Young and Gifted
"Miss, Adam won't join in!" Sarah shouted over the top of the children's voices of the classroom. The teacher looked curiously over at the silent boy sat staring at the wall, oblivious to his surroundings. Although he appeared to be a pupil in her class, in the same red uniform, sitting on the same hard orange chairs, and with the same childish features, Adam was far from the average Year Two pupil.
When he first came to Bluedale Primary Adam was the same as all the others around him he played and learnt how the others did. However, it soon became clear to his teachers and fellow pupils that he was learning faster than the others did. At first the teachers encouraged Adam, giving him extra and harder work to keep him as focused as he was. But when he began to reject the other children because they didn't understand him and to sit reading on the playground instead of playing they became worried and stopped providing him with challenging work; trying to 'make him normal again'. Their plan seemed to have the reverse of the desired effect and Adam became more isolated towards the other children in his class. By now the teachers who were not very motivated in their low paid jobs just left him alone, only bothering to acknowledge the 'strange little boy' when absolutely necessary, preferring to just pretend he wasn't there.
It was this blatant refusal to acknowledge him that made Adam so frustrated with his school and the people in it. The teachers seemed to underestimate him and his abilities by making him perform the same 'meaningless' tasks as the rest of the class. But he never lost his passion for learning. The little boy would sit for hours at the public library, the only place where he felt at comfortable, making his friends in the authors and living his life in other worlds. Adam felt that the only people who could possibly understand him were the great geniuses of the past Shakespeare, Einstein Mozart and so he tried to be as like them as possible. He wrote poetry in his spare time as well as painting and learning to play six instruments. His parents funded for these 'hobbies' as they called them and were very proud of the way he seemed to master almost any task but they did not know just how intelligent Adam was and so left him to do his own thing.
Because of the lack of support and challenge in his life, Adam became a very angry child. However, he never did anything about it, keeping his anger bottled up inside, the pressure building ready to fly out at any moment like a cork popping out of an aggressive bottle. By the time Adam reached Year Two, the pressure just needed a slight push to explode and that push came on that cold, chilly Tuesday afternoon in early March when the children in 2LH had been set some group work on simple multiplication.
"Miss, Adam won't join in!" Sarah shouted over the top of the children's voices of the classroom. The teacher looked curiously over at the silent boy sat staring at the wall, oblivious to his surroundings. Although he appeared to be a pupil in her class, in the same red uniform, sitting on the same hard orange chairs, and with the same childish features, Adam was far from the average Year Two pupil.
When he first came to Bluedale Primary Adam was the same as all the others around him he played and learnt how the others did. However, it soon became clear to his teachers and fellow pupils that he was learning faster than the others did. At first the teachers encouraged Adam, giving him extra and harder work to keep him as focused as he was. But when he began to reject the other children because they didn't understand him and to sit reading on the playground instead of playing they became worried and stopped providing him with challenging work; trying to 'make him normal again'. Their plan seemed to have the reverse of the desired effect and Adam became more isolated towards the other children in his class. By now the teachers who were not very motivated in their low paid jobs just left him alone, only bothering to acknowledge the 'strange little boy' when absolutely necessary, preferring to just pretend he wasn't there.
It was this blatant refusal to acknowledge him that made Adam so frustrated with his school and the people in it. The teachers seemed to underestimate him and his abilities by making him perform the same 'meaningless' tasks as the rest of the class. But he never lost his passion for learning. The little boy would sit for hours at the public library, the only place where he felt at comfortable, making his friends in the authors and living his life in other worlds. Adam felt that the only people who could possibly understand him were the great geniuses of the past Shakespeare, Einstein Mozart and so he tried to be as like them as possible. He wrote poetry in his spare time as well as painting and learning to play six instruments. His parents funded for these 'hobbies' as they called them and were very proud of the way he seemed to master almost any task but they did not know just how intelligent Adam was and so left him to do his own thing.
Because of the lack of support and challenge in his life, Adam became a very angry child. However, he never did anything about it, keeping his anger bottled up inside, the pressure building ready to fly out at any moment like a cork popping out of an aggressive bottle. By the time Adam reached Year Two, the pressure just needed a slight push to explode and that push came on that cold, chilly Tuesday afternoon in early March when the children in 2LH had been set some group work on simple multiplication.
