From
“Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted,”
http://www.sengifted.org/
Director's
Corner
Former SENG
Director Carolyn K. is the Director and founder of Hoagies’ Gifted Education
Page (www.hoagiesgifted.org) and Hoagies’ Kids and Teens Page (www.hoagieskids.org).
Carolyn K. will present “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Gifted, In 90
Minutes or Less. Seriously!” at this summer’s 25th
Anniversary SENG Conference.
Gifted Education: What I Wished I
Knew Sooner!
By Carolyn K.
I started
learning about gifted education by accident of birth: my first daughter’s
birth. As with most things she’s taught me, I had no idea I was learning at
first. Over the years, I’ve learned a great deal about gifted education; and
there are a few things that I wished I’d learned much earlier…
1.Giftedness comes in different levels.
Not all
gifted kids are the same. My first learning experience in education was with
our elementary school principal, as my daughter was enrolled for first grade.
The principal explained that “Gifted is like a light switch – it’s either on or
off.” I can’t put it any other way: she was wrong.
Some
children are moderately gifted, and need a little more depth and breadth than
the regular curriculum offers. These are the kids who usually thrive in the
typical gifted pull-out program, spending a few hours a week with their
same-age gifted peers doing fun extension work.
Other
gifted kids are more than “just plain gifted.” These children used to be
identified as highly, exceptionally, or profoundly gifted; but the latest
versions of IQ tests aren’t designed to differentiate levels of giftedness. The
high ability of these kids may be obvious – reading
Even among
the most highly gifted children, there are differences. One child might be a
prodigious writer or artist; another might excel in mathematics, mastering
calculus before he enters puberty; while a third might prefer to learn all she
can about the sciences and search for the cure for cancer. Gifted children may
not find a social fit among their age-peers, and not all gifted children will
get along with each other. It’s important that we allow them to spend time
among their academic peers, and help them to find those true friends they seek.
Resources from Carolyn K.
Here are
some recommendations on the Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page and elsewhere:
-
Professional development courses in giftedness: www.hoagiesgifted.org/
professional_development.htm
- On-line
support groups that focus on gifted and twice exceptional for teachers,
parents, and kids:www.hoagiesgifted.org/online_support.htm
- An
introduction to twice-exceptional children for parents and educators:
TheSpotlight on 2e series of booklets:www.2enewsletter.com.
- A guide
to enriching the gifted child’s education in the classroom: Teaching Gifted
Kids in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use
to Meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talented, by Susan Winebrenner
- Free
full curriculum units for grades K-12: www.hoagiesgifted.org/
investigations.htm
- Free
high school and college-level curriculum options in all
subjects:www.hoagiesgifted.org/online_hs.htm
Along with
different levels of giftedness, there are different educational options for
gifted children. A Nation Deceived(http://www.nationdeceived.org/),
a report detailing years of research, shows that our gifted children need an
appropriate education, and that there are many different ways to provide the
accelerated education that can meet their needs.
2. Most
teachers and administrators are not experts in gifted education.
It’s not
their fault, but it’s true. Most teachers and administrators (as well as
counselors, psychologists, and doctors) have no formal education in giftedness.
If they’re lucky, in four years of pre-service education there might have been
a single chapter in a special education course that mentioned gifted children.
More likely, according to an informal survey by Jim Delisle, Professor of
Education at
What does
this mean for teachers who encounter a gifted or exceptionally gifted child? It
means they must do their own research and reading to learn how to serve the
child appropriately. Thanks to the Internet, that’s not as hard as it sounds.
There are support groups for teachers of the gifted, and plenty of research and
resources on gifted education. The Internet even offers professional
development programs for teachers.
What does
this mean for parents who encounter a teacher who just “doesn’t get” their
gifted child? It means that we parents have the opportunity to work together
with the teacher to both grow and learn along the way – keeping in mind that
it’s a fine line to walk between “helpful partner” and “pushy parent.” It’s a
path we can, and must, learn to walk, with practice and with help from the
Internet. There we can find support groups for parents of the gifted as well as
research and other resources.
3.
Gifted children can also be learning disabled.
Many
people assume that gifted and learning disabled are opposite ends of the same
scale. Teachers may assume that a child, identified as gifted but struggling in
school, is simply lazy or unmotivated. At the same time, they may assume that a
child identified as learning disabled cannot possibly be gifted. I wish I’d
known sooner that neither of these assumptions is true. A child can be both
gifted and learning disabled, a combination also known as “dually identified,”
“twice exceptional,” or “2e.”
Some
estimates put the number of gifted and learning disabled children at up to 10
percent of all gifted children, similar to the percentage of learning disabled
children in the general population. Once a child is identified with a single learning
disability (LD), the odds that she has additional LDs are much greater.
Imagine
being a gifted child with amazing strengths in some areas, while at the same
time struggling with basic learning skills that everyone assumes should come
easily to a bright child. It can’t be easy to live in that body. To some
parents’ surprise, they discover, as they investigate their child’s dual
exceptionality, that they too were gifted/LD children.
Common
disabilities that effect learning among gifted children include
Asperger Syndrome and AD/HD. Gifted children can also have disabilities
affecting visual or auditory processing, dyslexia affecting their reading and
spelling skills, sensory processing disorder, and nonverbal learning disorder,
among other LDs.
Disabilities
are often overlooked at first because of gifted children’s ability to
compensate for their own weaknesses. Many gifted dyslexics aren’t discovered
until third or fourth
grade, when the reading requirements of school surpass the
child’s ability to memorize and work around reading difficulties. AD/HD and
other executive function disabilities might not show up until middle or high
school, when the organizational demands of school surpass the gifted child’s
ability to hide her difficulties.
Conversely,
if the disability is severe enough to be noticed in the lower grades, it’s the
child’s giftedness that might be overlooked. The fact that a child with AD/HD
cannot sit still will be noticed long before his ability to learn much
higher-level material may be discovered. The gifted and Asperger’s child may
look out of place socially from the earliest grades, overshadowing his advanced
academic abilities.
4.
Gifted education doesn’t have to be elitist or expensive.
In our
egalitarian society, we want all children to have an equal opportunity to a
good education, but that doesn’t mean that all kids learn at the same pace and
at the same academic level. Many people believe that identifying certain
children as gifted is a bad thing, that it creates a class structure between
the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Further, they feel that if the gifted
education program is something that all children can benefit from, but is
offered only to those identified as gifted, then the
program is, indeed, elitist.
Gifted
children come from all income levels, and all ethnic backgrounds. If we believe
that gifted education divides children along socio-economic boundaries, then
we’re doing gifted identification wrong.
Many of
our gifted children today find themselves in public schools stretched to the
breaking point, especially in the time of No Child Left Behind. How can these
schools ethically allocate money to the education of gifted children, who are
already able to pass the annual high-stakes achievement tests? When we ask this,
we are asking the wrong question. Instead, we should ask: How can we ethically
ignore the appropriate education of an entire subset of the student population,
the gifted children?
Gifted
education that consists of museum visits, robotic equipment, puzzles, and games
is not truly gifted education. It may entertain the gifted kids to the point
where the promise of the “fun” gifted program for a few hours each week can get
them to sit quietly the rest of the week. But that “fun”
enrichment program isn’t necessarily appropriate. It’s not meeting the
educational needs of most gifted children. They need to learn at their own
level, and their own pace and depth, just like all other children.
This can
happen in the regular classroom. Some subjects lend themselves to more in-depth
study; and many kids, not just the gifted child, would benefit from greater
depth and enrichment. Social studies is an example.
With this subject it’s likely that a few kids, including the gifted child,
would love to do their own research and present their findings to the class.
Other
subjects don’t lend themselves as easily to enrichment, like spelling. Once a
child has mastered spelling of most three letter words, it’s time to advance.
Adding c-a-t, r-a-t, and b-a-t when the child can already spell
d-i-f-f-i-c-u-l-t and t-a-s-k doesn’t help – it’s time to accelerate the
curriculum. Basic arithmetic, too, is difficult to enrich. Once a child can add
numbers without carrying, it’s time to learn about carrying. Once she can
multiply 3-digit numbers, it’s time to move forward – learning to multiply
4-digit and 5-digit numbers is a trivial enrichment.
While
there are classes elsewhere in the building at the gifted child’s current
education level, there is always a no-cost option for that child. It might take
a little coordination on the part of the teachers, but isn’t a child’s
education worth a little scheduling effort?
Once a child passes the level of courses in her school or district,
there are free or nearly free distance education options available, with just a
little teacher supervision.
These are
four things I wish I understood back when I first journeyed into gifted
education. I share them with you in the
hopes that you do not have to reinvent the journey that has taken me 10 years to travel!