As much as the chatter of 6th grade girls drives me to the edge of madness every day, that chatter is important and age-appropriate work. Howard Gardner and I agree that personal intelligence (the ability to know what's going on within yourself and the ability to understand what's going on with others) is the most important kind of intelligence. If your daughter can't learn to work with other people and enjoy their company, her academic and professional life may never match her verbal and logical ability.
Teachers are always trying to put together heterogenous groups with stronger and weaker members of the class in each group. This is great for everybody else, but it keeps the strongest students isolated from their intellectual peers or near-peers. I'm excited to hear that your daughter is getting the social experience that is so important in middle school, that she may have been lacking.
And may I suggest that a sixth grade classroom is a better environment for learning to balance academic achievement and a vibrant social life than a freshman dorm?
