Meet the Mexican siblings who run a centre for genius children
In partnership with Media City, Qatar
Transcript
00:00 I started elementary school when I was six like every other kid.
00:05 The difference is that I started studying since I was three.
00:08 I started reading and writing.
00:10 My dad taught me algebra.
00:12 When I get into elementary school, I had all this knowledge, so I finished it in one year.
00:18 I got into my bachelor's degree when I was ten and I finished when I was thirteen.
00:23 I become the youngest psychologist in the world.
00:26 I was doing everything faster, but also I knew that it was a big responsibility
00:30 because I needed to do something for Mexico.
00:33 I want to inspire other people.
00:35 My name is Daphne Almazan and I am a teacher in the Center for Gifted Students.
00:41 Hey guys! Good morning!
00:52 The CEDAD is the Center for Gifted Students.
00:56 What we try to do is to give them a differentiated education
00:59 so they can potentialize their giftedness and be able to advance at their own pace.
01:05 We focus on biology, physics, math.
01:13 We have taekwondo, piano classes, and painting classes.
01:18 We try to cover all areas so they can have not only the academic area,
01:23 but also to have artistic and the sports area.
01:26 I was like two years old and I started reading by myself and writing.
01:33 My parents realized that I wanted to advance faster,
01:36 so what they decided was to give me everything, all the tools, so I could advance faster.
01:41 It was helpful for me.
01:44 I received all the help that I could have ever imagined.
01:48 I have a sister, my parents, my brother helping me.
01:52 He got into college when he was 12 years old.
01:56 I was one of the youngest university students.
01:58 My relationship with my classmates when I was in college was professional.
02:02 Of course there were some social differences.
02:04 I couldn't go to parties, bars, so I had to have my own world.
02:08 It was really difficult with my brother first.
02:11 He received rejection from school, bullied.
02:14 When I was two years old, my parents introduced me to cultures.
02:17 Medicine, classical music.
02:20 It caused me sometimes to be isolated from other kids because they were not on the same topics.
02:24 It was so easy to get bored at school.
02:26 The teachers thought that my parents were teaching me too much,
02:33 and that they were hurting me, and they kicked me out of four schools.
02:39 When she was little, she had a lung disease.
02:43 To try to reduce the fear of hospitals,
02:47 what we did was to take a x-ray
02:52 and tell her, "These are your ribs, this is your lung, look, here you can see your heart."
02:57 Or we told her, "Let's take a picture of you, to see how you are inside."
03:06 Suddenly, a nurse told me,
03:09 "You have a lung disease, and you should not be knowing these things."
03:18 They tried to convince her that she was not fit,
03:24 that she was misbehaving, that she asked too many questions.
03:27 There are a lot of stereotypes about kids,
03:33 that they are sick, that they have something that is wrong with them.
03:36 When I was four years old, I was misdiagnosed with ADHD,
03:39 Attention Deficit Disorder, and there was even an attempt to medicate me
03:43 because I was a little hyperactive.
03:45 Most of the gifted children are misdiagnosed,
03:47 even mistreated without the same way, Asperger or ADHD.
03:52 Many of the kids, they don't perform well at school,
03:55 so they are usually labelled as underperforming, underachieving kids.
04:00 To be able to live with her classmates,
04:04 she entered into what she called "baby mode,"
04:07 because she no longer told them to go to the bathroom,
04:10 she no longer wanted to talk, she no longer wanted to participate,
04:13 to have this acceptance with her classmates and teachers.
04:16 It's really sad for us to hear, but also it helps us to start doing this work
04:23 on detecting these kids since they are younger,
04:26 so they don't have to pass through this suffering.
04:29 The Cidad was founded with this idea to resolve this need of gifted centers
04:34 that were not in Mexico.
04:36 This is a center of education and psychological research
04:39 designed to work with gifted and talented kids
04:42 who have an average of above the average.
04:45 We have received 13,000 students and worked with them
04:50 from elementary school, even preschool, since they are two years old,
04:54 all the way to high school.
04:56 One of the main challenges here is how to get them on time.
04:59 If they don't receive this education, we know that intelligence will be wasted
05:03 or misinterpreted.
05:04 When we take the kids to CHAL and put them in a special environment,
05:08 they can thrive.
05:09 They can finally be able to talk with others.
05:13 What's important is that they are already in the field they like.
05:16 That's why it's so important for us that they get to take it on time,
05:19 so we can just put them on track into the field
05:21 where they can actually contribute something.
05:23 We want the kids to still be kids, but in an environment that challenges them.
05:27 All people have different talents, and you have to find it.
05:48 Find places where they can accept you.
05:50 As soon as you find it, you are able to do great things.
05:54 [music]
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06:02 (upbeat music)
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