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OUTSTANDING PUBLIC MIDDLE SCHOOL

Challenging Gifted Tweens
At Anderson, a tailored approach to instructing special students

Like many of New York City’s new small schools, Anderson Middle School is situated inside a giant, cavernous building that from the outside appears more daunting than inviting.

Step inside the P.S. 9 building on West 84th Street, however, and things are a little cozier. Student artwork lines the entrance hallway and there are immediately two options: turn left at the top of the front stairs for a traditional K-5th grade school; turn right for the academically accelerated, K-8th grade Anderson School.

Working on keyboards at the Anderson School. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Within the half of the building that houses the nascent Anderson School there is yet another division. The 6th-, 7th- and 8th-graders populate their own, separate wing.

Those distinctions make all the difference to middle schoolers, who are in the awkward netherworld between childhood and independence.

“Developmentally, they are at a stage where they want to claim their own,” said Aimee LaPointe Terosky, Anderson’s middle school dean. She explained that the roughly 180 middle school students use a separate entrance and arrive and depart at different times than their elementary school peers. “It feels like it’s their turf,” she said, “but they’re still part of a bigger school.”

That the middle school grades are part of the Anderson School at all is testament to the success and popularity of the accelerated program.

Starting in 1987, P.S. 9 hosted a program for highly gifted elementary school students. The number of students enrolled in the program mushroomed, and by the time Joel Klein became schools chancellor in 2002, parents were pushing to extend this specialized track into middle school grades.

Klein wanted more schools to run from kindergarten through eighth grade anyway, and in 2003, the Anderson program in P.S. 9 expanded. With the three new grades, this track soon claimed about 500 students—roughly as many as were enrolled in the regular program at P.S. 9.

The schools split in 2005, though they still share a building. And while the addition of 6th, 7th and 8th grades seemed to make the newly-christened Anderson School more attractive to parents in all five boroughs, the school’s own success has decreased the number of new students admitted each year.

There were 433 eligible students who applied to start the 2007-08 school year in Anderson’s 6th grade. Only 17 seats were available for new students, since those continuing from the elementary school get first priority, according to Donna Smiley, the school’s admissions coordinator and a former Anderson parent.

The acceptance rate for this year’s 6th grade was 4 percent—lower than at any Ivy League university. So why are parents from all over the city so eager to send their children to Anderson Middle School?

Because Anderson students excel—and accelerate.

They do so within a fast-paced curriculum that includes all the traditional middle school subjects but places additional emphasis on math, science and technology. Eighth-graders take the Earth Science Regents exam, partially a result of the extra time and energy granted to science lessons throughout 6th, 7th and 8th grades. The middle school boasts two full-time science teachers for six class groupings. This way, each of Anderson’s extremely gifted students gets the personally-tailored attention he or she needs to learn.

“Kids at this end of the spectrum also have great needs,” said Principal Brian Culot, comparing accelerated students to those in special education programs. Because Anderson students’ minds work so rapidly, Culot said, they are often easily frustrated if they can’t do something. At times, socializing is a challenge, too.

Brian Culot, principal.

Culot likes to boast that, unlike some gifted programs within larger schools, Anderson specifically trains teachers to meet the needs of the extremely talented.

Sometimes he tells parents, “Your kid might not do well in a regular curriculum because they’re in need of an accelerated curriculum.”

Another educator relayed a similar message to parent Christine Cirker when her son, Marlon, was in kindergarten.

“Do you realize that your son is exceptionally bright?’” Cirker recalled Marlon’s chess teacher asking. “Obviously I thought he was smart. All parents do.”

Without that teacher’s prodding, though, Cirker and her husband might never have enrolled Marlon in Anderson. He is now starting his freshman year at The Beacon School.

In one studies class, students studied ancient Egypt using a mummified chicken. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

His mother knows the state Regents board will never test one of the most valuable lessons Marlon learned at the Anderson School.

“He has learned how to work with people and how to appreciate other people’s strengths,” Cirker said. Rather than being jealous of classmates who do better than he does, Cirker said Marlon has come home terribly excited, saying,

“This person is brilliant. He knows everything about this.”

Cirker said she believes that this encouragement likely has something to do with the school’s small size. Culot agreed.

“It’s like the ‘Cheers’ song. You want to go where everybody knows your name,” he said, referring to the theme song of the 1980s sitcom. That smallness creates closeness both inside and outside the classrooms, Culot added. “For middle school, in my opinion, that is the most critical thing.”

— Michal Lumsden