Personal Account of Interactions with a Memorable Individual During an Aptitude Program

When one is little every thing seams like it means the world. Children behave as though any little adversity the face is the great wall of china and as if each promise was a solemn oath. I know for myself that when I was young every thing was classified in one way or another and there was nothing that I wasn’t taught that an educated guess couldn’t teach me. I was extraordinarily gifted and but there is just something about being wanting to seam as smart and as daring as possible that made me say things, I didn’t really know. The odd thing was that in most cases I was right and people think that I know what I am talking about but I was Just a kid. I know nothing but that eight years was equal to one lifetime.

There are only one thing that I remember vividly from 3rd grade, a place where I managed to meat some of the greatest individuals in my grade… H.A.P. (high aptitude program). It was weirder for me that it was for the kids in the other parts of town. This was a program set aside for the one on one care of students capable of greater academic, philosophic, and problem solving capabilities.

To make it short I live in the “Down the hill” section of town. A section catered to by Washington School. The thing you need to know is that prodigies don’t come from Washington school and if they have then Washington school had very little to do with making them that way. The most good came out of there band and orchestra music teaches witch is an institution having nothing to actually do with the school but more to actually do with the high school and middle school where those teachers are actually based.

I would assume that right about now you want to know why me living in the largest congregation of non European or Asian minorities matters to that program which was earlier stated. The simple answer is that I was the only one on my bus. Every Wednesday at a scheduled time a full sized school bus would pull up and I, and only I would board it. This was to say that out of the entire third grade class at Washington elementary school, I was the only student that displayed a heightened level of problem solving capability. I find this hard to believe.

Obviously no it is not a logical impossibility that I was the only one but it is, especially looking back, highly unlikely. Other schools would drop off four to ten children at the board of education to partake in this program. But I was the only one to disembark from my bus. Many things may pass over a child’s head but on the level I was the basic idea of inequality was not going to. There is something wrong when some schools can find so many that upon arrival to the program several had to get kicked out, but out of the entire 3rd grade only one student. I was young but not blind to demographics even if I have never elaborated on it as far as I have today.

Nevertheless, It was without a doubt one of the greatest culmination of young minds I have ever had the honor to be in the midst of. As of now all of the students that were in the original eight grade class, with few exceptions, are either in IMS, or were to lazy to write the essay and settled for all honors classes. They were able to chose a great group of children and to be fair to the staff of Washington Elementary School after two years of riding that wretched long bus alone two more students were added to the to the program with myself.

But despite all the logistics and every thing that went into me joining H.A.P., aside from the amazing peers, the real reason that the program was so amazing is because of one person… Mrs. Carol Hyde. All that was fore stated was in preparation to help you understand why this woman has meant so much to me. Because unlike all of my teachers before Mrs. Hyde, she understood me. She understood life. Mrs. Hyde pushed me positively. With her was the first time I truly understood that there was a reason for what we were doing in school. Before the introduction of advanced problem solving I was the embodiment of innocents. I knew I went to school, did work and got grades. What I had not yet realized at this point was that In school was where the knowledge came from.

I remember a day were she spoke to me she said, “David you are a very bright young man,” at first it felt routine, “but you are not applying yourself. You can do more than you are giving yourself credit for and it will hold you back in the future.”

These were sentiments that by this point in my life I think I have heard her say a thousand times. But in the first time I heard it all I could think was, “future.” Truly I did not fully understand what she had done for me until about my 9th grade year. It was like it all snapped together. She was a precursor to the philosophies that I would learn later in life. She thought me that the adversities before me were not the grate wall of china, but simply side walk curbs. I didn’t have to climb anything just mount it.