I can't remember if I knew how to read before going to school. Both my kids did, but that doesn't seem unusual anymore.

I had a couple doozies of bad teachers, and at least one who'd been fired as principal of another school who was mean and hated me. My very next teacher took an interest in me, and used to bring in books from her own collection for me to read.

It averaged out, but it shouldn't have had to, not from abusive.

Oh, in Kindergarten, I was totally taken out of the room while the other kids learned to read! I forgot about that. They had an older kid read with me instead, which seems really smart to me now -- I'm sure it helped the older kid, too.

In kindergarten, me and my nemesis Cindy had to sit out in the empty hallway, unsupervised, doing phonetics when everyone else was learning to read. Lame.

We were streamed pretty early, but didn't have official G&T until 7 or 8th grade. I always thought G&T was pretty unfair as it mostly amounted to cool field trips that I'm sure most students could have benefitted from (as much as, if not more than me).

Erin, there's just the occasional teacher that I fantasize about going back, looking up, and kicking their ass, HARD. In my case, it was the PE teacher I had in grades 1-3. Yelling at shy little girls wearing glasses really doesn't help in any material way....

I was lucky not to have a Mrs. Howren (what a bitch!!). The closest I ever got to humiliation by a teacher was the time I went up to Mrs. Egan in 3rd grade math to ask her why my 3-digit multiplications were not coming up right, and she had to point out my stupidity in not using the right number of zeroes to the whole class. She was normally a great teacher, so I think she just decided to use my mistake as an example to everyone else, but I felt humiliated.

Everybody was on a more or less equal footing coming in and you weren't pegged with certain roles as "the smart one" in class. Everybody was the smart one.

This is what I liked about streaming.

Corwood, I'm sorry for the tragedy in your town. And thank you for all the recommendations in Literary; I now have a teetering stack of books on my desk (and also just happened to pick up the Oxford American that you are in!)

Gud, someone (Plei?) pointed out elsewhere that "gifted" often means "doesn't learn quite like others" and the skills required to be successful in honors/AP are very normative - no quirky learners. The definition of "gifted" seems to vary a lot, but it doesn't necessarily coincide with smart or intelligent. Edit: badly phrased - you can be hella smart but not gifted, and you can be gifted, but not succeed in AP Chemistry, is what I am trying to say.

My nemesis teacher was physically abusive--a standout in a school that did allow corporal punishment, because only the principal was allowed to administer it. I was the only kid I ever knew she hit.

There was my 8th grade PE teacher I didn't like. He had a fondness for humiliating the nerdy kids. I wasn't in the direct line of fire (I was nerdy but I also had been on the football team resulting in a dilemma for him I think) but the kids that were had it rough.

And it proceeded this way at that school until my 3rd grade teacher -- Mrs. Howren, you bitch, I still hate you -- accused me of lying about having finished some baby book we were assigned

Heh. At least I occasionally got backup from the other kids, even if they didn't always like me. I remember in like, sixth grade, we had a substitute, and she gave us a story to read, and I was finished very quickly (because I read REALLY FAST) and she pulled that same thing "no way you're done!" and the other kids were like "Er...no, she's probably really done. She's a big freak, but that's her thing"

"gifted" often means "doesn't learn quite like others" and the skills required to be successful in honors/AP are very normative - no quirky learners.

Yeah--I remember being surprised when a lot of new kids who were NOT in our G/T classes showed up in our AP classes in high school--but they were the kids who were just smart and willing to work hard. They weren't quirky or big brainy nerdy kids all "I can't fit in because I'm too geeky" in elementary school. They did fine in AP, and a couple of them were in the top 10 GPA-wise in school (we had a HUGE graduating class of over 500 kids, so that was a big thing)