Unwrapping the Gifted

Twice Exceptional - An Interview

2009-07-08T14:10:51Z

In Gifted Education, twice exceptional (also “2e”) is the term used for those individuals who have dual (or even multiple) exceptionalities. They are both gifted “and” – such as gifted and learning disabled, gifted and bipolar, gifted and physically disabled, gifted and ADHD, etc. This dichotomy of polar exceptionalities can be incredibly frustrating for the individual (and their families and teachers), somewhat akin to being the rope in a tug-of-war – being pulled in one direction by their gifts and talents and the intense desire to pursue them, while also being pulled in another direction by some sort of physical, intellectual, psychological, or emotional challenge that can complicate (or even get in the way of) their ability to develop and fulfill their giftedness.

I have a dear friend who is twice exceptional. We were both members of our university’s Honors Program and have known each other for about 15 years or so. Back then I saw her as a brilliant person with a sunshine personality. The fact that she had physical limitations was apparent, but I simply accepted that as a part of her and then looked beyond it to her great talents and fun qualities. But in the last decade(-ish) as I have learned about twice exceptionalities, I’ve come to realize that her physical disability has just as much influence on her life and who she is as her amazing intellectual gifts do. She is currently working on a PhD in Disability Studies (DS). With my perspective of twice exceptional coming from a gifted education angle, and hers coming from both personal experience and a disability studies perspective, we have had some interesting conversations over the years about the twice exceptional.

Given that she has such a unique perspective, I asked her if she’d be willing to be interviewed on the topic of twice exceptional and share with all of you some of her experience of what it’s like, along with some of her insights from the disability studies angle. She is choosing to remain anonymous, but I can tell you that she grew up in a small Montana town, was a part of her school’s gifted program, took all of the less-than-a-handful of AP classes that her high school offered, and pursued many out-of-school intellectual opportunities as well because she had such a craving for intellectual stimulation (reading, private Spanish lessons, reading some more, memorizing poems, reading, going on an exchange to Italy, and still more reading).

So, for your ponderment, here are some thoughts from someone who has been there. Everything in italics is her own words. As you read her responses, consider how her overarching messages also apply to gifted individuals whose 2e dual exceptionality is something other than a physical disability.

Describe your twice exceptionalities, the “Gifted and…”

Anon: After spending a year in Italy as a high school exchange student, I graduated co-valedictorian of my class and went on to finish my B.S. in Sociology at a Montana university on a full academic scholarship. I’ve done graduate work in ESL (English as a Second Language), Composition, and Literature; I’m hoping to finish my PhD in Literature and Disability Studies in the next five years.

I always seemed more interested in learning than the majority of my classmates, especially before attending college. School wasn’t much of a challenge for me. I excelled in languages and have lived in Japan as an ESL teacher. The one factor that always seemed to be in my way was exhaustion.

I usually don’t discuss my medical history with normates (people without disability), since the average person seldom has their medical privacy breached by strangers--while people with disabilities, especially those with visible physical disabilities, have their privacy breached on a regular basis. However, imagine you’ve already shared with me some aspect of your medical past, in which case I would comfortably share that I have a mild form of cerebral palsy. This causes muscle tension, fatigue, low tolerance for exercise, and a range of more difficult physical issues. To the average observer, it seems I just walk with an uneven gait; however, the physical challenges I face are much more involved.

As a child/teenager, what were the challenges you faced as a student who was twice exceptional?

Anon: I always wanted to do so much more than I physically could do. The main struggle, I think, was trying to “pass,” trying to act like I was a normate and could accomplish everything I saw my peers doing. Instead of using my limited energy for some task which suited my gifts, I would tire myself just keeping up with normates—finishing the same P.E. exercises in grade school, etc. Mediocre performances like this only wasted my mental capacity since I usually finished too tired to think. It was a combination of stubbornness and the implicit sense of shame I gleaned from others’ constant stares and toxic pity. Since I had no other lens through which to view myself until I really started reading works by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and other Disability Studies scholars, this incessant urge to “pass” really didn’t recede until my late twenties.

As a gifted student, I was often bored. I think that’s why I went to Italy at the age of 16—it was a challenge, and I needed a challenge. Also, growing up in a small Montana town was very isolating for me because I was the only visibly physically challenged student and one of the few who cared about learning. I had nobody to talk to; I used to talk with adults because at least they could provide stimulating conversation. In college, I met kindred spirits in the Honors Program, but I didn’t meet other intellectuals with disabilities until later graduate work. Having a community of like minds and bodies has been such a relief, and I wish that had been accessible to me during those tough growing up years.

(Tamara): In our follow-up conversation, she talked about how being around other twice exceptional individuals felt like home to her. Being a part of our university’s Honors Program was wonderfully stimulating and it provided her with what she felt was finally an intellectual peer group, but it wasn’t the only “right fit” she needed. The always-available stimulating conversations were a breath of fresh air to her mind, but the intensity of all those gifted individuals was physically exhausting for her. It was later, finding and being around other twice exceptional people, that created that “ahh, home” feeling for her. And she had to wait until her mid-twenties to find that. Our gifted youngsters often have enough struggle just finding intellectual peers. Double that struggle for a twice exceptional kid. If there is a twice exceptional child in your life, what can you do to help him or her find not only intellectual peers, but most importantly twice exceptional peers?

As an adult, what are the challenges you face as a person who is twice exceptional?

Anon: I still can’t quite find the balance between rest and work. If I overshoot the mark and take on too much, I can be ill for several weeks. However, if I become too concerned with resting, I cut myself off from opportunities I might really enjoy. My energy is a rare and valuable resource, and I still haven’t learned how to spend it correctly. Many folks have this same struggle, but the consequences I face if I get it wrong are more severe and longer lasting than normates might experience.

Medical and academic hoop jumping also drains energy I could use for more productive tasks. In order to access the services and accommodations that would level the playing field for me, the forms, signatures, waiting periods, fees, and other paperwork often form a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. There is no established path through a PhD that recognizes the physically different body, no alternate track or timeline. One must be individually created, which can take herculean effort. The ADA opens the door for me to pursue careers similar to my gifted classmates, but that doorway is often stuffed shut with paperwork.

What benefits or blessings have come in your life due to being a twice exceptional person?

Anon: The capable often have such a hard time accepting that the body changes. Entropy is working on all of us and eventually our capacities will diminish. Rather than feeling depressed or worthless in the face of physical changes, I accept them as a normal part of life. I’m also better prepared for injury, such as a broken leg, since I make sure my environment is as accessible as possible. I’m surprised that so few homes are built with minimal accessibility even today (wide doorframes, one ramped entrance, main floor bathrooms that accommodate wheelchair users, and at least one main floor sleeping area). These elements are something I notice and plan for. Then, when injury happens to myself or my family, we’re already prepared.

I also love the fact that others open up to me about the struggles and difficulties in their lives, even if they aren’t people with disabilities. Perhaps others realize that I have experience with struggles and will not reject or ignore them for their perceived weaknesses. I’m honored by how many personal details relative strangers are willing to confidentially share with me. All people are imperfect, all people need others—these facts are perhaps much easier for me to accept.

You are working on a PhD in Disability Studies. Tell a little bit about that and what drew you to that field.

Anon: I’ve always been searching for an alternate paradigm to the normate worldview that people with disabilities are “not,” less, “dis,” or lacking – we have not yet developed a semantics for describing ourselves that does not somehow agree that we are less. However, since I first picked up Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s Extraordinary Bodies, I’ve been hooked on the books and journal articles of DS scholars. From the historical work of Paul Longmore to more autobiographical works by Georgina Kleege and Nancy Mairs, and finally some theoretical introduction by Simi Linton (Claiming Disability is a great introductory text for someone just getting to know DS) and more involved theoretical works by Lennard Davis, these books redefine the way I see myself in the world. My goal is to add to the conversation with writing of my own.

What emphasis, if any, do you see on strengths in the Disability Studies field?

Anon: Reading DS texts leaves me feeling empowered; I no longer feel as if I am at the mercy of others to define me, rather myself and members of my community are coming together to define ourselves. We are writing books, taking interviews, staging protests, working to pass laws, teaching classes, and working toward changing the cultural perception that we are less than normates. In fact, the idea of normal is a fantasy oppressive to people with and without disabilities (sometimes termed the “temporarily able bodied”). Though the Deaf community does not largely identify as disabled, I was encouraged to see Gallaudet students protesting first for a Deaf President, and more recently for a Deaf President who better represented their desire to protect the culturally Deaf history and future of Gallaudet. I’m proud to identify as a person with disability, and this is a complete change from the view of myself I had in childhood. I confront ableism head on now, instead of taking on that “cloak of ugliness” Toni Morrison speaks of in The Bluest Eye. Morrison used this image to portray how racism is first offered and then received like a cloak. The image also works for prejudiced and stereotypical attitudes toward people with disabilities. I don’t put that cloak on anymore, and I hope to work toward helping others refuse it as well.

(Tamara): When it comes to twice exceptionalities, gifted education tends to take the focus of a strengths model, i.e. focusing on the person’s talents and assisting in development of their gifts. What unfortunately happens so often in schools for our twice exceptional students is a deficit model of focusing on assisting the disability (whatever type it might be) almost to the exclusion or neglect of the gift. (Or, the twice exceptional are only recognized as one or the other – either the giftedness or the disability gets missed and goes uncovered.) Imagine if my friend had been forced to go to P.E. for three hours each day for intensive work in her area of disability. She would’ve had nothing left in her to pursue her talents in her advanced classes. I’m certainly not saying don’t provide assistance and therapy for the disability (that should happen), but the message of gifted education is that 2e students are gifted, too. A child who is learning disabled in one area and gifted in another will need services for both exceptionalities. Each of us – gifted education, special education, parents, regular classroom teachers – can help the child tackle a different piece of his or her puzzle.

What advice or insights can you provide to people who aren’t twice exceptional that might help them understand what it’s like to be a person who is?

Anon: If you don’t have close friends with disabilities with whom you can discuss their experiences as equals (meaning you are open about your experiences as well), try finding some. We’re everywhere.

Think about events planned for gifted students. Are they accessible to folks with disabilities?

What about semantics? Does that 80’s term “lame” creep into your vocabulary? Do you overuse words like blind and deaf in exclusively negative ways? We know better than to use “woman” or “Norwegian” in only negative ways, but somehow it seems natural with terms related to disability.

(Tamara): And I would add – How much collaboration do we have in our schools between gifted education and special education? Are we open to the reality that an individual child can be both gifted and ______? How well do we allow and encourage a 2e student to pursue and develop his or her gifts? What can we do to level the playing field for 2e students so that they can pursue their talents with the same level of access as their 1e gifted peers?

What advice do you have for twice exceptional children and their parents and teachers?

Anon: Find twice exceptional peers; look high and low until you find them. The comfort of friendships with those who understand our experiences in body and mind cannot be replaced.

Read DS books. Younger folks can start with autobiographies, but keep reading through the histories, literary studies, and theoretical texts. Find one book you like, then start reading the books that author cites. Even if you can’t travel to others like you, if they exist on your bookshelf, then they are with you, in a way.

Read if you are twice exceptional, and read if you teach or parent someone who is. Try not to emphasize the supercrip overcomer biographies, also read books by those who are challenging the social order, the idea that being a normate is somehow inherently superior.

Make individual efforts to increase accessibility in your home, your school, and your community. Accessible architecture (T: and lesson plans!) works alongside changed attitudes to create an atmosphere where people of all abilities feel welcome. When I see a ramped church dias, feel someone’s business card printed in Braille, or visit a private restroom ready for wheelchair users I feel welcome—though I may not need each of these accommodations at the moment.

Educate yourself to get the vocabulary you’ll need to express yourself and advocate for what you need. Then when you’re ready to speak up and ask for something to fit you better, you’ll be better prepared to do so.

Additional Links of Interest

Twice Exceptional links at Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page

AEGUS, the Association for the Education of Gifted Underachieving Students

"The Spoon Theory" by Christine Miserandino (a great analogy)

My Thirteenth Winter by Samantha Abeel

Uniquely Gifted

To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled by Susan Baum and Steve Owen

Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities

Twice Exceptional Newsletter

GTLD Network

Strange Advice for Bright Kids

2009-06-19T20:09:16Z

Hey, kids :o) My name is Tamara and for my job I work with super smart kids like you all day long in every grade level (yup, from Kindergarten all the way through high school). It’s loads of fun and I get to learn a lot, too, right along with my students. They’re interesting people – just like you, I imagine – and they keep me on my toes because – probably like you as well – they’re intense, deeply curious, highly sensitive, sometimes perfectionistic, definitely creative, and often out-of-step learners.

As you may have discovered, being gifted isn’t always the cakewalk that a lot of teachers, peers, and parents sometimes think it is. Do you find that sometimes you’re confused by all the awesome choices you have for what you want to be when you grow up? Does it sometimes feel like you’re a grown-up trapped inside a kid’s body? Is it irritating when someone makes fun of you because you read the dictionary for fun or because you want to work harder and learn even more in school? Well, as I tell my students, it’s okay to be who you are because our world needs people like you. Our world needs people of all sorts. Even though others sometimes don’t “get” you, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. There’s nothing “wrong” with you. You’re just gifted, and because the majority of people aren’t gifted that means a lot of them won’t understand you at times. (But really – do you understand them all the time? It goes both ways, too.) Being who you are is a precious thing to be – and you’re the only one in the whole world who can do it.

I have a handful of gems of advice that I give my students and I thought I’d offer them out here today for you. Maybe a couple of these tidbits can be of some help for you. I’m calling it “strange” advice because I like to look at things from unusual angles and this advice comes from perspectives others may not consider.

1) Ask for help. Yup. That means raise your hand in class to ask the teacher for help, or go to Mom & Dad and seek their advice on something. Being super smart, you’re probably the kind of kid who doesn’t have to ask for help too often, especially when it comes to learning. It might all come fairly easily for you and (especially if your classes in school aren’t accelerated or challenging) you may find that you can pretty much always figure stuff out on your own or “get it” without any need for assistance. (Side note: If that’s always the case for you, that’s a big problem. See #5 below for more advice on how to change that.) But do you think everything in school and in Life will always be so easy that you’ll never need to ask for help? Nope. I promise you it gets harder – and there are things you can do today to help prepare yourself for handling it well when the day comes you’ll need big (or little) help. Put yourself into a (healthy) situation where you’ll have to ask for help – and then ask! Think of it as good practice for the future. There’s nothing shameful about needing to ask for help. It might seem that way to you because you so rarely need it, but the reality is it’s a healthy strategy for dealing with frustration and problems. (Not asking is the unhealthy strategy…) Everybody needs help from time to time, even people you might least expect, like Mom or Dad or Einstein or Teacher. Ask them… You’ll find out they’ve all needed help at one point or another, too. [Well, technically, Einstein is dead, so you can’t ask him, but you could ask someone like him…]

2) Love hard work. This piece of advice goes along with #1 a bit. Think about it – If everything always comes easy to you, will you ever really learn how to work hard? Will you ever really develop your work ethic to its fullest? Think of all the people throughout history who have accomplished great things… Was it a piece of cake for them to do what they did? Not at all. Think of someone you know who is GREAT at what he or she does. Is it a cinch for that person to be so awesome at what they do? Nope. (Just ask them…!) To a person, they put in countless hours of hard work before they finally met with success or discovery. So if everything is coming easy for you and you believe because of that that everything will always comes easy for you, then you’re letting yourself be set up for a big disappointment somewhere down the line. But if you can learn and practice HARD WORK now when you’re a kid, you’ll find that you’ll be much better set up for accomplishing whatever it is you want to do as you get older. This means finding ways that you’ll have to work hard in school, work hard at chores, work hard at learning an instrument, work hard at cleaning your room, work hard at learning how to write a great paper. As you practice working hard (just like you’re going to practice asking for help, right?), you’ll find that you’ll be able to make even more progress and you’ll be happier and healthier in the process.

3) Know when to keep your mouth shut. Now, you’ve probably had a lot of people in your life encourage you to speak up, give your opinion, say what you believe, utilize your freedom of speech. And yes, I fully agree with all of that. Speak up, speak out, be heard, and love that in our country we can do so. But this particular piece of advice – about knowing when to keep your mouth shut – is for that little voice in the back of your head that someday (if it hasn’t already) will tell you that maybe you shouldn’t say what’s on the tip of your tongue, maybe the timing isn’t right, maybe that person doesn’t want or need to hear what you have to say, maybe saying it would do more harm than good, maybe somebody has entrusted you with information that the little voice knows you shouldn’t reveal, maybe there’s a nicer way to say it. Learn how to listen to that little voice. I know (because I spend all day with bright kids like you) that you love to share what you know – and hey, that’s super cool. You probably have great ideas and tidbits of information to share, so go for it. But I also know that your impulse to speak up can be very difficult to resist (especially when what you have to say is so darn interesting!). But someday, some moment, you will need to know how to resist that impulse and listen instead to that little voice in the back of your head saying, “Not now… Don’t say it…” Don’t let your speaking-up-voice be a bully to that little voice. Let your little voice be strong, too, - and learn how to hear and heed it when it speaks up.

4) Do what you love. Deciding what you want to be when you grow up can be a really difficult decision, especially for kids like you who have many things they’re great at. (That’s called “multipotentiality.”) Some “multipotentialed” people find ways to combine some of their talents to create new kinds of career paths. Some will pursue one talent for a few years and then switch and pursue another and switch again to a third passion a few years after that. Some will maintain a couple of talents as hobbies, things they still do on the side because they love them so much, even if they’re not making a living off of them. I also know a lot of incredibly brilliant and talented people who have felt pReSsUrEd to pursue a particular career path because everyone always said they were “so good” at whatever it was – or because Mom & Dad or Teacher insisted (though not always bluntly) that they become a ____ (fill in the blank here with anything). But really, even though they were “so good” at it, they weren’t very happy doing it because there was something else they had loved to do that they turned away from. It’s not Mom & Dad’s or Teacher’s career; it’s YOURS. And your greatest successes will come through the talents that you are most passionate about – because they’ll be the ones you’ll want to work harder at, spend time on, muck around with (experiment, explore), and generally devote much of your Life to. So if what you love is to be a farmer or teacher or doctor or astronaut or stay-at-home-mom (or dad) or clown or lawyer or research scientist or orchestra conductor or house painter, then go for it. The most important thing is, as Abraham Lincoln once said, “Whatever you are, be a good one.”

5) Look out for #1. Who do you suppose #1 is? Nope, it’s not the Lakers or the Penguins or the Red Sox (sorry Maria and Catherine). Number One is YOU. And YOU are the one who is stuck with you for the rest of your life. That means that even though Mom & Dad and Teacher are there now to look out for you, in the long run, you will be left with YOU to look out for you. So (once again) there are things you can do now as a kid to practice looking out for #1. There are three sub-categories to this piece of advice. First, Self-Advocate. That means speak up for what you need – in school and out of school. Did you know that you can approach your teacher and ask for harder work? Yup. You don’t have to just sit back and “take it” – you can speak up and let the teacher know that you’re ready for something more challenging. Think of it this way… For whose purpose do you sit in class every day? Whose education is it? It’s YOUR education. The teacher already has her education. You are there for YOUR education. So it’s okay to speak up if it’s not fitting you very well. If your shoes don’t fit, you speak up about that, right? Well, if your education isn’t fitting, start speaking up about that, too. I have a few specific steps that I teach my students to follow when they are going to self-advocate in school. (We call them “The 4 P’s.”) Be Polite. Remember to use your please's and thank you's when talking to your teacher and asking for something more challenging. Do it in Private. If you bring the topic up in front of the whole class, you’ll just make the teacher uncomfortable and all the other kids will try to stick their noses in your business. Provide Proof. The teacher is going to need some sort of proof that you’re ready to move on or do something that’s harder or more in-depth. Be willing to give her whatever reasonable proof she needs so that she can be convinced. Propose an Alternative. Offer the teacher some ideas for what you’ll do instead (such as how you’ll select your harder Spelling words and who will give you your Spelling test when the other kids are taking their test). Be open to the teacher’s ideas for alternatives, too.

Second under “Look Out for #1” is Learn How to Quit Something. Yes, I actually used the Q-word. No, I’m not saying it’s okay to quit whatever, whenever. What I am saying is that you’ll need to know and learn in Life when and how to quit something. See, bright, multi-talented kids like you tend to get involved in EVERYTHING. You play sports, you take piano lessons, you’re in Scouts and 4-H, you participate in your church youth group, you take every challenging class offered at your school, you’re in Dance and Robotics Club, you tutor kids after school, you’re on the Student Council, you go running just for the exercise, you have Game Night with your family, you always have a book on hand to read, you’re on the Debate team, you have chores, you rodeo and PowWow, you love Tae Kwon Do, you’re thinking about learning the violin, you have a few science experiments growing in your basement (sshhh… Mom doesn’t know…), and if you’re old enough you even have an after school job. Whew! Honey, you can’t do it all. At some point, something is going to need to go. You can’t keep adding to your plate without running yourself into the ground in the process. Being busy and involved in such a variety of things is energizing and fun and interesting – and OKAY. You thrive on it – I know! But we all have our limits and it’s also okay to acknowledge that you, too, - being a “mere” human – have limits. When you begin to feel like you’ve reached your limits, take a moment to look at all you’re doing, set some priorities, and cut one (or more) of your activities loose. You’ll be better able to focus on what’s remaining (including getting better at what’s remaining) and you won’t be running yourself as ragged anymore.

And third under “Look Out for #1” is Accept That You Can’t Save the Whole World. I know as gifted kids you are sensitive to all the need and horror and struggle and problems in our world – and I know you have a deep desire to help and fix and save. That’s a precious facet of kids like you and I want you to feel empowered to go out into the world, no matter how young you are, and make a difference. You CAN make a difference. But I also think it’s important that you know going into it that you’re not going to be able to save everyone and solve every problem. I know it’s difficult to acknowledge, but the need in the world is MUCH bigger than you are. If you try to save everyone, you’ll only end up doing yourself in in the process, and then you won’t be any help to anyone. Now, I want to be clear here. Notice I am NOT saying, “Be selfish,” and I am NOT saying, “Don’t try to solve the world’s problems.” What I AM talking about is an important (and healthy) balance. Because if you don’t take care of you first, you’ll be less able to help those you want to help. Pick the Difference(s) you know you can reasonably make and let that (or those) be your focus. If you get sidetracked by all the BIG problems and trying to fix them alone, you’ll just end up demoralized by the overwhelming-ness of it all. I’m not saying you (or anyone) can’t do GREAT things to help in the world. You can. We all can. I’m just saying that you humanly can’t do EVERYthing to help the world. And it’s simply healthy (healthy for you and healthy for those you want to help) to come to terms with that. As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” You’re “only” human. And that’s a great thing to let yourself be.

So… Ask for help, love hard work, know when to keep your mouth shut, do what you love, and look out for #1. Hopefully some of this advice can help you learn how to manage the topsy-turvy’s :o) And maybe some of my readers will have some sTrAnGe advice to offer you, too.

Reflections on a Year Gone By (and Then Some)

2009-06-10T03:14:57Z

Well, today was our last day of school for the year, and I am experiencing the screeching halt that comes after the whirlwind which is the end of a school year. I tend to get caught off-guard by the ends of school years, perhaps because I so easily get immersed into the day-to-day joys and challenges of teaching, perhaps because I love what I do so much that I don’t count down, perhaps because I know I can’t possibly “get it all done” in the dwindling number of days remaining and therefore succumb to denial about the year’s impending conclusion.

[Just for fun, here’s a great end-of-the-year story… One year a bunch of kids at our middle school smuggled squirt guns in on the last day of school. It was a very hot day, which we typically don’t have here in early June (“Take today, for example,” she said with a shiver…!), and the kids were being kids, wanting to celebrate the last day with a splash, so to speak. But our keen-eyed teachers got wind of their plan and managed to confiscate every last squirt gun. Can’t have those kids getting all rambunctious in the halls with squirt guns, don’tchya know. But after the last school bus pulled out of the parking lot, and with Alice Cooper's “School’s Out” blaring over the intercom, the teachers headed to the sinks to fill up all the contraband and proceeded to engage in an all-out water fight in the halls! If the kids only knew…!]

I can’t help reflecting back on a year… Is another one really down? Did I do everything possible for my students? How well did I reach my goals for the year? What needs to be at the top of my list to tweak and improve next year? What contributed to this year’s successes? Boy it was cool to hear the Math teacher today say how much he’s enjoyed learning about ways to challenge his advanced students… Glancing out my window and seeing our retiring English teacher head out the back door this afternoon to his car, our parting gift for him held tight in his hands... Passing on the news to one of my little guys that he will be subject-accelerated into 7th grade Math next year… Pondering all of the piles surrounding my desk… Going through the check-out process at four different schools… Feeling a little uneasy about what Summer might bring for some of my students (sometimes they don’t come back, for example)… Discovering I’ll be getting new carpet over the summer when the carpet man comes in to measure my middle school classroom (and dreading the re-organization that will mean for me)… Cherishing the sweet notes the kids left in my yearbook… Offering some bootstrap wisdom to an always-achieving high school student who just got her first B+…

The end of this school year came with a unique experience for me. See, for my job (in case you haven’t picked up on this) I work with the gifted students in our District in all grade levels, K-12. That means I have the same students year after year after year after year after year (etc.). This was my 13th year here, so that means that my very first group of Kindergarteners graduated from high school this past Saturday. [Can I really be that old‽‽] I just saw eleven students through one complete loop of school. Wow… What a treasure that is… One of them, in writing a scholarship essay earlier this year about a teacher who had had an impact on her life, began it by writing, “I can’t even remember a time before Ms. Fisher.” It’s the ultimate form of looping, really, and I try not to get caught off guard by the power that has for my students… and for me. Seeing my wee littlest ones - three Valedictorians and two Salutatorians among them - all tasseled up on Saturday was almost an out-of-body experience. There was Elliott, who brought his own soapbox to stand on during his speech; Amethyst, who, I’m excited to say, is planning to become a teacher; SuEllen, a future dentist who has the next few years paid for with a Gates Millennium scholarship; and Shane, who, despite his semi-underachievement over the years, I just know is going to light the world on fire when he finally has a chance to immerse himself into his niche. It’s really fun to send them forth into the world, all full of optimism and energy. It’s gratifying to hear from them that they appreciate having been challenged and prepared for future challenges. It’s a little unnerving to contemplate the potential weight of that many years of impact on a kid’s life. If anything, it makes me feel even more responsible to look out for them, to do right by them, to create ever-increasing levels of tackle-able challenge for them.

Having a K-12 job has definitely created for me a long-term perspective of a gifted child’s education. I’ve witnessed, time and time again, the “evolution” of a gifted kid - from primary school to intermediate school to middle school to high school to college to career. Now, when one of my middle school boys can’t find the completed assignment he put into his homework folder just a half hour before, I know he’s going to outgrow his current flakiness and could even – like one of my former such students – one day be a Truman Scholar. Now, when one of my little ones is happy as a lark in school but makes a side comment about not being challenged, I know immediate early intervention means heading off otherwise-appearing resentment that would come about five years down the road. Now, when a new teacher or student teacher appears in one of our schools, I know that reaching out to that person as a resource means I am - today - helping that teacher learn about students she typically has previously learned nothing about and - tomorrow - helping all of the gifted students who will cross that teacher’s path in her career to be better challenged than they perhaps otherwise would have been. Knowledge is power that way.

I can’t separate this big-picture-perspective from how I see their school experience. It has grown on me, like the little sprout in my shamrock plant that just yesterday was a tiny bump in the dirt and today is two inches tall… Somehow, somewhere along the line, this perspective crept up on me and set up camp to stay. Most teachers know their grade-level of kids inside and out. But for me, it’s one continuous trajectory. I don’t see them as 2nd graders or 6th graders or high school kids, I see them on an un-ending journey (one which I have the honor and responsibility to help guide).

So… Today we scatter… to college, to summer camp, to Disneyland, to PowWow season, to grandma’s, to reading books in the sun and swimming in the lake, to summer jobs, to cutting hay and moving pipe, to Possibility. And come August, we will pick up right where we left off…

Bibliotherapy Revisited

2009-05-27T12:48:49Z

A few weeks ago I talked about the use of bibliotherapy with gifted students and how I was implementing the strategy with my 5th and 6th graders. Not long after that post, the kids finished reading their selected books and we had discussions on them. The 6th graders also each did a project to answer their questions. (I have less time with my 5th graders, so we only held discussions.) Just for a little quick review, these were the questions I posed to the kids:

* Who in the book do you identify with and why?
* What situations/events/problems do you identify with and why?
* Do you agree or disagree with the significant decisions the main character(s) made? Why?
* How did being gifted impact the character's life? (in positive and/or negative ways)
* In what ways was the character gifted? How did you know he or she was gifted? (i.e. What, to you, were the identifiable characteristics?)
* What do you think are the messages the author is trying to send with this book? (Or: What do you think was the author's purpose for writing this book?)
* Do you agree or disagree with the author's message? Why?

(I made each of them a bookmark that had the above questions printed on it.)

They suggested that I add this question for next year's kids: "What was the problem or challenge in the book and how was it solved or overcome?"

So now that the process is concluded, I thought y'all might be interested in a few reflections from myself and from the kids. One of the first things I noticed was how much most of the students loved the idea of reading a book with a gifted main character. I was actually a little uncertain about putting that prospect before them at first (maybe because this was a new process for me to undergo with my students, maybe because I'm always seeking a balance between helping them examine their giftedness but not overdoing it in the process), but I found them to be eager and curious to delve into the books, the questions, the projects, and the discussions. As a matter of fact, about half of the students even opted to read additional books from the list - not for extra credit, not for more work to do, but just because they loved the books so much and found the process of examining the gifted characters to be so interesting.

The students brought up some intriguing points during our discussions. Some of them felt that the book they read had only come from the angle that gifted kids had problems and struggles, that their challenges were over-emphasized in the book and that the great things about being gifted were barely illustrated. Others, however, felt that their books had done a great job of showing the myriad aspects of being a gifted kid - yes, the challenges, but also the triumphs and benefits. Some specific insights that the kids said they gained from the process were the following:

"I realized that someone can be gifted even when they're really little."
"I learned that it's possible for a person to be gifted without knowing it."
"I hadn't thought before about it, but my book made me think about how people can be gifted in different ways."
"My book's message was that you shouldn't take being gifted as something wrong or torture or a problem - you should take it as something that can help."
"Being gifted has been good for me, but I learned that some gifted people can have challenges - it's not always easy."
"I realized that being gifted isn't everything. Friends and the people around you are important, too, not just yourself."
"Even though you're different doesn't mean you can't follow your dreams. Just because others don't understand your dreams doesn't mean they aren't worth pursuing."
"Nothing is impossible if you keep working at it. Be persistent."
"Don't think people are crazy just because they're different. They have a lot to offer the world."
"Being smart doesn't mean it's okay to use your brains for evil."
"When times get tough, try to get through them as best you can and not try to change the past."
"I learned that even when you're smart (or challenged) people should still just accept you for who you are - not for what you can or can't do."
"I realized you should stop hoping for things to happen and instead not give up on making them happen."
"You should ask for help if you need it." (a great realization to hear coming from a kid who has typically been afraid to let others know when she needs help!)
"Even though some people are different doesn't mean they're crazy or wrong."
"I learned that being gifted and being who I am is an okay way to be!"
"I realized that the smart people who actually make a big positive difference in the world are the ones who pursue their talents a lot and also become really good people."
"It helped to learn that I'm not so alone in being like I am."

Intriguing to me was how, when it came time to have our class discussions on the books and the bookmark questions, it didn't matter that every kid had read a different book. It was similar to when we have discussions on other topics where each student comes at the topic from their own perspective and life experience and has something to offer based on that. I found our book discussions to function the same way. Each student was discussing the questions from the perspective of the unique book he or she had read, yet no one seemed to have any trouble understanding what everyone else was talking about despite not having read the other books themselves. Of course, we were discussing the issues and the big ideas of the books (which were similar in most cases), not the details or the plots (which would be different in most cases). And discussing these big ideas from the books led us to discussion of the same big ideas in their own lives. It's so fun to see kids being reflective! They are deeper than most people realize.

I also asked the kids to give me recommendations of books to add to or delete from the suggestions list. The most common request for addition was Artemis Fowl, so I have checked it our from our library to preview over the summer and possibly add to the list for next year. Thanks to everyone here who also added to (and in a couple cases deleted from) the list as well!

Happy reading :o)

Gifted Laughs - The Big Bang Theory

2009-05-13T17:23:08Z

Yes, I got hooked.

If you’re looking for a little summer humor and some fun, brainy entertainment (and aren’t already hooked as I am) check out this summer’s re-runs of CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory.” (I hope they re-run them!)

The show is built around Leonard and Sheldon, roommates and research physicists at CalTech. Their always-underfoot pals Raj and Howard also work in labs at CalTech. (Raj has his own apartment and Howard lives with his loud and never-seen mother.) The four of them are happily immersed into their routine lives (Wednesday night is Halo night, for example) and Sheldon in particular loves routine. But their lives get set off-kilter when beautiful, mid-west born, actress-wannabe, not-to-be-underestimated Penny moves in across the hall.

Yes, the characters are a bit stereotyped, but what sitcom’s characters aren’t? I was initially bothered by the stereotyping, but I soon became impressed by how much the writers for the show understand gifted lives. I think the characters can seem stereotyped if one watches an isolated episode without having yet developed a love for their well-developed personalities. But if you stick with it, about three episodes in you will see that the writers actually have a great grasp of the quirks, interactions, and realities of the lives of people like Leonard, Sheldon, Raj, and Howard. Their struggles and triumphs are explored and celebrated with perceptive insights and surprisingly-often sensitive treatment. And I know a lot of other geeky people like myself who have come to love and appreciate the show, too -- an indication of its ability to truly relate (rather than simply poke fun, like a lot of other media entertainment does at gifted characters).

I know these people… I teach them, I am friends with them, they are the pals I played with liquid Nitrogen with in college… Whoever writes for this show knows gifted people inside and out (well, the "typical" 20-something nerdy scientist male version of gifted people). They remind me of my friends who walked down the aisle to the theme from Star Wars, my students who get together on Friday night to have a LAN party, my relatives who tinker and build and invent unique solutions to problems, and myself.

Although, in the interest of full-analysis, one disappointment I have with the show is that the gifted female character(s) is still one-sided and has yet to become a multi-faceted dimension in the show. (The actress portraying Leslie does a nice job, I just don't think the writing has done her character justice yet. Not that I'm enough of a television or acting connoisseur to really be offering a critique...!) Another disappointment is that I can't comfortably recommend the show to my gifted students due to some of its adult humor.

That said, though, they get it. And it's so much fun to spend a half hour with this nerdy fab four and probably-underrated Penny.

One of my favorite scenes is the one where the guys set up a laptop to send a signal around the world (via wi-fi, fiberoptics, and satellite, etc.) that returns to their apartment to turn on a lamp that's within arms-reach... just because they think it's cool to be able to do something like that. (It is!) Another personal favorite scene is Sheldon's dilemma in trying to decide what to get Penny when she informed him that she had gotten him a Christmas gift. Sheldon's interpretation of "the rules" of gift-giving dictate that he give her an appropriately reciprocal gift in return. But how to decide what to get her when he doesn't know what she's gotten him‽‽ He hatches what he thinks is a fool-proof plan to have readily-on-hand any gift for her of approximately equal value (both monetary and sentimental). But when part-time waitress Penny gives him an autographed napkin used by Leonard Nimoy, well, the results are hysterical.

See for yourself what the brainy fun is all about:

A montage of their fascination with superheroes

Testing their killer robot, "Monte"

A geek’s guide to cleaning

Leonard refers to one of Sheldon's insights as a "little" idea

Settling disputes with Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock

An analysis of the physics of Superman

agh!

2009-05-13T14:03:39Z

"save and save often"

but I didn't

just lost a whole post :o( thanks to an apparently timed-out connection

(this is why I usually type them in Word and then copy/paste, but thought I didn't "need" to this time...)

and I have to head to work so I can't re-type it all right now

Oh, I'm so bummed! (Tamara pounds her head on her desk...)

I'll scramble it back together for you :o)

Ah, the wonders and conveniences of technology...

VHS isn't just for your VCR

2009-05-06T03:12:50Z

(Although I might be the only person left in the world still using a VCR!)

Our high school here is looking into the possibility of using Virtual High School, beginning next school year (if not fall semester, then spring semester). I'm intrigued and excited by the possibilities. It will give our students the opportunity to take courses they otherwise wouldn't have an opportunity to take at our high school. For example, we only offer Spanish language, but next year a student could take French or Mandarin or Russian if they wanted.

One complication for Montana students (and maybe other states did this, too) is that our state school board passed a policy a few years ago stating that Montana students can only get credit for an online course if the teacher for the course is a Montana certified teacher. A student could still take any online class they wanted on their own, but if the teacher isn't Montana certified the student wouldn't get school credit for it. I understand the desire to protect Montana teaching jobs and Montana teachers, but I also think the bigger goal should be LEARNING for our students. There are kids in tiny Montana towns - and for the target audience of this blog, let's think of highly advanced students - who don't have access to the expertise to learn at the next level in their town of 100 people. (Sometimes they *do* have that access - Any tiny town has brilliant people in it with their own areas of expertise - But my essential point is that the chances of finding a mentor on any given specialized topic in a town of 100 are far less than they are in a town of 100,000). So I'm disappointed that the unintended consequence of the policy is a restriction on the credit-worthy coursework Montana students have access to.

But VHS is aware of our state's policy on this and the two (that we're aware of) Montana high schools who began offering VHS courses to their students this school year were still able to be a part of VHS because some of the VHS teachers are Montana certified. A team from our high school recently visited a nearby school that began VHS this year and met with the teachers and students who have been a part of it. All involved were reportedly pleased and excited by the experience.

All VHS teachers are actual teachers somewhere (i.e. at a brick and mortar school), certified in the discipline they teach online for VHS. Eighty-five percent of them hold a Master's degree or higher. (And, lucky for us, at least some of them hold a Montana teaching certificate!) VHS also requires that they complete training in teaching online classes before they are approved to teach a VHS class.

I still have a lot to learn about VHS, but I'm excited about the possibilities because it opens a lot of new learning opportunities for my gifted students (and for all of our students). The kids I work with have a lot of unique learning interests that aren't always able to be accommodated within our course offerings. And they're so curious that some of them want to take more than the seven classes that fit into a high school schedule each semester. For a few years, our high school offered a couple classes during an Early Bird (i.e. before school) class period and a few of my students took Early Bird plus the next seven class periods (instead of the additional six that would've made for a typical full day). They've thrived on it and were able to prove to a couple of initial skeptics that yes, advanced students can capably handle taking eight classes a semester. Next year, due to a revised schedule, we won't have any Early Bird classes. But the addition of Virtual High School means my motivated, curious, hard working, advanced students can still pursue an extra class if they want to.

[Part of me is even a little bit jealous... Had an opportunity like this been around "way" back when I was a kid, I would've loved taking advantage of it! I never could fit all the classes I wanted to take into the limited, standard seven-period-day. I would've jumped at a window-of-opportunity to take an interesting course that was beyond the scope of that structure.]

I'm also excited about the possibilities of VHS because it might open up some windows for my gifted middle school students to take these high school courses. In the course catalog, many of the course descriptions say, "This course may be appropriate for Gifted and Talented middle school students that meet all course prerequisites." From what I've read so far, as a feeder middle school to a VHS participating high school, it seems our younger students could be a part of this opportunity. And I know I have some middle school students who would jump at the opportunity.

However, even though that might be a possibility, we're still trying to work out the details of just how all of this is going to work for us. I raised a few questions in our meeting last week (or was it the week before? things have been a little crazy...) that we don't have answers worked out on. I'm curious how any of your schools have answered these questions or handled these situations:

* If one of your middle school students takes a VHS course, does she get credit for the course when in high school? (i.e. Do you count it toward her graduation progress and cumulative high school GPA?) [For a point of reference, we usually have a handful of 8th graders who take a math class at our high school and it does count toward their graduation progress and high school GPA. It shows up on their transcripts as if they took the class their freshman year, usually reflected in a double-booked class period or as an Early Bird class.]

* We are a small enough high school that some/many classes we are only able to offer during one class period, which means a student sometimes has to choose between two classes he wants to take because they're both only offered during the same class period. Hypothetically, one of those classes could be available via VHS. In cases of such schedule conflicts, do you allow the student to take the class via VHS and get credit for it even though it's offered at your school? For reasonable reasons, our high school is going to tell the students that if a VHS course is offered at our school, they have to take it at our school. But I know that my students sometimes have to make choices between classes due to lack of repeated availability, and taking one of the classes via VHS might allow them to do both. How have your schools handled this?

* For those of you who have weighted grading systems, how do VHS courses fit into those? Some VHS courses are listed as "Honors" (as opposed to "Standard"). Do you weight their grades in an Honors VHS class the same way you do for one of your Honors on-site classes?

* Some high schools require more classes and tougher classes for those wanting to graduate with Honors (such as taking more Math, more Science, more Honors classes). How do VHS classes fit into your school's requirements in this regard?

I know what I would like to see happen here in answer to each of these questions, but I am not the decision-maker. Any ideas any of you can offer based on your own schools' experiences would be helpful and appreciated!

Your State Gifted Association

2009-04-09T02:34:42Z

Well, it's that time of year again! I'm chin-deep in conference-organizing, as our state gifted conference is coming up in a couple of weeks. It's a considerable undertaking, but it is always well worth the effort. Each state has its own process for coordinating their state conference and we here in Montana are in our second year of trying out a new method.

Because Montana is geographically gigantic, our conference rotates each year between our five regions so that at least once every five years the conference will be relatively close to home for everyone. (That would be using a Montana driving distance definition of "relatively close"!) It used to be that if you were the Regional Representative on the Board the year the conference was scheduled to go to your region, then you were in charge of the conference. (And everyone else issued a silent breath of relief, "Glad it's not my year...") The last two years, though, we have experimented with a new organizing format. Having coordinated conferences under both systems (the first when I was a Regional Rep back in 2006), I find myself singing the praises of our new format.

Now, the Regional Rep and I (as President-Elect) are conference co-chairs, and every Board member (even the one who lives 535 miles away) has her own task to complete to help coordinate and organize the conference. Essentially, each person takes charge of a PIECE of the process and then the pieces all fall into place as the conference unfolds. Last year, for our first time trying this method, I'd say we had about a 95% success rate of everything falling into place, and that 5% where things didn't quite go right were all rather tiny, minor issues that were easily resolved on-site. This year we have the added benefit that most people are taking on the same task they did last year, so they are that much more well-versed in what to do and how to do it, now, too.

We have one person who is coordinating all of the vendors, another person who is collecting and coordinating the table decorations and door prizes, another person who is making all the nametags, another person who is collecting registrations and keeping track of who's paid and who hasn't yet, someone who is the contact person with the hotel where the conference will be taking place (securing rooms, determining the menu, etc.), someone to coordinate and collect items for our silent auction (which raises money for our scholarships-for-kids fund), someone to contact speakers and organize a schedule/program (me!), someone to organize the awards ceremony where we give various awards to kids from around the state, someone who is in charge of publicity (which involves contacting every superintendent and principal in the state), a person who is in charge of getting a packet together for each attendee (including a copy of the program, coupons from local businesses, a map of the town, etc.), someone who will grade all the papers so we can offer our conference for credit, someone to coordinate the renewal units process for those attendees who want to earn CEU's, and someone to coordinate and organize the Saturday Sessions for Kids that we usually manage to offer, too. And then some. (whew!)

Obviously, all of this requires some communication between Board members! In fact, I think that's been one of the extra benefits of this process. We used to see and communicate with each other just three times a year (when we had our Board meetings and the spring conference), but now (especially from October-May, prime conference-organizing time), we communicate with each other a lot more frequently, which in my opinion has helped the Board members come to know one another better (which in turn lends itself to better Board working relationships). And modern technology helps a lot, too, given that we live hundreds of miles from each other.

I first attended (and presented at) an AGATE conference as a college student back in 1993 when I (and a couple other students) went to talk about the Mentor GATE program we had created. I even attended the Board meeting that afternoon simply because I was curious. (Okay, Sis, I can admit it... there's something a little strange about me...!)

I love attending our state gifted conference. Being a Gifted Specialist in Montana is a rather solitary role (there are only 40 FTE of us here... not even a whole person per county), so I treasure being able to get together with others from my state who do what I do and who are equally passionate about helping other Montana schools get something going for their gifted students. It's also exciting to see so many regular classroom teachers at the conference who are also eager to learn what they can about reaching the gifted students in their classrooms. (Our conference attendees are about 80% regular classroom teachers, plus some parents, counselors, GT specialists, and the occasional administrator.)

[Okay, random, though related, tangent story because I think it's funny... Last fall I gave a keynote at the KGTC conference in Kansas and I asked the audience how many of them were Gifted Specialists... expecting the smattering of hands that I would see raised to the same question in Montana. But about 90% of the people in the room raised their hands!!! I was so stunned a feather could've knocked me off the stage. I stood for a moment to take in that beautiful sight of a packed room full of Gifted Specialists. Other than at NAGC, I had never seen so many of us together in the same room before. I needed a moment to let my paradigm shift! Suddenly the dream of having that many of us in Montana seemed so much more possible...]

Montana AGATE was officially founded back in 1980 (after two years of laying the groundwork...), the same year I was a little one in "Project Promise." As a matter of fact, my GT teacher's name is on the roster list of AGATE's charter members. (Thank you, Mrs. Sexton, wherever you are...) Two other founding members are still current AGATE Board members to this day! How's that for dedication? (Kudos to Stephanie Smith and Shirley Olson!) And another charter member will be one of our keynote presenters at this year's conference, Jann Leppien (I imagine many of you know her or at least know of her, as she has been an NAGC Board member, has written a few gifted ed books, presents and consults frequently, runs Edufest, and is generally a rock star in the field. We're quite proud of her back here in Montana :o)

Besides put on a great conference each year, what else does AGATE do? We advocate individually, locally, and statewide. We have resources available for schools, teachers, and parents to borrow. We provide scholarships to kids. We help coordinate the publication of Signatures from Big Sky, which consists entirely of artwork and writing by K-12 Montana students. We coordinate the SAT Challenge (similar to the Talent Search in other states). We publish a newsletter for members. We outreach with other Education organizations in the state. And we are currently piloting a new project: mentoring a Montana school through a two-year intensive process of learning about, implementing, reflecting upon, and improving use of differentiation strategies. (It's been a fabulous process so far and we hope to expand this in-depth opportunity to other schools as the money and time to do so become available.) And as Board members we also field a lot of queries from teachers, parents, administrators, Education majors (i.e. future teachers), and others from around the state.

So the point of my rambling post here today (were you wondering if there was a point? ;o) is to encourage you to not just join but get involved with your state's gifted association. You can find a link to it here. (Or if you are from Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, or Wyoming - states without gifted association websites - click on your state in this map to get the email address of a contact person.) And for my international readers, consider the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children or your home country's group. If one doesn't exist, find some like-minded folks and create one!

Benefits of being a member of and being involved with your state's gifted association include knowing what's going on in gifted education in your state, having opportunities to positively impact the gifted learners in your state, being connected with others who are also passionate about this topic, becoming more easily aware of the various learning opportunities offered in your state (i.e. conference, workshops, etc.), and - frankly - making a difference! Plus it's fun :o)

I'm also curious to learn what benefits you have found from being involved with your state gifted association. Also, what great projects is your state organization involved with that others might enjoy learning about?

Well, I have a conference program to go put the finishing touches on so that it can be sent to the printers this week. Happy Spring, everyone!

Using Bibliotherapy with Gifted Children

2009-03-16T04:46:13Z

Hopefully we’ve all had that experience of reading a book that powerfully “spoke” to us, a book whose characters we could relate to, and whose struggles and triumphs we identified with. Taking this experience a step farther is the strategy of bibliotherapy, the process of helping the reader learn about and cope with any social or emotional struggles or developmental needs by identifying with a character in a book who shares a similar struggle or need. The reading is typically followed up by discussion with a trusted adult.

Bibliotherapy of course can be done with all students, particularly students who might be experiencing a divorce in the family, a learning disability, adoption, etc. Today I want to talk a bit about using developmental bibliotherapy specifically with gifted students. A fair amount has been written already (see links at the bottom of this post) about what bibliotherapy is and why it's important to do with gifted students. Essentially, by having gifted students read literature and/or biographies featuring gifted children or adults, the students can gain insights into their own giftedness. Through bibliotherapeutic reading, the gifted kids are presented with ideas for how to cope with some of the struggles they encounter because they are gifted. These struggles can include trouble finding meaningful friendships, existential depression, dealing with high expectations (whether internal or external), and being a unique learner when most around them don’t learn as they do.

In addition to helping them learn new strategies for dealing with their various social and emotional issues, bibliotherapy with gifted kids can help them to better understand themselves, their sensitivity, and their quirks. It can allow them to learn about themselves vicariously and to know that they're not alone, that others have - and have had - the same concerns or problems. It can expose them to new ways of thinking about and seeing the world around them. And it can help them gain insight into themselves by connecting with or identifying with a character in a book who is similar to them or who has similar obstacles to overcome.

The reality is that gifted kids don't always have everything going for them, despite what others may mis-perceive about them in that regard. They're certainly not all in need of clinical therapy, either, but - as I point out to the parents of my students - raising (or teaching) a gifted child is usually not the cakewalk that everyone else assumes it to be... because they come packaged with all these worries, sensitivities, quirks, and surprises, together with their unique intelligence. (I've had parents' eyes tear up when I say that to them... It's often their first acknowledgement from someone outside the family that raising their gifted child is far more of a challenge than others realize.)

My angle today is to offer a concrete example of how I'm using this strategy with my students, with the aim of perhaps giving the rest of you some ideas for how to use this strategy with your own gifted students or children.

There are certainly millions of books out there that gifted kids would love reading, but I know that "just any ol' book" wouldn't qualify for the purpose I have in mind. So I set some criteria for creating a booklist for this lesson:

First, in my case I am doing this with my 5th and 6th graders, so criteria #1 is that the content of the books has to be appropriate for them. While on my hunt for books to add to the list, I came across many that would be excellent to use in this way with older gifted kids, but I didn't feel comfortable putting them on the list for my 5th & 6th graders.

Secondly, I wanted books with a reading level of about 5th grade or higher, preferably higher if possible. Most of my 5th & 6th graders read on a high school level and I want the vocabulary and sentence structure to be challenging enough for them. [Yet, as any parent or teacher of a gifted child can tell you, getting criteria #1 and criteria #2 here to mesh together is not always easy!]

Third, I wanted books that have at least one main character who is relatively obviously gifted AND their giftedness is a relevant factor in the storyline. Again, I eliminated many otherwise-awesome books as candidates for the list because they didn't meet this criteria. But I stuck to it because what I have in mind for the students to do with their books wouldn't be nearly so relevant or even possible if the book didn't match this criteria. The exploration of giftedness (or some of its concomitant issues) had to be a factor of the book.

And fourth, I wanted a variety of books on the list, to meet the varying interests of my students. So some of them have a boy main character, some have a girl main character. Some are historical fiction, some are realistic fiction, some are science fiction, some are biographies, some are poetry, some are first-person accounts of real-life events, some are non-fiction, some are mysteries, and together they feature main characters from a variety of cultural and economic backgrounds, as well as different periods in time.

The kids have read through the list of books and each has chosen which book he or she wants to read. And I have given the kids bookmarks to use that have the following questions on them:

Their reading will be followed up with some group discussion of gifted characteristics and issues, and the kids will also have time to create some sort of project on their book that answers all or most of the above questions. What kind of project they do is very open-ended (write an essay, do a PowerPoint, give a speech, write a play or poem or song, do a poster or diagram, etc.)

This is not an exhaustive booklist by any means, but it's a start. I fully expect this list to grow as the years go by, and a few of these books could potentially even be taken off the list if they don't fit the criteria as well as I had thought they would. Feel free to add your own ideas and recommendations, keeping in mind criteria #3 most of all. (A special shout out of "thanks" goes to the librarians in my district whose expertise was invaluable in helping me put together this list!)

Alvin Webster’s Surefire Plan for Success and How it Failed by Sheila Greenwald.

Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry.

Apollo 13 by James Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.

Arilla Sun Down by Virginia Hamilton.

The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell. (For this purpose, an excellent book to combine with "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," listed below.)

Been Clever Forever by Bruce Stone.

Belle Prater’s Boy by Ruth White.

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Curtis.

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham.

Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson.

Children of the Atom by Wilmar Shiras.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

Deliver Us From Normal by Kate Klise.

Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations by Alex and Brett Harris.

Einstein: A Life in Science by John Gribbin and Michael White.

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.

Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis.

Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective by Donald Sobol.

The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt by Patricia MacLachlan.

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

Forever Changes by Brendan Halpin.

Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho by Jon Katz.

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story by Ben Carson.

Good Enough by Paula Yoo.

The Great Brain by John Fitzgerald.

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.

A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League by Ron Suskind.

Ida B: . . . and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

Kids Inventing! A Handbook for Young Inventors by Susan Casey.

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs.

Leonardo’s Notebooks by Leonardo da Vinci (edited by Anna Suh).

Letters From Rapunzel by Sara Lewis Holmes.

Libby on Wednesday by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

Maizon at Blue Hill by Jacqueline Woodson.

Matilda by Roald Dahl.

Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee.

More Than a Test Score: Teens Talk About Being Gifted, Talented, and Otherwise Extra-ordinary by Robert Schultz and James Delisle.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.

The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy by Diane Stanley.

My Thirteenth Winter by Samantha Abeel. (I had the opportunity to see Samantha Abeel give a keynote address at Edufest a couple of summers ago. It was absolutely fascinating to hear her real-life account of what it's like to be both gifted and learning disabled, or "twice exceptional.")

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.

Pride of the Peacock by Stephanie Tolan.

Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam (also titled "October Sky"). (Also an AWESOME movie!)

Saving Lilly by Peg Kehret.

The School for Cool by P. G. Kain.

Seeing Emily by Joyce Lee Wong.

Smart Talk: What Kids Say About Growing Up Gifted by Robert Schultz and James Delisle.

The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley by Duncan Blanchard.

Some Day Angeline by Louis Sachar.

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli.

Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie Tolan.

The Teenagers’ Guide to School Outside the Box by Rebecca Greene.

The Triple Chocolate Brownie Genius by Deborah Sherman.

The View From Saturday by E. L. Konisburg.

Walt Disney: An American Original by Bob Thomas.

The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane by Russell Freedman.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

More good lists of other possible books for this purpose can be found at the following links:

Hoagies' List of Books Featuring Gifted Children

Gifted Kids, Gifted Characters, and Great Books

Books for Gifted Children Featuring Gifted Children

Film and Fiction Dealing with Giftedness

GT World Reading Lists (click the "Books" link)

Mind the Gap: Engaging Gifted Readers

Juvenile & Young Adult Fiction & Biography: Giftedness

Resources for Students

To learn more about using bibliotherapy with gifted children, try these articles:

Nurturing Social and Emotional Development in Gifted Teenagers Through Young Adult Literature

Using Biography to Counsel Gifted Young Women

Guiding the Gifted Reader

Using Books to Heal and Enthuse Gifted Students

Role Models in Books and Movies

Gifted Fictional Characters

And check out this great book as a further resource: Some of My Best Friends Are Books by Judith Wynn Halsted.

Happy reading!

Great Expectations

2009-02-11T03:25:27Z

A couple of weeks ago, I had some group discussions with my fourth graders about the “Gifted Children’s Bill of Rights.” We sat around the poster in a semi-circle and I asked them to say which items, if any, struck a chord with them and why. (For anyone who hasn’t previously read the insightful list created by Del Siegle, you can read it and learn more in my previous post on the topic.)

It’s amazing what comes pouring out of these kids when given a safe zone to open up about their myriad of hidden struggles that almost no one ever notices. Although I frequently hold group discussions with the kids about many various topics (perfectionism, how to make friends who matter, self-advocacy, etc.), I never cease to be amazed by the insight, reflection, and level of struggle that they reveal in our discussions. A few of the kids expressed a desire to “put it in writing” for all of you, my readers here, so that a kid’s perspective in a kid’s own words might lend some additional angles of understanding. If/when they get it written, I’ll post it here for you (always with pseudonyms).

In the meantime, though, one segment of our conversations (their response to something I said) surprised even me (and I’ve pretty much heard it all after thirteen years).

Many of the kids said that #6 (“You have a right to make mistakes”) and #10 (“You have a right to not be gifted at everything”) really hit home with them. They talked about how they feel like everyone expects them to be perfect at everything, *all* the time. They gave examples that illustrated the reactions from others (classmates, parents, teachers) when they missed a word or two on their spelling tests. They talked about how it seems to them that everyone else just assumes they’ll know the answer to any question. They commiserated with one another over how frustrating it was to know internally that they weren’t perfect at everything, yet still feel like they had to live up to everyone else’s (perceived?) expectations of their perceived perfection. "I feel like any little thing I get wrong is seen by them as a giant black spot on my soul," one boy even said.

[A-Rod provides a timely example. He claims he juiced up because he felt he had to be THE best in order to live up to everyone's high expectations of him. Not that what he did was okay - it wasn't - but it illustrates the lengths some of these kids will go to if they think they are not up to the task of fulfilling whatever high expectations they perceive others hold of them.]

What also came through in the discussion was a point that, in my experience, has typically held true for gifted kids: They have far higher expectations of themselves than anyone else could ever have of them. Most of these kids are very internally driven. "Dad doesn't NEED to put this much pressure on me," one girl said. "I want to do well already, for me. His unreasonable expectations just stress me out and I probably end up doing worse than I would otherwise."

Not every student expressed a sense that their parents had unnecessarily high expectations of them. Others felt that it came from their teachers, and many said they sensed it from their classmates ("What do you mean you only got a 95% on the test? I got a 100%. Maybe I should be in GT and not you.")

While it was cathartic for them to let it all out in our discussion, I also sensed that their anxiety level regarding the topic was a bit inflamed. In an effort to ease that for them, I offered them a soothing insight, something I was certain they already knew but that they simply might appreciate being reminded of...

"Ya know, I'd like to just take a moment and say to all of you that I hope you know that while I realize you all have many things you're good at, I never expect for you to be perfect at anything. You are each simply human - you have strengths and weaknesses like anyone else. Sure, you might have some unusually exceptional abilities in one or more areas, but I don't think that should ever mean that you have to be 'perfect' in that or any other area. My 'expectations' of you are rather simple: That you learn how to work hard, that you put forth your reasonable best effort at learning and at challenges, and that you maintain a healthy perspective on what you can and cannot do in life. And I want you to know that I know being a gifted kid isn't exactly a charmed life all the time. I know there may be some struggles or issues that come with it. It's okay to mention those things to me. You may feel like you're the first smart kid ever in the whole world to struggle with making friends or to struggle with being different or to struggle with being sensitive, but I can assure you you're not. Anything you could bring up, I've probably heard before. And there are lots of kids just like you out there experiencing the same things. You're not alone, and I'm okay with you not being perfect."

Miley's response? "THANK YOU... SO... much... You are my hero for saying that. A huge load has just lifted up off my shoulders." Yes, that's what she said: "You are my hero for saying that." And others chimed in with similar sentiments.

I hadn’t realized how much they needed to hear it from ME, even...

Real or not, they perceive others' great expectations of them. I know all of their teachers and most of their parents, and I know that the adults in their lives (for the most part) don't have unreasonably high expectations of them (most of the time). And yet the kids still perceive it seemingly all of the time.

In part I was surprised by their response to my statement because I have always told my students that I don't expect them to get everything right in my classroom, especially not the first or second or tenth or twentieth time they try it. When we do analogies pages, for example, and they cringe or gasp when they get one-fourth of the problems on a page wrong, I tell them, "That's okay! It's supposed to be challenging here. It's a good sign. It means you're in the process of LEARNING something. If you got everything correct here on the first try, then I wouldn't be doing my job right. Getting some wrong means you're being stretched, it means you're in your Learning Zone, not in your Piece of Cake Zone." That's the kind of philosophy that I express to them in all that we do. And yet they still apparently develop a sense that my expectations of them are pretty high.

By telling them this, by utilizing this philosophy in my work with my students, it is not a matter of lowering my expectations of them. I’m simply letting them know that I have REALISTIC expectations of them. There's a difference, a very healthy difference...

Take a moment this week to tell a gifted child in your life that you don't expect him to be perfect. Take a moment this week to tell a gifted child in your life that you know being a gifted kid isn't the cakewalk others seem to think it is. Take a moment this week to tell a gifted child in your life that her intellectual growth and hard work ethic are far more important than perfect marks, even if it means a B in a challenging class. What we assume that others know about our views of them can be out-of-sync with reality. Tell them you know they're only human. You very well could be someone's hero for saying it.

The Echo in the Pipeline

2009-01-14T03:49:18Z

In a few days, one of my former GT students will begin her student teaching. She came to school with me one day last week to shadow me, to have an opportunity to observe and discuss some of what I do with my gifted students. Yes, she participated in the program when she was a kid, but she came this time with a different perspective – that of a soon-to-be teacher.

A few years ago, when Narysa was just beginning her college education, I encouraged her to come to a four-day AGATE (gifted education) conference that was taking place in the town where she was about to go to college. She was so enthusiastic about the opportunity! But I think it shocked her a bit back then when I told her that she would probably learn more in the four days of the conference about gifted students and how to reach them than she would in the next four years of her college education. My perspective in making that prediction (which proved true) was not so much one of pessimism, rather realism. I knew even then that our nation’s higher education institutions have a bleak track record of educating future teachers about this portion of their future student populations. As I’ve mentioned here previously, only 81 colleges or universities in America (out of thousands) offer coursework in Gifted Education.

Yes, gifted students are, in theory, covered in the “Exceptional Needs” type classes that are required (to the best of my knowledge) for all future teachers. But Narysa’s experience is likely quite typical of the reality: the amount of time spent in these and other classes covering gifted students is as minimal as one can get without actually avoiding it altogether. Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t great professors out there who DO make a point of covering this sub-population in depth and doing justice to preparing the future teachers in their classes for knowing how to understand and make accommodations for gifted students. But they are probably more the exception than the rule.

As she shadowed me throughout the day, Narysa talked about what it was like for her to bring up gifted students in her college education courses – when no one else, not even a professor, was making them a part of the broader conversation about teaching and education. She said, “They look at me like I’m from another planet. They automatically assume that I don’t care about all the other kids, which is totally NOT true. I ask a simple yet *important* question – like what to do for the gifted kids – and they practically roll their eyes at me.”

It just breaks your heart, doesn’t it?

And yet, after class, a student or two would seek her out and say, “Hey, I want to learn more about what you were talking about in class – the gifted students. Where can I learn more about them and what to do for them?”

Are they posing that question to the professors? No. She has become the go-to resident-expert on gifted students – based on 1) her participation in a four-day GT conference, 2) her personal experience in a GT program, and 3) the fact that she puts forth the effort in class to raise questions or to figure out how what is being taught can be applied to or adapted for gifted students.

She also talked about what it was like to be observing in area classrooms and see kids who were leaps ahead of the other kids, kids who quite possibly were gifted, all but banging their heads against the wall they were so bored going over material that was much too easy for them. “I just know there are things that can be done differently for those kids! I really feel for them. But, as ‘just’ a college student who is ‘just’ observing, how do I bring it up to a teacher who’s been teaching longer than I’ve been alive?”

How, indeed…

Despite her struggles and frustrations in the process of speaking up, it warms my heart to know that this future teacher is well on her way to being the kind of teacher who will reach and stretch all of the students in her classroom, including the often-overlooked gifted ones. And essentially it only took a four-day conference at the beginning of her college education to set her on that path. It created a starting line for her, and she has run with it.

With that in mind - Do you know a future teacher? Is there a student teacher in your school this semester, or a new teacher in your school this year? Think about what you could do to reach out to that person, to help educate him or her about gifted students, to begin to fill what is likely a hole in his or her knowledge base. Is there a conference or workshop you could sponsor his or her way to? Do you have a book on the shelf you could loan out? Do you have some great strategies to share that he or she could even witness in action in your classroom?

Reach out. Be a mentor who can help show them that this path even exists. You don’t have to be an “expert” to make a difference. If you read this blog, then I know it’s a topic you’re interested in and know at least a little bit about. Don’t worry that your “little bit” of knowledge isn’t enough – because it’s more than likely still more than they’ve yet to be exposed to. You have knowledge and experience that they (and their future gifted students) can gain from. So reach out to that new or soon-to-be teacher. Narysa’s voice needn’t echo in the pipeline.

Born? Made? Developed? Unstoppable?

2008-12-10T17:43:22Z

[ugh... I suppose it's now obvious to the whole world that I have too much on my plate this year, huh? Sorry for the delay everyone... Here is today's update.]

Hello, all! :o) The transcript for the recent EdWeek chat on "The Evolving Definition of Giftedness" can be accessed at this link HERE. It's a fairly long read (but of course very interesting), so leave yourself a half hour or so when you click the link to go read it.

Many of the questions posed in the chat were not specifically focused on the three authors' new book and the ideas in the book, rather, some questions were aimed at more general Gifted Ed issues, such as identification measures or meeting the needs of twice exceptional learners. But there were also some questions that aimed at getting the authors' insights as to whether "giftedness" can be "taught" or if it is innate ("constitutional pre-dispositions" is the term preferred by one author). Whether giftedness is born, made, developed, or unstoppable (the "in spite of") is, always has been, and likely will continue to be a hotly debated question in education, especially in the field of gifted education.

As the authors allude to in the chat, there tends to be a straight-line process in America for determining giftedness, a process that essentially boils down to "give the kid a test, determine the kid's score, and - if the score is above a certain mark - stamp the kid with a G for gifted for the rest of his life." (Okay, so I'm simplifying dramatically, but you know what I'm getting at...)

But that is essentially what we do in many, many places across the country.

Not that I don't understand WHY that's common practice. That kind of a process makes it all so "easy." It takes out all the messiness of having to examine oodles of data and explain why Kid A "gets in" and Kid B doesn't. The explanation becomes the test performance. IQ is 128? Sorry. Try again next year. (Nevermind the child's four-grade-levels-above reading level. Nevermind the test's margin of error. Nevermind the 99th percentile that the kid scored on the state assessment two years in a row.)

But, of course, when I look at the challenge of identifying these kids through the lens of a community that looks far different from mine, I become more sympathetic to the daunting task. We have school districts in our nation that are so big their student populations exceed the total population of my entire state. I live in an itty-bitty microcosm by comparison. But if I were in charge of identification for a district that had hundreds of thousands of students... well, I'd probably be using a process that looks far different from the one I'm using now. [That realization struck me at NAGC when I attended a session about the K-BIT. Hearing someone say, "We have 800,000 students in our District and this is the research that shows that the K-BIT is a useful screener in our identification process" made me see an angle to the identification dilemma which I hadn't fully understood before... that big districts have a numbers issue! (i.e. population)]

[Was that my fourth tangent already in just five paragraphs‽ ;o)]

So I was intrigued to read in the interview how the authors handled the whole "nature vs. nurture" question of giftedness. Many of the comments y'all wrote after my previous post highlight this debate. (Kudos for participating! And I imagine today's info will generate even more discussion/debate along that line...)

I've grabbed a few statements from the interview that illustrate some thought-provoking ideas on the topic. (I do, once again, encourage you to read the full transcript of the chat to get a better picture of their ideas. These snippets will give you a good glimpse but not the full picture. I did my best to grab pieces that offered a broad overview rather than ideas out of context, but the best way to get the full context is frankly to read the whole thing if you have the time.)

"Twenty-three years ago we used 'gifted' and 'talented' as categorical attributes which, once declared were considered permanent characteristics. Now, in 2008, the field has moved on so that giftedness and talent are more properly thought of as individual differences that are in dynamic change across the life span. In this perspective gifted and talented behavior can appear at different points in development and once in evidence may or may not continue." (Frances Degen Horowitz)

"The definition of 'gifted' that I like the best focuses on exceptional learning needs requiring some kind of educational adaptation -- something like 'Exceptionally advanced in one subject or another such that accommodations must be made to the educational programming normally given.'" (Dona Matthews) [Hmmm... sounds a bit like a learning difference... ;o)]

"All children and adults have strengths, but not everyone has abilities that could lead to outstanding performance or the development of great ideas." (Rena Subotnik)

"The developmental theory I put forward is actually an attempt to re-frame the nature-nurture debate into a consideration of the interaction of constitutional and environmental variables as they affect development. I do not use the terms 'innate ability.' Rather, I prefer to think about individuals as having constitutional pre-dispositions. I think these pre-dispositions can certainly be nurtured." (FDH)

"We do not know if all of this can be 'taught' but I think it is fair to say that many of these behaviors can be nurtured. In some cases they will not develop without nurturance; in some cases these abilities appear to develop even in some not particularly nurturing contexts." (FDH)

"We are arguing that giftedness can be developed rather than taught." (RS)

"The paradigm shift that we discuss --away from a categorical perspective on giftedness, and toward a developmental one-- is a lot more palatable and politically acceptable, mostly because it effectively addresses traditional nay-sayers' misconceptions about giftedness." (DM)

"Exceptional abilities are developed and often nurtured and... giftedness is not a static characteristic over the life span." (FDH)

"Address whatever gifted learning needs you see developing in your children as they develop, understanding that development is uneven and variable over time, and that there are many important dimensions developing simultaneously, in addition to the cognitive, including emotional, social, and physical." (DM)

"The implications of what we are saying is that assessment for gifted and talented behavior should not be a one-time evaluation that results in labeling a child as gifted or not gifted then and forever after." (FDH)

"It seems to me we've got two major objectives in gifted education: (1) nurturing the abilities of those students who are exceptionally advanced relative to their age peers, and (2) fostering giftedness more broadly in diverse others. Both of these involve lots of teaching, but it's not about teaching kids to be gifted, more about LISTENING and RESPONDING, and then nurturing and fostering what we see needing to be developed in the kids." (DM)

"SPED generally is moving toward a much more dynamic and flexible approach to understanding learning differences, an approach that we need in gifted ed. Ultimately, it's all about finding a good learning match for every learner, right?" (DM)

It all reminds me of a statement that the professor for my "Assessment and Evaluation" class made one day. [This was maybe my sophomore year of undergrad... Why THIS random statement of his has stuck with me so clearly, I have no idea, but I've always remembered it...] He said, "You're a band, not a point." ...the essence being that any test or measurement can give a good general idea about a learner's abilities or understanding of a concept, but on any other given day the person would test a little bit differently. One day a child might come out as a 100 IQ, a few weeks later as a 98 IQ, and a few weeks after that as a 107 IQ. His point was that the results of any given test (assuming it is reliable and valid) should be considered a good general idea of a (reasonable) range rather than an exact, fixed point. It's the "-ish" factor. (Note that an individual "-ish" does not stretch across the entire spectrum!)

We may not have control over what we start with, but we do have some control over what we do with (or don't do with) whatever we began with. And teachers and parents can play a big role in providing opportunities for development (or setting up roadblocks that impede development). As the authors point out above, it's not about "teaching" everyone to "be" gifted. It's about paying attention to the kids and then providing them what they need as learners. And some kids have "exceptional learning needs requiring some kind of educational adaptation." Let's not neglect to stretch their bands, too.

The Evolving Definition of Giftedness

2008-11-18T22:11:51Z

This is somewhat short notice for y'all, but I thought I'd mention it for those of you who don't subscribe to the EdWeek updates (which I know a number of you don't). So FYI for anyone interested who doesn't already know...

Tomorrow (Wednesday, November 19th), EdWeek will be hosting a live chat with the three authors of a new book, titled "The Development of Giftedness and Talent Across the Life Span." I haven't read the book yet myself, but there is an article about it here that you could read to get some idea of what it's about.

EdWeek's publicized info about this live chat:

This Week's Live Chat: The Evolving Definition of Giftedness
When: Wednesday, November 19, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time
Where: go to http://www.edweek-chat.org
To submit questions in advance, click here.

"For years, giftedness was considered to be a static category, with children either possessing the trait or not. But developmental theory has now led to more nuanced view of what makes some people gifted. Instead of being innate and immutable, giftedness can be nurtured and even taught—and if ignored, it can also be lost.

"Please join our guests, the three editors of the upcoming book "The Development of Giftedness and Talent Across the Life Span," who will talk about what researchers currently believe about giftedness, and its implication for classroom practice.

"About the guests:

"Frances Degen Horowitz is a university professor and president emerita at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

"Rena F. Subotnik is the director of the Center for Gifted Education Policy at the American Psychological Association.

"Dona J. Matthews is currently a visiting professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, engaged in several writing projects, and working with families and schools on issues relating to gifted education. From 2003 to 2007, she was the director of the Center for Gifted Studies and Education at Hunter College, the City University of New York.

"No special equipment other than Internet access is needed to participate in this text-based chat. A transcript will be posted shortly after the completion of the chat."

I'll post a link to the full transcript after it's finished in case anyone is interested in reading it.

I know the readers of "Unwrapping the Gifted" have a variety of ideas, opinions, and questions about the nature of giftedness, so this would be an opportunity for y'all to pose some great questions!

This Year's Kid, not Next Year's Teacher

2008-11-11T06:35:36Z

There are a lot of reasons why the academic needs of our gifted students aren’t always met, among them lack of teacher training, lack of funding, lack of accurate data on student learning needs (or lack of acting upon the data we do have), lack of awareness about these students and the effects that little challenge can bring about for them, and so on.

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of great things happening for the advanced learners in our nation’s schools. There are. But there are also many ways the learning needs of these kids AREN’T being met. And while lack of awareness and lack of teacher training (among other things) can account for large portions of the deficit (note my previous post on how few future-teachers are ever taught about gifted learners), misinformed excuses account for some of the rest.

The hundreds and hundreds of teachers I know have great hearts. They are good people with the best of intentions and, to a person, they want to do right by their students. I do not mean to negate that reality by calling our profession on the carpet today. I’m simply aiming with this post to hold up a little mirror to help us see the flaws in the default positions we so easily fall back on.

What are those default positions? I’m willing to bet we have all either said or heard most of the following:

* “Give it a couple years – the other kids will catch up.”
* “Schools don’t need to worry about gifted students because those kids are already where they need to be.”
* “If I let you do that, then I’ll have to let all the other kids do that, too.”
* “It’s elitist to target only certain students for accelerated learning opportunities.”
* “I don't have time to challenge students who are already meeting the benchmarks. I have too many other kids I need to get up to par.”
* “Identifying some kids as "gifted" only makes all the other kids feel badly about themselves. We should just treat them all the same.”
* “But all children are gifted.”
* "My school has a gifted program. I let the gifted teacher worry about those kids.
* “If only that gifted student would bother doing his assigned work, I might consider giving him something different to do.”
* “But if I move you ahead in the subject this year, then what will next year’s teacher do with you?”

Let’s examine these more closely…

* “Give it a couple years – the other kids will catch up.”
Okay, so if my sister had put her basketball talents on hold for a couple of years, I could’ve magically caught up with her? I suppose the fact that she was six inches taller than me didn’t matter either, nor the fact that I just wasn't all that good at basketball. Do we say to a 10-year-old version of Dara Torres, “Don’t worry about working so hard at your swimming, hon, the other kids will be swimming as well as you in a couple of years.” This “give it a couple years” excuse implies that an “early bloomer’s” learning curve will stagnate, that there’s essentially “no point” in putting any effort into continued growth because the other kids will get to that level someday, too. But this isn’t about "the other kids." This is about each kid having the opportunity to grow in his or her learning. You’re ready for a size 6 shoe? Well, give it a couple years and the other kids will be wearing a size 6 shoe, too. In the meantime, little Johnny sprouts up to a size 8. I find a terrifying metaphor of stunted growth in images of the bound feet of Chinese women. We need to quit putting bricks on these kids’ heads and let them grow in their learning! There IS a point to putting effort into continued growth... because learning matters.

* “Schools don’t need to worry about gifted students because those kids are already where they need to be.”
If, by "where they need to be," you mean the standardized bar set by education wonks of the realistic average expectations of a child of a certain age, then sure, our gifted learners have reached (*cough* surpassed) that bar. But do we say to a 12-year-old, "Oh, you're 5 feet 8 inches tall already? We need to let the other kids catch up to you in height, so we're going to stop feeding you for a couple years until they do." Of course we don't. That would be negligent. But shouldn't it be equally negligent to stop feeding a child's intellectual growth? Where these kids (all kids) need to "be" is learning and growing academically. Where they need to be is moving on from where they are, wherever that happens to be. EVERY child should be able to learn and grow intellectually. But just because our gifted learners have met or exceeded what for them are low expectations doesn't mean it's okay for us to not put any effort into them as learners. If the child can already spell the week's spelling list on Monday, that doesn't mean, "Whew - one less kid for Teacher to worry about." That SHOULD MEAN a different spelling list for that child so he can learn how to spell some new words.

* “If I let you do that, then I’ll have to let all the other kids do that, too.”
Well, if all the other kids CAN do that, then why aren't they?

* “It’s elitist to target only certain students for accelerated learning opportunities.”
Ah, elitism... There's nothing wrong with being an elite athlete (and taking advantage of the opportunities that come with it), but dare to be an elite learner and the antipathy of society comes raining down upon you, even if you're only six years old. How about this perspective on elitism... Couldn't it be viewed as elitist to place egalitarian ideals above a child's right to learn? Couldn't it be viewed as elitist to not devote effort to teaching (stretching) children whose learning capacity is 'inconveniently' fast for our school systems? Couldn't it be viewed as elitist to "teach" a child content she has already mastered because we think "it will be good for her" to be there to help the other kids learn it? In my opinion, yes. I know we don't set out to be "elitist" in these ways, but I do see it as an unintended consequence of our resistance to doing what's necessary for these learners. It should never be elitist to provide each child what he or she needs to best learn! Doing so should simply be the right thing to do.

* “I don't have time to challenge students who are already meeting the benchmarks. I have too many other kids I need to get up to par.”
So if you don’t have time to reach every child where he or she is and move them on from there – if you don’t have time to challenge every kid at their learning readiness level – how do you decide which kids will get an education this year? How do you decide which kids will get to learn and which ones will be denied their potential degree of educational growth? Because that's essentially what this statement boils down to... saying we don't have time to educate some of the children in our classrooms is in essence saying that we are choosing to educate some students and not others. I don't deny that teachers are incredibly busy and overworked people. I, myself, haven't been keeping up here at "Teacher Magazine" because I've been swamped with so many other things. As teachers, our to-do lists are never-ending, complex, varied, and ever-changing. But we signed up to be educators. We signed up to educate. If we make no significant efforts to teach the most advanced learners in our classes (along with teaching all the other kids, too, of course), then we aren't actually teaching these kids. This is one place where administrators can come in and be a great help to their teachers (and thereby their students). Administrators have the power to tweak schedules, provide teacher training opportunities, guide a schoolwide focus, and influence policy. Hopefully teachers have some say in those matters, too, but for all the administrators out there - you can make a big difference for the gifted learners in your schools by taking a leadership stance about educating these kids.

* “Identifying some kids as "gifted" only makes all the other kids feel badly about themselves. We should just treat them all the same.”
Here’s one response to that. Stephanie Tolan, who was one of the three authors of “Guiding the Gifted Child,” (among other books) said recently, “You don’t have the moral right to hold one child back to make another child feel better.” Re-read that and let it sink in for a minute... Do we do that? Do we hold some kids back because we're worried about the feelings of other children? You bet we do. We say we can't have leveled math groups because the kids who aren't in the highest group will feel badly about themselves. We say we can't have leveled reading groups because the kids who aren't in the highest reading group will feel badly about themselves. But ya know what really happens? It's the gifted kid who ends up feeling badly about himself because he’s treading water with no goal in sight, because he's constantly encountering roadblocks in his learning, because no one recognizes what he can really do, and because he's not learning to his capacity. (How come we don't consider his feelings?) It's easy to pretend that there is no impact on the child because we often don't see the impact of lack of challenge until further down the road. But there is indeed an impact. And I agree with Stephanie. This is a MORAL issue, and we as teachers don't have the moral right to hold one child back just to make another child supposedly feel better about himself. We need to support and strengthen all kids' self-efficacy and self-esteem - and find ways to do so that don't involve sacrificing another child's learning potential in the process. It is not okay to sacrifice any child's learning potential. If we have concerns about the feelings of other children, then we should address that issue by explaining to kids that it's our job as schools to figure out what's best for each learner and then to provide it. The language we use in talking with kids about these things can go a long way to prevent any hard feelings. Besides, the kids know who the best reader in the class is, even if we aren't providing that child challenging reading material, even if we aren't "pointing it out" by splitting the kids into reading groups. We need to teach each and every child, including the ones who are 'ahead of the game' - and that means owning up to not having the moral right to hold some kids back just to make other kids feel better.

* “But all children are gifted.”
I think when people say this, they mean that all kids are special, all kids have something they're good at, and all kids have something unique and wonderful to offer the world. Of course! But all kids do not learn as gifted children learn. Try this logic on: So "all kids are gifted" because all kids have something they're good at? Well, we all have something we're not good at, too. So, therefore, are we all retarded or disabled? It's absurd, and we easily recognize just how absurd when it's turned inside-out like that. It should sound just as absurd to say "all kids are gifted" because "gifted" isn't about specialness or contributing to the world or 'being good' at something. It's a learning difference. And as long as we remain in denial about this learning difference's existence, we will continue to be denying our gifted students the education they are capable of.

"My school has a gifted program. I let the gifted teacher worry about those kids."
These children don't become un-gifted when they enter your classroom. Their learning needs don't matter solely in the gifted resource classroom. We make accommodations in our classrooms for children whose learning needs are on the other end of the spectrum. We recognize that grade level material is not always the appropriate learning resource for those kids. We make adjustments according to what is best for the child. Most of us have been trained in how to do this and most schools have enough special ed personnel to aid us in the process. But when it comes to making adjustments according to what is best for a gifted learner, we have two strikes already against us. #1 Most teachers have received little or no training on how to do this, and #2 Most schools are severely understaffed of qualified gifted ed personnel. (As one example, there are only about 40 FTE in gifted ed positions in the entire state of Montana... that's less than a whole person per county!) In order to do what's best for these learners, we really do need to work together throughout the day to reach (i.e. teach) them where they are.

* “If only that gifted student would bother doing his assigned work, I might consider giving him something different to do.”
Imagine if, in order to begin your job each day (the learning opportunity that stretches you to new levels) you had to first fill out a few worksheets on Bloom’s Taxonomy (or some other concept you've mastered) to be able to get in the door. As adults, we wouldn’t stand for it. As adults, when a learning opportunity isn’t reaching us where we are – if we’ve been through it all before – we resent having to sit through it again. Do you like to go to professional development opportunities when the presenter isn’t delving into the topic any deeper than you’ve already mastered it? Nope. We get up and walk out. We can. But the kids are stuck. Assigned work that provides no educational growth for a child is busy work to fill time. In the real world, businesses don’t hire employees to stay busy and fill time. They hire them to FULFILL A PURPOSE. A gifted child isn't in your classroom to raise your test scores or to be a good role model or to dutifully re-hash material she has already mastered. She's in your classroom to LEARN. That is her purpose to fulfill there. The steps to take to make that happen could involve recognizing that some of the assigned work isn't appropriate learning material for that child. Yet still making her do it first as some sort of "entrance fee" before she can do the work that IS appropriate learning material for her is - well - cruel. And yes, I'm deciding to use that word. Ask the gifted kids. When they have to do both the assigned, too-easy, regular work and the challenging extra work, they see one or the other as a "punishment" for being smart.

* “But if I move you ahead in the subject this year, then what will next year’s teacher do with you?”
Our focus in the classroom should be the KIDS, not our colleagues. It is not okay to not teach a child just because some hypothetical teacher in the future might not know how to move the child on from that point. It is not okay to not teach a child just because "next year's teacher" won't know what to do with him. Ya know what? Next Year's Teacher could retire or move away or take maternity leave. You don't really know for sure who Next Year's Teacher will be. But you DO know for sure who This Year's Kid is. Teach This Year's Kid!

Feel free to add any others you may have heard (or even said) in the comments section. You can find additional examples at the Hoagies site in the “Ridiculous Things I Heard Today” section.

Just some food for thought to challenge our default positions...

Think It Off

2008-10-08T15:03:25Z

One morning last week, I was working during recess in the Computer Lab at one of our elementary schools when one of my third graders popped in. "Oh! Ms. Fish! I want to come in here during recess and do some research about space and astronauts, but my teacher said I could only do it if someone was in here with me. Will you be in here for a little while?"

"Sure thing - come on in. You can use this computer next to me."

He opened up a browser page and headed off to his first destination. A moment later, he looked up at me and said, "I don't like recess," and followed that statement with a grin: "I like to LEARN! My favorite classes are GT, Library, Music, and regular class." (He listed them off on his fingers.) I could really do without PE and recess."

My first reaction to hearing him say "I like to LEARN!" was "oh, cute!" But I quickly became surprised... This little guy is *very* active. He oozes energy from every pore. He's the kind of kid that some would refer for an ADHD evaluation. He has one speed (fast) and one volume (loud) and his middle name must be "Wiggle."

I was suprised because I had figured he was the kind of kid who loved recess, the kind of kid who needed recess. I had thought that recess was his way to "run it off."

But he apparently doesn't feel that need.

And then a couple days later, I thought to myself... "Maybe he needs to think it off..."

So I asked him this morning... "What gets rid of your extra energy?"

"Learning! Learning helps me get rid of energy. Sometimes learning even wears me out if it's hard enough. I like the harder problems better than the easy ones."

I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised. This is the same little guy who, back in 1st grade, had trouble walking down the hall with his class without getting his hands into everything along the way or spinning in circles while walking. What was his teacher's strategy for helping him learn how to manage himself in the hallway? As the kids were lined up in the classroom by the door, before leaving the room, she would tell him a three-digit math problem. He would figure it out in his head while walking down the hall and then tell his teacher the answer when they arrived at their destination. By figuring out a challenging problem along the way, his energy had been re-directed to thinking. This little strategy worked consistently with him!

Is there a brilliant but extra-energetic little one in your class? Maybe there's a way you can help him to think it off.

A special "hello!" to everyone that I met in Kansas this past weekend at the KGTC conference! I look forward to seeing many of you again in Tampa. :o)