My name is Yvette, and I am a Torch 4 freshman student from New York City currently pursuing a major in International Affairs. When I arrived this summer for my intensive Torch Summer immersion program, I didn’t quite know what intensive meant. Through Summer Immersion, I would be emotionally and academically challenged. However, with an “Advanced Regents Diploma,” my assumption was that I was clearly ready for college, as I had surpassed the NY State Department of Education standards.
In the Torch intensive bridge program I had a rude wake up call. I was forced to deeply analyze where I had been the past four years of my life. I wondered how I could have gotten this far with such poor fundamentals. Eventually, I reached a theory. If we want low-income, first-generation college students to achieve and do well, the process needs to start early, and not just in charter schools.
Where along the process did I get lost? Where did my fellow elementary school peers get lost? I then broke my school experience apart. My elementary school’s first mistake was separating us apart after kindergarten. They put the gifted students with other gifted students and the “others” were left uninspired, without field trips but with constant comparisons to “inabilities” and “abilities”. Think about it: we were labeled as far back as kindergarten. My dad has always taught me that I wasn’t better than anyone else, so why was our system separating us? Why?
When high school came around, unfortunately, the schools that could meet my academic standards were few, and only the really gifted and talented could attend. I was trained to show the state that I knew the information, and then I forgot about it afterwards. Some of my peers assumed a 55% on a state exam (of which its standards lowered each year) was worthy of high school. We were left on the sidelines with gaps.
Luckily, my strong fundamentals acquired in “gifted” programs in middle school gave me the essentials of success. The process taught me curriculums for the “gifted” should be applied to everyone. Kindergarten is not a defining point. We should have all been taught to strive and dream. Inabilities should have been made into abilities. I know there are others who were left with gaps. Fortunately, I have found my bridge with Torch.
