All Our Children

The Double Take story “A Class of His Own” [Issue 985] has drawn significant feedback. Are our schools equipped to deal with the challenge of gifted children? Who is ultimately responsible for their education? Is giftedness a blessing or a curse? Previous letters dealt with these questions. The below submission, written by a mother and daughter, provides a unique perspective.

We chose to write this letter together. Our family has several gifted children, therefore, this topic is important to us. We hope our shared experiences will be valuable to the greater community in the important discussion raised by Mishpacha on gifted education.

Mother: I am a baalas teshuvah. Growing up, I went to public school and was placed in a gifted track. This gave me greater social opportunities because I wasn’t so different from my classmates. We were challenged and grew together as a group. I have fond memories of building giant Rube Goldberg projects, learning to code our algebra homework with punch cards before having a home computer was commonplace, and creating our own civilization along with artifacts to bury in the yard for the other students to find and uncover, learning the mysteries of our civilization.

Daughter: I am the oldest child in the family, and I benefited tremendously from my parents’ tireless advocacy on my behalf. At my pre-1A interview, as the story goes, my parents were told that it would be best to have me skip a grade. My mother knows this to be a social disaster for most students and believes school is, first and foremost, a social learning environment. They were also told I would be very bored for nine years (eight if I skipped one) and that I would likely become a behavior problem. With this rosy picture in mind, they weighed their options.

They didn’t want to send me to a more modern school, but the promises of the Bais Yaakov principal were depressing. Around that time, a new school was starting in the neighborhood, and the small group of parents were more than happy to accommodate my parents’ requests for my education. They got creative, mixed grades for several subjects, and offered enrichment opportunities throughout the years.

I dove deep into projects on penguins and on Jews who sailed along with Christopher Columbus. My class was small and had a wide range of intellectual abilities, with some students visiting the resource room while others got enrichment projects, but I don’t remember anyone complaining or putting anyone down.