I being a fellow highschool filmmaker can feel your pain on alot of these things.
You are lucky though that you at least you have a special arts highschool. I live in New York and we don't have anything like that near me. I got to a regular public highschool and the only filmmaking courses i got were communications and media productions. We have tech teachers who are nice and mean well but arent all that knowledgable about filmmaking(they ask me questions not the other way around). And I'm one of the only serious filmmakers in my school so I dont have much to compare myself to
And when you say how it discourages you that the people in your selective school are not that talented, let that give you confidence that you have that much better of a chance to make it.
You are lucky though that you at least you have a special arts highschool. I live in New York and we don't have anything like that near me. I got to a regular public highschool and the only filmmaking courses i got were communications and media productions. We have tech teachers who are nice and mean well but arent all that knowledgable about filmmaking(they ask me questions not the other way around). And I'm one of the only serious filmmakers in my school so I dont have much to compare myself to
And when you say how it discourages you that the people in your selective school are not that talented, let that give you confidence that you have that much better of a chance to make it.