By:Carrie James
Melissa Meade, a Clarke Middle School sixth-grader, doesn't mind missing some of her regular classes twice every six days to participate in a district-wide program for academically gifted children in fourth through sixth grade.
""I think it gives us the chance to express our creativity and our imagination," Meade said, also saying it stretches her brain in new directions. "It's definitely a lot more fun than my regular classes."
Meade and fellow students in the Quest program at the middle school recently finished a project in which they created their own utopias, Quest teacher Victoria Casey said. First the students discussed what would make East Meadow a utopia, she said, and then she let the students loose to create their own ideal world, addressing governmental, health, educational and technological issues.
The purpose, Casey said, is to get the children to challenge themselves and explore other areas. The Quest students throughout the district use critical and higher-order thinking and learn cognitive skills to help them explore their interests on a deeper level.
Quest first started in the district 20 years ago, said Peter Valente, principal at Barnum Woods Elementary School, who has been instrumental in Quest since its formation.
"During the late '70s, there was a lot of interest in creating programs for the academically gifted students, in general," Valente said. "So we here in East Meadow created a committee to see what was out there and try to develop a model that would work for us."
Out of that research, Quest formed. Although a majority of the students are recommended for the program during third grade, Valente said, some move into the program later in the cycle.
The students are pulled out from their regular classrooms for the equivalent of a day's worth of class time every six days, he said. They receive this much time, Valente said, so they can explore projects and engage in class discussions in depth. It's the students' responsibility to make up the regular class work they miss.
"The program requires students to read above grade level, be able to do extensive research projects and have basic language and math skills," said Jocelyn Weston, Bowling Green Elementary School's Quest teacher. The students should be able to handle making up their work in addition to the homework given in the Quest class, she said.
Since the program's inception 20 years ago, Valente said it has changed only slightly.
"The fundamental foundation of the program is the same," he said. "What we looked at and wanted to do is provide an opportunity for academically gifted kids that they didn't have the opportunity to do in their regular classrooms. What we really wanted to do is to tap into the students' interests and let the kids design projects around what they were interested in. The only set component was a series of cognitive abilities they were taught."
Perhaps the greatest modification to the program has been its movement to a more structured setting. Quest teachers develop units or themes and guide the students on a variety of projects, rather than completely let student interests dictate the curriculum.
For example, at the elementary-school level, Quest teachers this year studied the theme of structure, said Weston, who has taught the Quest students at Bowling Green for 11 years.
"We focus on interdisciplinary units so the students can express their current talents and explore new ones," she said. "We change the theme from year to year, but we always teach the same cognitive skills. This year children in fourth grade studied structure in archeology, colonial life, technology and finally the structure of culture."
From the moment they enter the Quest program in fourth grade until they finish in sixth grade, students said they enjoy this time to expand their knowledge.
"I like being in Quest because we learn a lot of new things, and anything that is hard, [Jocelyn] Weston taught us," Bowling Green fourth-grader Gabrielle DiBiase said. "I learned a lot about culture."
Many students enjoy Quest because it offers them something their regular classes do not, more hands-on projects and opportunities to deeply explore their interests.
"I think Quest is different than my regular class because we learn more by doing different projects and we do research. It's a lot more fun," said Rebecca Boccio, also a fourth-grader at Bowling Green.
While the students at Bowling Green said they wished they could have started Quest earlier, students at Clarke Middle School said they wished they could participate again next year. The program stops at sixth grade, Valente said, because in seventh grade, honors classes begin.
If they could take the Quest class again next year, many students said they had interests of their own they would like to explore. For example, sixth-grader George Michel would like to explore time travel, and Maria Gordan wants to further stretch her imagination.
Although Quest currently is provided only to fourth- through sixth-graders, Valente did say the district hopes to bring the Quest teachers into the third grade soon to work with kids there who show signs of academic giftedness.
And with Quest in place and addressing the gifted students' needs, Valente said the hope is that those students go into seventh grade with the ability to think independently and creatively.
"If we can accomplish that ,then we've done a good job," he said. "It's a challenging program and students do get the opportunity to work with their interests and work within a homogeneous environment. The future of the program is to continually improve its success."
