APTOS — Nine-year-old Wensdai Brooks is interested in Barbie dolls, ’N Sync ... and 19th century poet Edgar Allan Poe.

"I like his poems — not the fact that they’re dark and stormy, but the way he expresses his emotions," she said in an interview Friday.

Needless to say, Wensdai — who tests at grade level in math, but has the reading skills of a high school senior, according to the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for children — didn’t exactly fit in at her elementary school.

"She was being teased for being too academic," said her mother, Shana Brooks. "She came home every day in tears. She started dumbing down to fit in."

Brooks, 32, didn’t like what she saw, and pulled her daughter out of school last summer.

Since then, Brooks has been trying to build an effective home school program for her daughter, with an emphasis on upper-level textbooks and independent research projects.

Everything was going well, Brooks said, until she tried to place her daughter in an art class at Cabrillo College this spring. The move raised eyebrows on campus and sparked a broader debate about the appropriateness of college-level course work for elementary-age kids.

Opportunities
Brooks, a single mother and part-time student at Cabrillo, first suggested Wensdai consider a Cabrillo art class in November, and her daughter — a spunky kid with an independent streak — hopped on board.

Brooks said she thought about private art lessons. But Cabrillo, offering cheaper classes just down the road, seemed like the best option.

Oddly enough, the college, which enrolls high school students from time to time, has regulations for K-8 children hoping to take classes. Among the requirements: parental consent, the signature of a school district representative and passing a college-level assessment test.

The Brookses crossed the t’s, dotted the i’s, and went hunting for an introductory art class. The first couple of instructors they approached were friendly, they said, but had no space in their classes.

Then came Sue Dirksen. When Brooks tried to get her daughter into the instructor’s drawing and composition course, she said, Dirksen brushed the pair aside, leaving Wensdai in tears.

The instructor said she had a waiting list for the course and legitimate concerns about Wensdai’s ability to handle it.

"I find even high school kids who come into classes often drop, because they don’t have the critical thinking for a college-level course," Dirksen said. "I was saying that really for the sake of the child."

Jane Gregorius, Cabrillo’s program chairwoman for studio art and art history, has backed the teacher. College-level art courses, she says, involve heady concepts like perspective and composition, difficult for a young person to grasp.

"A lot of people think art classes are just fun," she said. "(But) there’s a real rigor to art."

The experts, though, say advanced classes, even those taken alongside older students, are generally beneficial for gifted children.

"It is kind of counterintuitive, for sure, but the research really does, across the board, support acceleration ... for (advanced) young people," said Marie Capurro, executive director of Davidson Institute for Talent Development in Reno, Nev., which advocates for gifted children nationwide.

UC Santa Cruz psychology professor Don Saposnek said putting academically advanced children in classrooms with kids their own age can stunt their intellectual growth and lead to depression.

But gifted kids, he emphasized, should only take college-level classes of their own volition. Undue parent pressure, he said, can be "toxic."

The issue is particularly touchy in Santa Cruz County, where eccentric Agustin De Mello, now deceased, got national attention — much of it unfavorable — for pushing his 11-year-old son, Adragon, to graduate from UC Santa Cruz in 1988.

Brooks has built a reputation for aggressively pursuing educational opportunity for her child — rubbing some people the wrong way. But she makes no bones about it.

"I’m her advocate," she said. "If someone says ‘no’ to me ... I’ll go find someone who will say ‘yes.’ "

But if Brooks works hard to provide Wensdai with opportunity, she’s equally adamant about letting her daughter take advantage as she sees fit.

"I don’t want her to feel overwhelmed," Brooks said. "I want her to be a kid."

Wensdai finds a class
Wensdai eventually found an instructor, Rebecca Ramos, who would let her into an introductory drawing and composition class.

School officials have declined to discuss her performance, citing student confidentiality. But 35-year-old classmate Michael Keller said Wensdai, who is accompanied by her mother at the administration’s request, has fit in well.

"She’s pretty cool," he said. "She’s always asking questions, getting involved."

Her attention can wander from time to time, Keller said, but she’s not disruptive.

Wensdai said she’s having fun and making new friends, even if getting acquainted is a little different in college.

"In elementary school, you talk to the person a little bit and if they seem nice, you ask if they’ll be your friend," she said. "In college, you just keep talking and assume they’ll be your friend ... but I still do it the elementary school way."

Psychology professor Saposnek says friendships with older students can work. But if gifted children hope to grow socially and emotionally, friendships with kids their own age are important.

Wensdai said she misses the day-to-day contact with her peers, but has made new friends her age through a soccer team.

And if she gets her way, Wensdai will be spending a lot of time with young people in the future. The 9-year-old said she hopes to parlay her advanced course work into a Harvard University degree and career as a pediatrician.