Archimedes. Omar Khayyám. Leonardo da Vinci.  Maria Agnesi.  Thomas Jefferson.  Goethe.  Steve Jobs.  All of these people have something in common: they have been described as “polymaths” – people who are experts in multiple fields.  Nearly synonymous with the term “Renaissance Man,” a polymath is unconstrained by narrow fields of study and finds virtually everything interesting and worth of study and mastery.  Sound familiar?

Parents of gifted children often find that they are raising miniature Leonardos and Jeffersons, struggling to keep up with the whirlwind of interests and passion.  Parents can find their children’s interests traveling from paleontology to history to space exploration to Impressionism and back, all before lunch.  It can be daunting, intimidating, and even paralyzing.  And it can also be thrilling and rewarding, invigorating, and even fun.

Here are five tips for raising a Renaissance kid.

1. Stretch.

This doesn’t necessarily mean yoga; it means that you’ve got to develop some flexibility, and to do that, you need to stretch.  If you were raised that once you start something, it must be finished (and done well to boot), parenting a rising Renaissance kid will come as a shock. They change interests like they change shoes, and the insistence that they stick with something that no longer interests them will not be welcome.

A good practice is to treat commitments like a freeway: once you’re on, you can only get off at approved exits.  There may be turn-arounds for emergency vehicles, but in general, you stay on until it is safe to get off.  The same is true of sports, specialized classes, or other extra-curricular activities.  Once involved, the child needs to remain until the next logical exit (end of the season, semester break, etc.).  Disengagement is not a problem as long as it doesn’t leave anyone else in the lurch unnecessarily.

Read the groundbreaking study on the idea of strategic goal disengagement here.

2. Don’t Over-schedule.

This applies to both parents and children.  Parents whose schedules are so busy that the least ripple in the pond capsizes the time boat need to dial back.  Even though it seems like nothing can be eliminated, it must be done.  When parents are overscheduled, the stress of it makes them unable to easily handle the fluidity of a child’s interests. 

Flexibility and schedule rigidity are mutually exclusive because when your schedule has a little wiggle room, you can afford to be more flexible.  Keep in mind that just because something interests a child, formal instruction or participation is not required, at least not right away.  Wait a bit before you sign your child up for something to give it time to see if it is a lasting interest.

Read an important study on the effects of overscheduling teens here.

3. Chronicle.

One of the most fascinating things to examine is the record that experts kept of their thoughts.  Authors, artists, inventors, journalists, chefs, and scientists all tend to travel with notebooks in which to record their ideas, musings, and thoughts.

Give a child a quality notebook (bound, not loose-leaf), such as the ones made by Moleskine.  Provide good quality pens or pencils as well, and let him/her write down the musings of the mind.  You can find an interesting article about the notebooks of some famous men here.  The British Library has interesting information about Leonardo’s notebooks here.

4. Keep Alexandria in Mind

Although the Library at Alexandria is most famous for its written treasures, it was actually a part of a larger museum that contained myriad rooms for the study of virtually every subject, and even an exotic animal zoo (note: do not be surprised if your child wants a literal zoo).  Help your child develop a library that includes, but is not limited to, books.  If the item is too large to feasibly keep in the home, record it digitally.  You can create a document or PowerPoint, save it as a pdf, and upload it to create an online flipbook for free at FlipSnack.

PowerPoints can be uploaded to sites like Slideshare to create an online library of projects (tip: if your formatting messes up, save the PowerPoint as a PDF and upload that). Even sites like Pinterest can be used to organize learning.  Use sites like Goodreads or Library Thing to allow a child to create a virtual bookshelf for those books he/she actually owns, as well as those that had to be (reluctantly) returned to the library or a rightful owner.

Organizing is often a hobby of gifted youth, and organizing the library is often a favorite hobby.  Using a formal structure such as the Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Congress Classification protocol can actually be fun for young scholars.

5. It’s All in the Agar.

Agar is that jelly stuff that you put in Petri dishes to grow bacteria and other wonderfully intriguing things.  Often, parents will contact Mensa worried about how to make sure their child is learning.  “But how can I teach him?” they ask.  The answer is as simple as agar: just make sure the environment is right for growing.

You do not need the latest educational toy or gadget. You do not need to invest in tutors and expensive summer programs.  Just make sure the home is a an agar-rich environment, full of reading material, access to appropriate creative materials, and, the most precious resource of all, time to explore.

Be sure to read the work of Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek for more on the importance of play in brain development here.

Recently, my mother was speaking with a seven-year-old neighbor named Alex, who was explaining his newest venture – an import/export business.  My mother inquired as to where he learned about import/export businesses.  Did he learn that at school?  “No!” he responded instantly.  “I’m in second grade. You don’t learn anything in second grade.  I read!”

His passion-filled voice carries the most important message we need to remember when parenting a budding polymath: don’t worry that one avenue is not providing everything the child needs.  Allow him/her the time and materials to explore, and the mind will soar.

For more information, tips, and resources, I recommend visiting Mensa for Kids, or the Mensa Foundation’s fab Pinterest boards.  Note: In the event that I become famous, in order to avoid future embarrassing accusation that I plagiarized myself, I originally wrote this article for the PAGE newsletter.

Are you raising a Renaissance Kid?  Is something great working for you?

Raising a Renaissance Kid is a post from: giftedguru.com

The last level of attaining expert status in any field is to contribute to that field. Although this is less straightforward than the previous two steps because it looks very different in different fields and for different people, the basic premise remains the same: you must further the field. You must give back in a way that benefits others.

Ian Byrd is an educator in California who specializes in differentiation merged with technology.  He gives back and gives back and gives back. His website is a treasure trove for teachers, and he is constantly working on deepening and broadening his contribution through conferences, presentations, and connections with others in the field.  He’s on Facebook, Twitter, and offers a monthly newsletter to fans (including me).

By now, you know what the field looks like. You likely have developed some opinions about where the field is and, more importantly, where it’s going. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you try to find your own niche:

1) Are there obvious gaps in the field? Are there areas in which no one is really working or aspects of the field that are neglected?

2) Where is your personal passion? Even if it’s a burned-over district, just jump into the conversation. Very few areas of human endeavor have no room for another passionate expert.

3) Where is the longevity? If something doesn’t have the power to engage your attention in the long term, it’s not for you. You are looking for a permanent relationship, not serial monogamy.

Once you’ve picked your area of contribution, you need to figure out exactly what form your giving back will take. It may involve writing a book, creating a website, developing a series of videos, presenting at conferences, publishing articles, having a show, displaying your work, mentoring an aspiring practitioner, or curating and annotating the state of the art in your field.

Don’t worry about the size of the project because it will never end. You will not rest on your laurels until they bury you because you have chosen something about which you are so passionate that you cannot imagine not learning and growing in knowledge, understanding and contribution within that field.

Brian Housand, a gifted education professor, is an expert in the field of gifted education and technology.  In addition to his literal Ph.D., he has expanded his reputation as an expert through numerous conference presentations (just explore his website to get a taste), serving on the board of NAGC, and creating and maintaining a clean, easily-navigated website.  You could argue that he’s gone above and beyond by actually marrying another expert, Angela Housand.  This is not cheating, it’s synergy. Full disclosure:  I myself married my IT department.

You must keep reading, keep learning, keep reaching out, keep making connections, keep creating, and keep sharing because the best experts are the cognitive equivalent of servant leaders – their ultimate desire is to enrich life.

Good luck. I hope you’ll let me know how you’re doing.

If you came across this article without reading the first two parts, you can find step one here, and step two here.

3 Steps to Becoming an Expert in Anything: Part 3 is a post from: giftedguru.com

Part 2: The Master’s Degree.  Once you’ve made yourself familiar with the fundamentals of your own field of interest, as well as other complementary topics, you are ready for StepTwo.

To continue the university metaphor, this is the mirror of a master’s degree – the step where you master what there is to know in your field.  How do you do this? It’s straightforward process of three steps:

1. Find out who the experts are & stalk them (in a really respectful way).

You probably heard the same names come up over and over when you were working on step one.  Begin there.  Choose three or four of them who are a) alive, and b) engaged.  By engaged I mean that they have a blog or they are on Twitter or they are somehow connecting.  Don’t pick people who are the Bobby Fischers of your field. That won’t help you.

Follow them everywhere they are (not literally – I mean in their outlets) and begin to engage.  Comment on blog posts with something reasonable to say (not just “great post!”).  Eventually, you will be able to be to connect with them on LinkedIn or through email.  I was able to connect with two of my faves, Sally Hogshead and Dan Pink, on LinkedIn after a couple of years of following them on Facebook/Twitter/reading all their books, actually using what they say in things I write and say, and really knowing what their message is.  I’ll be honest: I was a little starstruck.

Look to see who your big names are following or talking about, and add them to your list.  It’s a six degrees of separation kind of thing in most fields – the same people know the same people – and pretty soon, all the names will start to sound familiar.

2. Read. Repeat.

If you don’t like to read to the extent that you won’t read, you will have a much more difficult time becoming an expert in virtually any field. Of course, if that were an issue for you, you wouldn’t be reading this, now would you?  So let’s assume you are willing to read.  What should you read?

The answer sounds like a sandwich: B, B & J.  Blogs, books, and journals.

Blogs: Find the meta-blogs of your area of interest.  What I mean by meta blogs is this: you’re looking for the blogs of the people who stay on top of trends in your field, not only the blogs by individuals who are writing primarily about their own stuff.  You are doing that already for a few of the top dogs in the field (see Step 1 above), but you need to find the people who are casting a wide net.

To find the blogs, turn to your friend Google and search “best blogs about underwater basket weaving” or whatever it is you’re trying to become an expert in.  Check them out, selecting perhaps five to start.  See who they link to for more ideas.

You need a good way to keep all of this content organized, so check out this article on how to get a good aggregator to keep all of that information flowing smoothly.

Books: You know those ads in

Skymall

magazine for that service that takes the top business books and condenses them to five minutes of material so you can act smart at meetings?  Yeah, that’s not for you.  You need to actually read books.

When I was an English teacher, a colleague taught her students six pages of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, while I invited my students to enjoy the complete novel.  One of them once asked why (silly, silly child), and I said, “Because I don’t want you to be at some social function where a colleague says, ‘Did you read Huckleberry Finn?’ and you have to say, ‘I read six measly pages.’”  This is not what I want for you, either. Read the whole book.  Read the books by the people you are stalking in Step 1.

Journals: Subscribe to the journals of your field if you are rolling in money in manner of Donald Trump.  If you are not, use your local library to access databases and use them to find (and, ahem, read) at least one journal article a month in your field.

Why?  Because if you never read the original research, you will always be at the mercy of the translators.  You will only know what other people think you should know, and that is not mastery. You need to read in the original sometimes.  It’s good for you.  You will find the articles you want to read by reading the blogs we talked about in Step 1.  Someone will mention a study, and off you go!

Just so that you don’t get too erudite in an annoying way from reading too many articles with tables and large n values, subscribe to (or check out of your local library) some magazines in your field, as well as your analogous and complementary fields.  My fave site to order magazine subscriptions very cheaply is best deal magazines.  They have a plethora of subscriptions available at $4.69 a year, and coupon codes abound on the internet as well.  The magazines will give you a good feel for the language of your discipline as you start to see trending phrases and words.

3. Join the conversation.

The last step in this level is to actually join the conversation.  Here’s how you do that:

Go to conferences and/or trade shows, and after you’ve gone to a couple, present at them.  When I took a graduate seminar with Dr. Desiree Henderson, she said to us, “You are no longer students. You are now scholars.  It’s time to act like scholars, and scholars present at conferences.”  She was right, and she helped launch a conference attendance and presentation hobby of mine that has been one of the key elements of my acquisition of knowledge in my field.  This site will tell you where to find academic conferences  and this one is even more broad, including trade shows and conventions.

Next, write something.  This is one of Atul Gawande’s five steps to positive deviancy, and it’s critical.  Whether you write your own blog, submit an article to a magazine or journal, or send letters to people whose work you respect, you need to write to thrive.  The process of writing forces you to distill all you’re taking in and facilitates your becoming more discerning about what you read.  One of the best ways to get started writing something is to pen reviews of the books you read in Step 2 on Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble, as well as the publishers’ sites.

Whew! Still with me?  Bravo!  You’re 2/3 of the way there.  Be sure to read Part 3 for how to take the last step towards expertise.  Remember, if you missed Part 1, you can read it here.

3 Steps to Becoming an Expert in Anything: Part 2 is a post from: giftedguru.com

Why would anyone want to become an expert, you ask?  Because it’s fun.  It’s invigorating to really know something deeply or be able to do something well, and it has nothing to do with recognition from other people.  Someone recently asked me how I became an expert in the field of giftedness (this was a reasonable question because I don’t even have a Ph.D.), and that prompted this explanation of how you, too, can become an expert in anything in three simple steps.  In the interest of full disclosure, there may be sub-steps.

A metaphor of tertiary education is very helpful here, as the three steps in the university ladder mirror the steps toward expertise.  Here is the first step on the journey to expertise:

Step #1: Bachelor’s Degree (not literally)

You know how when people go to college, you almost hope they don’t choose a major they really love because they’re probably going to end up changing it anyway?  This is because we go to college completely ignorant of most of what’s there.  High school offerings are so much more limited that when we get to college and take classes on more esoteric subjects, whole new vistas open up to us.

If you want to be an expert in something, it’s important to begin by studying not only that thing, but also fulfilling the “general ed” requirements, keeping your mind open to the idea that what you initially begin studying may not be your true calling.

Imagine that knowledge is a color wheel.  Your chosen area has complementary colors (opposite on the color wheel), as well as analogous colors (adjacent on the color wheel).

For instance, if you want to become an expert in business management, psychology is a complementary field, while marketing and economics are analogous fields.  For me, studying giftedness, the complementary color was business (may seem odd, but business theory is closely aligned to excellence in all forms), and the analogous colors were psychology (particularly cognitive) and education in general.  Identify what your interest’s “colors” are, and be sure to explore the analogous and complementary colors.

Additionally, all colors have shades (the color with black added to it) and tints (the color with white added to it).  All fields have this as well.  Shades of the field are the research side of it – professional publications, peer-reviewed journals, conferences and papers.  Tints are the more accessible side of the field – blogs, articles in popular magazines, books by readable authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Pink.

Explore the tints first.  Subscribe to the blogs of the leaders in your field.  Follow them on Twitter.  Create a separate Twitter account for your identity in this field so that if people start following you back, they only see your contributions to this field, not what you had for dinner.  Read the books and mine their bibliographies for the shades that interest you.

If what you are trying to become an expert in has a performance piece (this would include anything from piano to knitting), you need to explore the early practice of the field, and there is no better place to do this than YouTube.  When my son was trying out for the soccer team, he would come home and scour YouTube for videos of soccer players demonstrating particular techniques.  He didn’t end up making the team, but he’s still using the things he learned when he plays pick-up games with friends.  Create an account just to follow people in this field.

You will also need a practice log and to understand the role of what researchers who study this call “deliberate practice,” which is, in essence, practice designed to make you better, not just tracking time.  You can find more about this from the researcher himself (the shade version!) here or in a more conversational form (the tint) here.

Spend some time familiarizing yourself with the tools below because it will pay off in the long run.

What you don’t need to do yet: say anything.  Right now, you don’t know what you don’t know, and it is better to wait until step two to begin to try to join the conversation.

Tools you need for this step (they’re all free):

Twitter account for this topic.

Diigo account or other place to save/store/organize great articles you find.

Evernote or other method to save/store/organize your thoughts.

Practice log and YouTube account (if applicable).

Overachievers can start a blog at this step to chronicle their journey to expertise.

Tomorrow: step 2

3 Steps to Becoming an Expert in Anything: Part 1 is a post from: giftedguru.com

I can practically guarantee that if your child is gifted, you will face at least five of the issues the tools below help fix. In fact, I’ll give you your money back if you don’t. I have no magic ball, so how do I know? Because I see it literally every day. In the interest of full disclosure, I have suffered from them myself, and so have the GT kids who actually live in my house.

I did a SENGinar the other night on internal motivation, and there were too many questions to be able to answer.  That was not surprising – parents of GT kids are often blazing their own trails on a daily basis. What is also not surprising is that the questions were not that different from each other.  Most of the parents are facing the same issues.  So here are seven tools you will need if you’ve got a GT kid in your family (or you yourself are recovering from Post Traumatic Gifted Kid Disorder.  And yes, I know that seven is a symbol of perfection. That is purely circumstantial.  Probably.

1. Tool: Negotiation.  Use for: virtually everything.

Negotiation is the screwdriver of the GT parent’s toolbox.  You will use it with schools as well as with your own child.  So where do you get this tool?  Unfortunately, it’s not just something you can print out.  You’re going to have to do some reading and practicing.  Here are some resources to get you started.

Inc. Magazine offers some basic tips on negotiation, and this is hands-down the best place to start.  Read them here.

Business Insider has great tips, too.  You can find them here.

If you’re willing to spend $4, you can buy How to Negotiate with Kids…Even if You Think You Shouldn’t by Scott Brown for a penny plus shipping.

The book often considered the gold standard on this topic is Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World by

How to start?  Find a friend or spouse with whom to practice.  You can start small, negotiating what toppings are going on a pizza or how the Saturday morning chores will be divided.  Let your child shadow you as you negotiate in business situations.

One area this may be necessary is the “Show Your Work” battle in class. Find some tips on that from one of my fave gifted heroes, Ian Byrd, here.

This one skill can change your life, and this is not hyperbole.

2. Tool: Rating Scale.  Use for: Perfectionism

Perfectionists have hijacked the saying “anything worth doing is worth doing well” and sent it off in the direction of “anything I think I have to do I must do perfectly.”  This is false thinking.  Help perfectionists by teaching them to rate assignments, chores, and other must-do’s on a scale of 1 – 5.

A 1 is something that needs to be done, but needn’t be done that well  (taking out the trash, making the bed, practicing math facts for the billionth time [see Tip #4]).

A five is something that must be done perfectly (brain surgery, tightrope walking).  Fives are things with little room for error. Very few things are fives, but you wouldn’t know that talking with a perfectionist.

Most things are about a three, and helping budding perfectionists learn to accurately rate tasks and allocate their resources of time, attention, and patience accordingly is a necessary skill.

My presentation on Perfectionism is here, and you can find more explanations and ideas here.

The must-have book on this topic is Adelson & Wilson’s Letting Go of Perfect.

3. Tool: Zentangle®.  Use for: boredom & stress relief

If there is a panacea for coping with boredom, this is it.  Now, I have my own thoughts on boredom that are more complex than this, but if you’re looking for a simple tool anyone can do (I’ve taught it to four-year-olds), then Zentangle is right for you.

Designed by Rick and Maria Thomas, Zentangle is deceptively simple. The idea is that you fill small spaces with simple patterns.  The inclusion of multiple patterns in the same design is what makes it beautiful, and the repetition makes it soothing.  Kids can do this in class while listening, and I believe it actually improves listening skills, as the brain uses the patterns being drawn to scaffold the ideas being heard.

Zentangle.com is the official site, and they have a starter kit and a book. You can also find information/ideas/all you need to know there.  Another usefule site is TanglePatterns.com.

4. Tool: stopwatch.  Use for: coping with repetitive work

One reason we balk at undesirable tasks is that we lose our sense of time when we are engaged (or not) in tasks we don’t like.  Simply timing how long it takes to do something can make it less daunting or undesirable. If you think I’m kidding, go time how long it takes you to fold a load of laundry or change your sheets.  It is probably much quicker than you think.

When I meet a child/teen/spouse who procrastinates, balks like a donkey, or goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid a task, the first thing I do is insist that we time it.  Once you know how long it really takes, a couple of things happen.

First, you realize that it’s not that bad.  Really? I can change the sheets in seven minutes?  That’s nothing.

Secondly, you have created incentive to try to do it even faster. What tricks could I use to make it only six minutes?  Are there videos on YouTube about how to do this more quickly or effectively? (You’ll be surprised!)

A stopwatch can help kids become manufacturing engineers, seeking more efficient ways to run their cognitive assembly line.

Note: if your child has high anxiety, be sure to use the stopwatch as a tool to reduce, not add to, the anxiety.  It’s not a punishment – it’s a get out of jail free card

5. Tool: mindfulness.  Use for: boredom & anxiety

Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present in the moment without judgment. That is a vast oversimplification, but the key elements are there.  Researchers know that the root of boredom is the inability to pay attention, to stay present in the moment.  Mindfulness helps with that.  Reducing anxiety comes from the “without judgment” part.

And don’t worry – you don’t have to become a Buddhist to do it.

You can find a wealth of resources here.

A book I recommend is Mindfulness for Beginners.

My best friend, Patricia Bear, is a therapist in Eugene, Oregon, and the credit for this tip goes to her.  She actually put together some basic mindfulness exercises you can do with kids that you can find here, so thank you, Patti!

6. Tool: executive function skill development Use for: chaos (internal and external)

It looks like lazy with a little messy thrown in.  That’s how I describe executive functioning issues with kids (and adults, really).  Executive functioning is the brain’s ability to manage itself.  Problems with executive functioning are often observed as disorganization (even in kids who love to sort and organize), but the executive functions extend beyond that.

You can learn the basics here or watch this short video

If that rings a bell, Late, Lost, and Unprepared is the book of choice if you are dealing with this issue.  There are many other books on it, but they are almost all written for clinicians.

A great, free, and comprehensive list of resources is found here.

If you’re a teacher, some suggestions for helping children with executive functioning issues can be found here.

7. Cornell Notes  Use for: underachievement

If there’s a one-size-fits-all tool for GT kids, this is it.  Cornell Notes (so named because they were developed by a professor at Cornell’s Law School) refers to a specific way to take and, most importantly, use notes.

Many GT kids struggle with knowing the specific skills of studying that, ironically, their typical learner peers have often mastered out of necessity.  Cornell Notes are one of the strategies that can help, and I believe it is perhaps the most important.

The key is not only the layout, but also the evaluation and summary that is done.  This forces learners to truly think about what they heard.

The layout itself makes studying for exams much easier.

As with so many things, the method is quick to learn, but you can spend a long time mastering it.  I still use this method myself when I attend conferences, so it’s a great life skill for anyone.

Find out how to use them here.

or watch the video here (her voice is a little bit off-putting, but the info is good).

You can download a template here, but after awhile you don’t need one and can just draw your own with two lines.

This toolbox obviously does not contain everything you will need to effectively parent GT kids, but it is a start.  The resources will lead you to other resources, and soon you will be a master craftsman.

7 Essential Tools for Parents of GT Kids is a post from: giftedguru.com

 Trying to figure out how to help young people develop internal motivation is a complex thing.  What lights the fire (and what dampens it) in any one individual can seem like a mystery inside an enigma.

While I don’t pretend to have all the answers, the Prezi below accompanies a presentation I do called “Lit Within: Developing Internal Motivation in the Gifted Learner.”  It’s a popular presentation, and although it is far more meaningful with the person actually talking about what the pictures mean (I hope!), I think it’s worthwhile on its own.

In particular, there is a video of Andrew Wiles talking about his moment of enlightenment when he realized he could solve Fermat’s Last Theorem that is stunningly profound in its implications for high ability youth.

If you’re interested in this topic, the handout for the presentation has more resources.  You can find that here.

Internal Motivation: the presentation is a post from: giftedguru.com

I’ve been speaking about perfectionism (the occupational hazard of being gifted) a lot lately, and I thought I’d share my presentation on it. Of course it’s better with me there (!), but you will get the main ideas here!

Perfectionism: the presentation is a post from: giftedguru.com

Some of my best friends are teachers. No, really. I was one. Now my six word biography is, “She was a teacher even when she had no classroom.”

If you’re not familiar with six word biographies, they’re really cool. Here’s a video about them:

As a former teacher and the friend of lots of teachers, I’m going to share with you five crazy laws of teaching.

Law #1. Take no credit, but take all of the blame.

As a teacher, you have a child for a certain number of hours a day for a single year (usually).  It is a fraction of where they spend their time.  And yet, the teacher is to blame if the child doesn’t do well in school.

I just Googled “teachers under fire” and got over 39 million hits (for comparison, there were about six and half million hits for “nurses under fire”).  Does that sound like a fun profession to be in right now?

It’s become popular to lay all student failure at the feet of teachers, even when the student doesn’t actually ever show up in the classroom. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard someone who’s never stepped foot in a classroom say, “Our schools are failing kids” (or words to that effect), I could fund the college educations of my three sons (and probably all of your kids, too). Guess what?  Many kids are failing themselves, and their parents are failing them, too.  Are there bad teachers. Sure.  Are there more bad teachers than bad any other profession? Uh, no.

Teachers have few rights, but all the responsibility.  Teachers can’t force kids to do anything, but many people want to base teacher pay on whether the student scores well on a standardized test.  Can you imagine suggesting paying doctors based on how healthy their patients are, regardless of whether they take their medications or follow doctors’ orders?

2. It’s harder to be gone than to be there.

This is a strange one.  When you are gone, you’re not really gone.  No matter how sick you are when you wake up (or what the thermometer reads), you have to drag yourself up to the school and desperately design lesson plans that a sub can do.

When you have a sub, you will not be able to relax while you are gone because you will be looking at the clock thinking about what the class is doing at that time and worrying.  I’ve had students call me from the bathroom to tell me a sub was giving away all the cool stuff in my desk.  Not kidding.

When you return, it can take days to get your groove back.

It’s not like any other job where either a) your work waits for you, or b) someone does it for real while you’re gone.

Even the best subs (and there are some awesome ones – they are like gold, gold, gold) are not the teacher. It’s like having a sub for a mother.  Just not quite the same…

3. Performance is nearly impossible to measure with current techniques.

How can you tell a good teacher, I mean a really good teacher?  You can’t truly tell with appraisal instruments that are in use right now.  There is an undefinable quality that makes up teaching excellence that is hard to describe and impossible to quantify.  You can feel it when you’re there, but it doesn’t always translate well.

Student performance is not always a good measure. What about a teacher who teaches a subject not tested by standardized tests?  How can you compare the performance of a teacher in an impoverished inner city school with a colleague at a private, college-prep school?  It’s not even apples and oranges.  It’s apples and Cinnabon.

4. It is very likely your boss never did your job and does not understand it.

There are fewer chiefs than Indians in teaching (as is true of nearly everything), and there are myriad types of teachers.  Because of this, the odds that your administrator who rates your performance never taught what you teach are high.  Vegas high.

This makes it tricky to explain why a strategy the administrator heard of won’t actually work in your classroom.  In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been an administrator, too, and it was far easier to tell how the class was going in the courses I had taught than in the ones I had never experienced since college or even high school (or even never – some classes didn’t exist when I went to school – yes, I am that old).

While my current boss has never done my job either, she is in a very different position than the teacher/administrator relationship.  This is tricksty.  It’s not necessarily bad, it’s just a little odd.

5.  In spite of everything, you will love it.

Teachers are like Marines.  You are never an ex-teacher, you are a former teacher. Semper Teach.

Teachers, even those who leave the classroom to retire, change professions, or raise families, are tied to the classroom in a visceral way.  They love it.  They love the kids, even when they gripe about them.

They go up to the school during the summer and play in their rooms. They move desks around trying to find the perfect arrangement.  Millions of them (it seems) are on Twitter, excitedly sharing tips and tricks.  They have blogs, they use Pinterest to track awesome ideas, and the night before the first day of school, 99% of them have their clothes laid out for the next day. No lie.  They are that excited.

I’m not here to say that teachers have it worse than other people or that they got lured into the profession with an elaborate bait-and-switch in which they were promised high pay and gratitude.  I’m just saying that it’s a quirky job, and as popular as it is to criticize them, it’s a long walk a mile in their moccasins.

I once read a story of people who were standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon.  A person was walking across it on a tightrope, carrying everything they held dear with him.  Instead of encouraging him, they shook the rope.

There’s a lot of rope shaking going on right now.  Instead, let’s call encouragement to the teachers who are carrying our most precious resource across a vast and dangerous canyon – the crevasse of ignorance and missed opportunity.

So, if you’re a teacher, this one’s for you.  Good luck, friend, and God bless you.

This post is dedicated to some of the best teachers (and friends) I know: Susan Darr, Sherry Neaves, Jeannie Burt, and Becky Hargrove. I will never shake your rope.

Five Crazy Laws of Teaching is a post from: giftedguru.com

This boy at the starting blocks is ready to race.  He’s really fast.  He is, in fact, the fastest runner on the team.  To make sure that no one’s feelings get hurt and that he is able to fit in socially, his coach has him wait every 100 meters for everyone else to catch up, and then he’s allowed to go another 100 meters. Everyone on the team finishes the race together with identical times.  The team never wins any races, and no one knows how fast this kid can really go (because they don’t let him run his fastest race), but everyone likes him at the team parties.  And that’s the important thing, right?

This scenario may sound ridiculous, but it is far less ridiculous than the entrenched practice of putting students in grade-level bands with no thought to any other criteria than chronological age.  The only thing that  approaches it in absolute stupidity is the refusal to acknowledge that there is a cheap, easy, and effective solution.  Disclaimer: I accelerated all of my children with universally positive results, so I don’t even pretend to be neutral about this.

Very few things in gifted education are a panacea.  The closest we get is acceleration.  At the same time, few things in gifted education are less well-understood than the idea that students should be allowed to progress at their own pace of learning, rather than by their birthdays.

Reading an post called Against Acceleration (which I hesitate to even link to, actually) has brought this to the surface for me, and I want to discuss the how’s and why’s of doing acceleration right (and why we should). So all of those opposed to acceleration: I’m calling you out.

First, we have to look back at why school is set up the way it is: it is designed to create good employees. To this end, students are compartmentalized by chronological age (down to the day, in most instances).  Many schools’ hackles get raised when the suggestion is made that the child may benefit from learning at a level above that of the  other kids who were born during the same twelve-month band.

What is truly ridiculous is that the date of school admission varies from state to state, so that a four-year old in California with an October birthday can start Kindergarten, while a child in Texas born the same minute has to languish in preschool.  Where is the reason in this?

Until the entire system is fixed, acceleration corrects this error. Your birthday shouldn’t be a limitation. It’s just a starting point.

Next, people who are opposed to acceleration nearly always point out the socialization aspects.  They worry that somehow the accelerated child will commit some social faux pas at the third-grade equivalent of a cocktail party.  This is the argument that makes the very least sense to me.  While acceleration isn’t necessarily going to fix students’ social challenges, it doesn’t make a child fit in any better if they are forced to remain in a classroom in which they are head and shoulders above their age-group peers cognitively. Newsflash: other kids notice.  I know: I taught third grade.

If a child is struggling socially, address that.  Don’t punish a child academically because of social challenges.  We would object strenuously if a teacher attempted to lower a child’s grade because he or she didn’t have friends in the class, yet forcing the child to stay in the “right” grade does just that.  Kids can find age-group-peer friends outside of school as well, if that is a concern.  Scouting, sports, arts, and other activities all ensure that kids can form friendships.

Oh, and have you ever noticed that almost everyone has social challenges of some kind in school?  I enter into evidence: 7th grade.  I rest my case.  Those girls in the picture don’t like her any better because she stayed in a grade that’s too easy for her.

Keeping a child in an inappropriate academic placement will not necessarily result in friends.  Do I really have to say that?

Another issue the keeps people from embracing acceleration is that they have the mistaken notion that it is nothing more than “skipping” a grade.  There are multiple forms of acceleration, and they can be used in combination.  AP classes are a form of acceleration, but everyone likes those.  Why do they not have the same bias against them as other forms? Essentially, the student is “skipping” the high school version of the class and going straight to the college level.

Acceleration can mean going to a different grade for a single class. It can mean doing two years’ worth of subject in a single year (Let a child move at his or her own pace? Blasphemy!).  It can mean AP classes. It can mean moving ahead a grade.

One of my sons whole grade accelerated first grade (in full disclosure, he attended first grade for two painful weeks) and then single subject accelerated math and science.  He graduated from high school at 17 with 74 hours of AP credit (and a prom date, for those who are worried about his social development). I asked him recently if he wishes he’d stayed at the “right” grade level, he said he couldn’t imagine having to stay in school another minute more than he did. Another son single subject accelerated in math and took loads of AP courses.  The other son ate a high school combo meal of AP and dual credit courses.  All of this is acceleration.

The boys in this picture were accelerated and lived to tell the tale (and dance the Haka – blame their Aussie dad and too much watching of Aussie Rugby League).

I’m not saying that every child should accelerate. The Iowa Acceleration Scale can help schools and parents evaluate whether acceleration is right for the child.

It is not the duty of gifted children to make people comfortable. It is their job to learn.  It is the adults’ job to make sure that they have an appropriate education placement so that can occur.  Acceleration can do that cheaply, easily, and with a minimum of stress on everyone when it is done appropriately.  But you don’t have to take my word for it.

The Institute for Research and Policy on Acceleration invites students to share their own stories about acceleration, and you can read them here.

The Advantages of Acceleration is a post from: giftedguru.com

Part of what I do is train teachers to teach gifted kids. Did you know that that’s a job?  I know, right?  Sometimes I worry that teachers may think that because there is so much to learn about becoming an excellent teacher (especially of the gifted) that it is one of those things like getting your Christmas shopping done in July – it seems like a terrific idea, but it just is so hard to make yourself do.

In practice, it is more like quilting or chess – you can learn how to do it quickly, but then spend your life mastering it.  The five essential steps (as defined by me) for any teacher (or homeschooler) who desires to teach with more than simple adequacy (which isn’t all that simple) follow:

1. First, do no harm.

The most important thing to remember is that doing no harm is not just the first rule for doctors – it’s for teachers, too.  Think of it as the Hippoteacher Oath. The intimidating and scary truth is that it takes a really good teacher to be better than none. Ask your friends what your three best traits are that make you a good friend. Surprisingly, no matter how many people you ask, you will likely get similar answers.

These are your core teaching traits – and it doesn’t matter that the students are students and not friends. The same things that make you a good friend have power to make you a good teacher.

Type up three or four of these traits and place them in a spot of prominence in your classroom. Every day, remind yourself to focus on sharing these with students.

Don’t worry about your weaknesses – no one cares if Beethoven was good at croquet, and if you are focused on sharing your compassion, your impatient tendencies will naturally be minimized.

Under stress, it’s easy to default to our weaknesses. Resist this. Constantly bring yourself back to your core strengths.

2. Step away from the textbook.

Textbooks are supplements in manner of gummy vitamins – they keep you from having gaps in your curricular nutrition, but they are no substitute for fabulous teaching.  Teachers rarely have control over the textbooks that come into the classroom (I know that no one ever asked me my opinion, in any event), but we do have control over how we use them and how we fit them into the framework of instruction.

How do you do this?  The easy answer is to use the textbook; don’t let it use you. Like habit, it is a terrific servant and a terrible master.  You should plan the lesson first, using the textbook to augment the lesson, not replace it.

Even content areas that seem like they would be cover-to-cover pathways shouldn’t be.  Two of my sons had a teacher who was great as long as she was teaching directly out of the textbook. Any deviation created confusion on the part of the class because she was so completely dependent upon the textbook’s explanation that she was unable to clarify the concepts in a different way. Let this be a cautionary tale.

3. You have to go outside the box to find the pieces of your puzzle.

The very best ideas I ever got for teaching didn’t come from the education arena.  In fact, I learned far more about teaching in the Army than I did in college.  The ideas for excellent teaching come when we least expect them.  They come when we are watching a child’s soccer practice and see something in the way the coach teaches a drill.  They come when we are watching an episode of West Wing and learn about quick pacing as an invigoration technique.

One time, for me an idea came when I was close to death in a hospital bed and saw the power of a Gap commercial to raise my spirits.  Don’t believe me?  Go watch it.

Twitter makes it easy to find cool ideas, and Pinterest makes it easy to collect and curate ideas.

Teaching can be someone restrictive socially because our hours are so odd (belief that we come in at 8 and leave at 3 notwithstanding).  If you are to be the best teacher possible, you’ve got to keep one foot in the “real” world. This means not limiting friendships to those in our profession.

It means trolling every magazine you read, examining every tv show you watch (while you grade), and listening to the lyrics of every song looking for something you can use in class.  Keeping your social and entertainment circle diverse will make you a better, more interesting person, which is the key to being a better teacher.  No matter what the picture on your content area box, I guarantee you that key pieces lie outside that box.

When you learn to see how the world outside your room connects with your content area, you can easily turn it around the other way, showing students how what they are learning in the class applies outside the class. Voila! Awesome teaching.

4. Get interested in something.  Really interested.

Think crazy passionate interest in manner of Trekkie convention aficionados (or aficionadi for those who love hyper-correct pluralization).

In her book, Re-Forming Gifted Education, Karen Rogers explains, “Teachers with extensive knowledge of even one academic area are more likely to be excited about learning because they understand better how much more there  is to learn about the subjects they are teaching.”

When you collect stamps or Wizard of Oz memorabilia or are a huge Frank Sinatra fan and you let students in on that passion, that excitement builds energy within the classroom.  So if you are having trouble finding a place to store your Beanie Baby collection at home, don’t worry: just bring it to school.

But it’s more than just stuff.  I have a friend named Sherry Neaves who took the passion she had for people that made her a great journalist and turned that passion into an interest in kids. She left journalism and became a teacher extraordinaire.  Aside from natural talent and hard work (two things that go very well together), it is her genuine interest in teens that sets her apart. She is the teacher she was meant to be.

My best friend once told me that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy.  Bringing passion for anything into the classroom helps you to avoid apathy (the kiss of death for excellent teaching).

5. Take charge of your own professional brand.

In marketing, branding is huge.  One pundit said that branding is what people say about you when you’re not there. Teachers have brands.  Are you the hard one? The easy one? The mean one? The nice one? The young one?  If you don’t know, allow your students to (anonymously) write down three adjectives they would use to describe you or that they have heard other people use to describe you.

This may be an ouch moment.  I’ve been there.  One time, my son said, “Mom, only the bad kids don’t like you.”

I wasn’t sure how to take that.

To take charge of your brand, decide who you want to be as a teacher, and then how you will get there.  You need to consider how you want to be perceived by students, parents, other faculty & staff, and the administration (in addition to yourself).

Come up with a game plan on how you can align your behavior and environment with that vision of yourself.  For example, if you want to be perceived as a strong parent supporter, think about what the most important thing a teacher could do to support parents (probably effective communication and fairness), and then list how you will do that.  Revisit this  plan frequently, giving yourself feedback on it.

Seek feedback from others, even  especially those who aren’t your biggest fans.

Professional development plays a key part here. Actively seek out opportunities for professional development that are responsive to your vision of yourself as an educator.

Professional development is not a punishment; it is the hallmark of a true professional. When I meet teachers eager to be at professional development opportunities, they are almost always passionate, engaged, vibrant teachers.

But in today’s information-dense world, you don’t have to wait to go to professional development. It is at your fingertips all of the time. Look around on the net and find teachers who think like you think and teach like you want to teach and connect with them.  Join the forums and discussion boards and find the Twitter hashtags and Facebook groups that fit your content area and teacher-type.  Read some of the amazing books written by and for teachers (Educating Esmé, Teach Like a Champion, and many more).

You can find a short guide to infusing technology into the classroom that includes great resources for finding awesome educators online here.

So there you have it – my tips for becoming the teacher you were meant to be. Just a word of caution – it’s kind of like playing Barbie: once you get it all set up how you like it, you may lose interest because that’s the fun part. So don’t be in a rush. Enjoy the journey. And please share with me your amazingness.

{cool brand image credit: Melanie J. Cook on Flickr; all other photos sxc.hu (with some artistry by me on the top photo)}

Becoming the Teacher You Were Meant to Be is a post from: giftedguru.com