a gifted-focused master’s degree like Aldred.

Principals and administrators assign teachers to gifted programs based on interviews and on the teacher’s interest. At Westmount, Frank looks for teachers who display flexibility in their thinking and are intellectually honest. An ideal teacher of the gifted must also be creative and humble. “If you are paralyzed by someone being smarter than you, please do not go into giftedness,” she advises. Above all, Frank says a teacher of the gifted needs to understand that “these students are wired differently.” Gifted teachers “encourage students, in their authentic search for self, to make conscious choices towards the good.”

Empathy is key. For this reason, Frank believes the best teachers of the gifted are gifted themselves. She understands the suggestion may rankle some, but no one understands the nuances of giftedness better than those who have endured them first hand. Thankfully, gifted education tends to self-select for gifted teachers anyway. Many of those who apply to teach gifted programs, Frank says, display the same exceptional traits their potential students do.

Frank and Jennifer Aldred both admit that there is little gifted students can learn from their teachers, at least intellectually, that they cannot learn on their own. These exceptional kids can speed through a year’s worth of school board curriculum in a matter of hours. “I will never know more than they do,” Aldred says. They need teachers and programs that focus not on the magnificence of their brains, but on the fragility of their hearts. “Unless their heart is intact, no learning can happen,” Aldred says. She quotes from Galway Kinnell’s “Saint Francis and the Sow,” a poem she teaches her literature students:

…sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

“I can’t teach them anything,” Aldred says. “But I can reteach them their loveliness.”

suntan
03-31-2016, 09:32 AM
I knew Reed and Jenn. Reed was certainly an odd duck. Poor guy never stood a chance though, being tossed into the corporate machine at such an early age.

Jenn was part of the popular kids, she was damned hot.

Edit: Christ almighty. So I was friends with one of her friends, looked her up just now, she teaches at Westmount mid-high.

My life is full of weird shit like that.

RealJimmyJames
03-31-2016, 09:46 AM
Thank you for posting the text of that article.

suntan
03-31-2016, 09:47 AM
Use your browser's private mode to read articles in the Herald, G&M, etc.

ExtraSlow
05-30-2017, 09:57 AM
Bit of a blast from the past, but thought a follow-up might be interesting form some of the parents on here. as I said before, gifteness wasn't the dominant trait of my child, and now that we are through nearly three years in the CBC system, it still isn't.
She's been accepted in the "bridges" program. I haven't been able to find much online about this program, but the letter we got states it's for kids with "severe externalizing behaviors" which certainly sounds accurate. It's got small class size and lots of support and hopefully it'll be an environment she can succeed in. Gen Pop sure wasn't.

There is more than one bridges program in the city, and I get the sense that different ones may have different specializations. At least one of them is for kids who are several grade levels below in academic achievement. That part wasn't specifically mentioned in my letter.

Gotta figure out childcare for the new school, but we're hopeful.

Looking back on when we were considering westmount and other gifted programs, I think it is for the best that she didn't end up in one of those. My perspective is that it's all about getting a good fit for the kid, and not getting into the "best" school.

benyl
05-30-2017, 10:59 AM
Originally posted by ExtraSlow

Looking back on when we were considering westmount and other gifted programs, I think it is for the best that she didn't end up in one of those. My perspective is that it's all about getting a good fit for the kid, and not getting into the "best" school.

I think that people get too caught up on rankings. What some don't realize is that the rankings are good because parents can afford tutors. I see it all around me. A bunch of kids go to webber and you see the same cars parked outside every week for 1-2 hours. Tutors.

Westmount isn't for everyone. There is one kid in the same grade level as my son and he can read novels. He has other issues, likely associated with autism. My personal opinion is that he needs more attention that even Westmount can give him. But that usually means private school.

Kids need to be with their "tribe." that's where they will do well. It doesn't have to be the "best" school.

suntan
05-30-2017, 12:23 PM
Private schools that have high rankings are all prep schools. They teach you to do well on tests.

I do know someone high up at the U of C and she says the private prep school students do very poorly.

I guess I should give an update. We decided to put her into Westmount. The first couple of months were tough because she only knew one other kid and the students there actually aren't the most outgoing. But she's made lots of friends now. They do have more knowledge around how to deal with high intensity children. The kids are all very much like mine - very high energy, very intense.

They do a lot of work. Academic rigour is high - much higher than her old school. Band is tough for many of the kids. The sciences are started much sooner - they've already started stoichiometry, for instance. She's in accelerated math, so next year she'll be doing grade 7 math in grade 6.

And yes, it's a mega nerd school. It's all nerds. Wonderful, wonderful nerds.

BTW, the deadlines are meaningless. We know people that applied well after the deadline in both programs and their kids got in.

ganesh
05-30-2017, 01:13 PM
Lots of good information here.
My daughter got accepted at Westmount and she will be staring kindergarten this September.

abyss
06-25-2017, 10:03 PM
Mine didn't get accepted to Westmount (because the grade was just too full), but he did get accepted into GATE at Hillhurst. Not sure if it's going to be the right fit for him, but we are willing to try anything at this point because the combo of gifted, sensory issues, SJW and severe anxiety was just too much for the regular school to handle, even with the IPP. The orientation at Hillhurst was amazing though and they totally understood him and went out of their way to make him feel comfortable, definitely feel like he'd have a tribe of like minded peers there.

sexualbanana
06-27-2017, 12:31 PM
This thread is odd. But only because, as I said before, I can maybe recall one or two kids in my GATE classes that had these kinds of issues.

Strider
07-10-2019, 01:15 PM
Bump. Any updates from parents of Westmount kids?

Question for those who applied for Kindergarten at Westmount (ganesh, Penis McNickels), were there any strong indications that steered you to have your kids tested for giftedness?

On the fence with whether we should have our 3.5 year old kid tested. It seems hard to benchmark at this age without blatantly obvious signs (she's not reading novels or playing chess or anything like that), but she seems ahead of her peers in terms of language skills, memory, and inquisitiveness (and behind in physical development). I also can't tell if it's just parent bias either.

suntan
07-10-2019, 03:20 PM
Can she read/write at all? She's going to be bored to death in regular school if she can.

ganesh
07-10-2019, 06:35 PM
Bump. Any updates from parents of Westmount kids?

Question for those who applied for Kindergarten at Westmount (ganesh, Penis McNickels), were there any strong indications that steered you to have your kids tested for giftedness?

On the fence with whether we should have our 3.5 year old kid tested. It seems hard to benchmark at this age without blatantly obvious signs (she's not reading novels or playing chess or anything like that), but she seems ahead of her peers in terms of language skills, memory, and inquisitiveness (and behind in physical development). I also can't tell if it's just parent bias either.

You have a PM

Buster
07-10-2019, 07:13 PM
parent bias

This explains about 99% of the "gifted" kids I've encountered - along with a healthy dose of humble bragging.

We either need to be more realistic in general, or re-define what the word means. I've met maybe 1 or 2 people in my life I consider to be truly gifted.