| OCR Text |
Show r- e ""' r Klv' lu EQUIP: Gifted Program 1 By TOM BUSSELBERG BOUNTIFUL - Salt Lake City School District has been blessed with a number of half-empty half-empty schools, over the years. IN FACT, over the past 20 years, its enrollment has nearly near-ly halved, and 26 schools have been closed. This year, though, the trend was reversed. re-versed. It's reversed to the point the district is no longer opening its doors freely to students stu-dents from other districts, including in-cluding Davis. Salt Lake offers an alternative alterna-tive gifted program, called EQUIP, that involves some Davis students, including a son of Carolyn Zaugg of Bountiful. As a parent with a child in the program, she volunteers at least three hours weekly-a pre-prequisite and in large part secret to success for the program. AS SHE explains it, the classes clas-ses generally aren't any smaller smal-ler than in regular classrooms-25 classrooms-25 students is common. And in the "home base" or homeroom-type classes, up to 45 students stu-dents are enrolled. But in many classes, such as reading, for example, the students stu-dents are divided into small groups by ability, overseen by paid teachers as well as parents, pa-rents, in many instances. AS SHE explains it, the program includes about 150 students in three different "forms" or levels, including those in kindergarten-grade 2 in form one, grades 3-5, approximately, appro-ximately, and form three generally gen-erally 6th-7th graders. Grade levels don't hold the same weight as traditional schools so that varies. Students are grouped by reading ability -- and that brings together 2nd graders with 6th graders, for some activities. acti-vities. It doesn't necessarily mean they play together after school but they may interact during school hours and can often be seen making up the soccer team-bringing together all grade levels. EQUIP offers a learning home for many youngsters who felt out of place before, who were beset with the stereotype that was described at the start of the article at left. In EQUIP, even if a youngster isn't great at baseball, for example, ex-ample, he can find a friend who not only shares the baseball game but with whom he can discuss topics that generally bore other youngsters, Mrs. Zaugg says. Having grown from one-self-contained classroom to many, with students housed at Lowell Elementary in the Avenues Ave-nues to Central City Mulit- purpose Center near downtown, down-town, students are exposed, except for those in the lowest grades, to at least a couple different dif-ferent teachers daily within the program. The students at Central Cen-tral City, in form three, or the junior or senior high-type setting, set-ting, change classes more often. SPEAKING of her own son, recalling when he was a 4th grader, Mrs. Zaugg says that despite having a teacher she considers one of the best, he dreaded school, was getting near-failing grades and didn't want to return to school. Now as a 6th grader, he's doing algebra. "Gifted" youngsters are given direction in their learning learn-ing to a more creative vent, often-times, she says, beyond the normal reading an assignment assign-ment and then being asked to regurgitate, for example. IN SCIENCE, for example, students perform a lot of experiments ex-periments with hands-on microscope-type experience and get knee-deep in computer work, for example. Currently, students are drawn from the top 10 percent in general academics although that may be changed, she says, adding that Elizabeth Jameson has been most instrumental in getting the program off the ground, seeing it grow from the one classroom five or six years ago to a program that may have to be moved to another school. IT'S AN alternative, she notes, and it augmented in the Salt Lake District by the during dur-ing school and after-hours Horizons program that compares com-pares with the Davis Academy. |
