Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Finding like souls in GT programs?

I'm curious. Dd13 is, admittedly, turning into a teenager in terms of her attitude so I don't know how much of this is her or something else. I bugged her to attend a freshman GT lunch that her school had today. As has been the case in most, if not all, schools she has attended, she heard at this meeting that about 16% of the kids in her grade have a GT identification. I believe that the purpose of this meeting was to give the GT kids a chance to meet one another and find like minds/souls.

Dd doesn't seem to feel like she is any more likely to meet kids who are "like her" in her accelerated/pre-AP classes or amongst the kids with the GT identifications than she is in non-accelerated classes, or among the non-identified kids. She came home totally irritated (my teen again) that I had "made" her go to this meeting and assured me that the majority of the kids weren't even of average intelligence. I'm sure that she's exaggerating there, but I am wondering...

Do any of your kids feel like GT classes, etc. are better places to find like souls than the regular classes? Dd seems to feel like the kids who are GT ided are no more likely to be gifted than others. She also feels like the kids who are different in the way she is (probably HG types) are often not identified b/c they aren't the compliant hand raising types (although she, herself, is a good student b/c she knows that she needs the grades for her college aspirations and has a lot of direction in that regard).

If not through GT stuff at the school or AP classes, where is one to find the like souls in a big high school, then?

My DD has had much better luck finding kindred spirits now that she is at a GT magnet. However, it uses IQ and only IQ--minimum 130.

I'm hoping my son will meet more like-minded kids in the gifted program next year. His best friend this year is bright; I don't know if he is "gifted." At recess they frequently are looking at ants or things on the ground; my son monologues about it and his friend nods.

It was in AP classes that I found other students like me - the ones who pretty much coasted along, never studying, only doing half the homework, etc, and still getting A's. Not sure there were any PG kids in my HS, tbh. I would say of the twenty of us who all took all the AP classes for two years about 8 of us were "gifted", the rest worked and worked and worked for their grades. That's 8 kids out of a graduating class of 500, btw.

(I used quotes because, as far as I know, none of us had ever had an IQ test since probably early elm. At a certain point you just "know" when other people are on your wavelength or not.)

In all fairness, dd doesn't have her first real AP (not pre-AP) class until next year.
I'd agree and suspect that dd would as well. She has no need to see IQ scores for her friends (lol!). One of her friends from middle school who she & I would both feel comfortable calling EG-PG has not taken an IQ test as far as I know, but you can tell. She's an underachiever, but seriously brilliant. Dd is looking for people like that.

At least on a positive note, she does seem to be making a few more friends. I just hope that they develop into deeper relationships like with her friend from last year at some point.

My kid is too young, but for me:
- academic bowl (primarily on the opposing teams; we were in the same competition pool as the gifted magnet)
- speech & debate (even among the drama kids, who were generally not academically gifted, but had huge tolerance for difference / weirdness - band kids tend to be that way, too)
- high-level (no AP at my school, but what would be AP classes now) classes taken with 1-2 grade higher kids

In my "big" high school, the HG+ kids were generally found hanging out at lunch and before and after school either in the music room, the science research and comp sci teachers' rooms, or the library, or at the science fiction book club meetings...but this was at least as much because those places happened to have the few highly gifted adults in the school running them as it was because the gifted kids naturally gravitated to those subjects.

Quiz Bowl is where my D has found her tribe. She would do academic decathalon if her school offered it, too. They also have a Future Problem Solver's team that she enjoyed for a couple of years, and she has some gifted friends on the Robotics team.

I would say she's absolutely right. DS9's school had a meeting for parents of "gifted" students a couple of years ago (probably since then too) and the principal told us that there were about 30-40 kids in the school (k-12) who were on the "watch list", but only three that were really "up there", of which DS was one.

In my experience, GT and AP type classes attract bright kids who are overachievers, but the really "up there" kids will be found in Knowledge Bowl, Speech and Debate, Chess Club, or hanging out in the art room during lunch. YMMV, of course, and it could well be the chemistry lab or computers, it just depends on the particular bunch and the specific teachers involved. Those kids may indeed be in the GT or AP classes, but the classes as a whole will not be particularly heavy with them.

I would add Destination ImagiNation, but we've had three different methods of determining who is in that in three years now, so it depends on how the teams are made up.

I went to nationals with my science project my senior year of high school. That was the first time I met other kids who thought and felt like I did about science. Certainly in college I met other people like myself.