SAGE Gifted Senior Scholarship Winners: 2020 & 2019

11/4/2024 3:06 pm

2020 Senior Scholarship Awarded to Colin Means

Publication Date: April 25, 2020

 

Grapevine-Colleyville Supporting and Advocating for Gifted Education (SAGE) is pleased to announce the 2020 recipient of the SAGE Senior Scholarship for $1,000.

 

Colin Means, Class of 2020 of Grapevine High School, will receive $1,000 from SAGE when he enrolls at Yale University to study Biomedical Engineering. His parents are Becky and Brad Means of Colleyville. Colin attended Colleyville Elementary School and Cross Timbers Middle School.

Colin’s Achievements and Activities:

• He founded Smile Squad, Inc, a charity providing educational and entertainment support to hospitalized children in Dallas-Fort Worth. He managed all aspects of the organization, raised $25,000 from donors, and procured books, art supplies, toys, board games, and video game systems to donate. He teamed with a local foundation to design, assemble, and install Nintendo Switch mobile charging stations at three of the region's largest hospitals for children.
• Colin also founded Unity Board Games, in which he invented, designed, prototyped, and manufactured a strategy board game called Unity: Ancient Greece. He has several prototypes in the works as additional installments in the Unity game series.
• He played on the GHS Baseball team as an outfielder and pitcher for four years and spent three years on select travel baseball teams.
• He founded the GHS Board Game Club, was a math/science tutor, a Best Buddies volunteer, a GHS Ambassador, and a freshman debater. His teachers awarded him with 8 Teacher's Choice Awards.
• He is a member of the National Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta Math Honor Society, Science National Honor Society, National Chinese Honor Society, and National Speech & Debate Association.
• Colin completed two industry engineering internships and is a National Merit Scholar Finalist.

After graduation, Colin planned to take a gap year before university. SAGE's scholarship judges were very impressed with Colin's essay, activities, and school and testing performance. Congratulations again to Colin Means.

 

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2019 Senior Scholarship Awarded to Ruth Schlenker

Publication Date: May 13, 2019

 

Grapevine-Colleyville Supporting and Advocating for Gifted Education (SAGE) is pleased to announce the 2019 recipient of the SAGE Senior Scholarship for $1,000.

 

Ruth Schlenker of Grapevine, Class of 2019 of Grapevine High School, will receive $1,000 from SAGE as she enrolls in Brown University with a concentration on Social Analysis and Research, and she plans to cross register for classes at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) while at Brown. Her parents are Lucy and Marty Schlenker. She attended Glenhope Elementary and Cross Timbers Middle School.

 

Ruth’s Achievements and Activities:

 

• Ruth captained the UIL Ready Writing Team and is a 5A All-State Champion.
• She performed as principal bassoonist for GHS Wind Ensemble and the Fort Worth Youth Orchestra.
• She captained the GHS Debate Team and qualified three years for the all-state tournament.
• Ruth was inducted into the high school Honor Societies for art, music, science, and math, as well as the National Honor Society and National Forensics League.
• She volunteered more than 300 hours with GHS Ambassadors, Middle School Debate, Grapevine Public Library, GRACE, Annual Special Olympics Bike Race, and the Presbyterian Night Shelter.
• She interned at the Legacy Senior Communities last summer, and planned to intern at the Costa Rica National Park Conservation the summer after graduation.
• Ruth is a National Merit Scholar Finalist.

 

Essay Excerpt: What Giftedness Means to Me

 

SAGE asked scholarship applicants to write an essay on their gifted traits, how they discovered and nurtured their giftedness, and how this shaped their post-high school plans. Ruth’s essay is as follows:

 

Kindergarten

Dots. Squares. Circles. Lines. Find the pattern. Finish the drawing.

“Good job, sweetie. Have you heard of the Program for the Academically Talented? We meet on Wednesdays and draw and do puzzles. Does that sound fun? Yes? Good.”

 

Second Grade

“I'm sorry, your daughter can't read those books. They're above her grade level. Yes, I know her reading index is above the second grade level. But for now, she needs to read second grade books.”

My homework consists of cutting and pasting things. My little sister has fun doing it.

“Sweetie, you can't write your name in cursive. We learn cursive in the third grade.”

 

Third Grade

[P.A.T. teacher at parent-teacher conference] “Your child is an average smart kid. She's not special.”

 

Fourth Grade

The other P.A.T. kid in my class and I sit in the hallway, doggedly pasting feathers onto paper turkeys. We'd missed the project; it was on a Wednesday. A teacher walks by. “P.A.T.?” We sigh and nod, smearing glue onto more feathers, our palms pressed against the grainy carpet, supporting our bony wrists.

 

Fifth grade

My teacher gives us each a rock with a word on it as a graduation present. Mine is perspicacious.

Perspicacious (adj.): of acute mental vision and discernment

 

Seventh Grade

Our teacher makes us take the Myers-Briggs Personality Index. We get four-letter identities.

I.N.T.P. Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving.

I'm the only one.

The teacher describes each personality, naming a famous person with each one. “Look, Ruth, you have the same personality as Einstein.” I don't feel proud. I feel…inadequate.

 

Twelfth Grade

“You're a National Merit Finalist and a genius. Why can't you study for my class?”

_____

Giftedness has never been one size fits all. But it has also never been one size fits me. All my life, other people have defined my giftedness for me, each understanding it in a different way.

This has led to confusion, even frustration on my part. My identity has been inextricably tied to the gifted label, the former thus as fluid and ambiguous as the latter.

_____

Tenth Grade

I read a book called Outliers. It cites a study finding no correlation between life success and IQ beyond 120 (below every cutoff for what is considered “gifted.”)

 

Eleventh Grade

I read about an experiment in which a teacher was told that her (actually underperforming) students were gifted. They got the highest scores in the school on the end of course exams.

_____

The gifted label is largely a social construct. Sometimes I wonder if I am only “gifted” because all my life people have told me I am. People tend to conform to expectations.

The gifted label is a curse. Because I'm “gifted,” I've been able to rest on my laurels. Soon I will face hard reality, and I will have had little experience dealing with it.

However, the gifted label is also a blessing. Because I'm “gifted,” I have an incentive, almost a calling, to live up to the descriptors the term evokes. Analytical. Creative. Truth-Seeker. Nonconformist.

In college, my goal is to prove these labels accurate, socially constructed or not. Whether I do it through art, writing, sociology, or some other facet of the liberal arts has yet to be determined. On balance, I'm glad I bear the gifted label. My only wish is that every child did.