Students of excellence express daily life through a shared blog. Talented and Gifted (TAG) is a program created to help challenge students who otherwise remain unchallenged.
A group for some of the most talented and gifted minds has arrived at Marshfield.
Every day during intervention, students meet in the Pirate hall computer lab with their peers to work in a community of like-minded people. These students have higher intellectual skills than average.
According to Peggy Thornton, head of the program at Marshfield, in order to be admitted into the Talented and Gifted program (TAG), students must score within the 97 percentile in a nationally normalized test in mathematics or English, as well as demonstrate a high level of performance in class. Those who just barely miss the cutoff line to be identified as TAG may join if teachers feel they have the potential.
Thornton said she has seen how helpful this program is for students academically and emotionally.
“These are the kids that see things differently than others in their classes,” Thornton said. “They can often feel left out of different, this gives them a place where they can be themselves.”
The members of TAG are currently working on a student led blog called Through Our Eyes. The blog was private but was opened to the public in January after they presented it to the school board.
“It gives the kids a venue for their creative talents, and it’s a great way for the community to see the world the way they see it,” Thornton said.
Freshman and TAG member Sam Mukaida said he hopes their blog will be read by other students around the country who relate to it, but they will continue to write on it regardless of how many views it receives.
“We want people to hear what we have to say and the blog is the best way to do that,” Mukaida said.
The blog is an outlet for anything the bloggers feel like talking about, from serious topics such as LNG to more creative writing such as poetry.
Eighth grader Joshua Olson, one of the 16 writers for the blog, said TAG has been very beneficial for students like him who are not challenged by their regular school work.
“At first we didn’t have anything to challenge us,” Olson said. “Now we have a place to be creative and that pushes us to work harder.”
According to Mukaida, TAG has evolved over the years to become a great program to focus on learning.
“We used to go over to Milner Crest but they downsized from that and in eighth grade I was the only person in TAG so we didn’t have much of a group,” Mukaida said. “It’s great that we actually have a decent sized group of people this year that we can work with.”
Mukaida said he is proud of the effort he and his peers have put into making the blog the best it can be.
“Everyone in the group has something they’re good at,” Mukaida said. “It’s impressive what you get when you mix everyone’s talents together.”
