Being Gifted

This week I have noticed that the majority of students through the office are our highest students. It makes me remember when I was in third grade - one day, I took my name tag off of my desk, said I quit school, and walked out of the classroom. I am certainly not advocating for students who are disrespectful in the classroom - I merely want to illustrate a point regarding our highest students. We expect our high performers to also be our best behaved students. We expect them to sit still and wait patiently while we teach to the middle. My third grade experience shows what happens when our highest students cannot wait for us to engage them, to challenge them, and to teach them.

So, what prevents us from truly challenging our highest students? Why do we have to develop programs, special classrooms, and even schools for students who are inquisitive, who read voraciously, who think divergently, or who see the world through a different lens?

Gifted students in your classroom may challenge the status quo. They can be seen as disrespectul (or insolent, as my mother liked to say as I was growing up). They can struggle in social situations. They can laugh at things that no one else understands (when I was in 6th grade, I would make up jokes that no one laughed at but me and my parents went to my teacher to ask if there might be something wrong with me). Teachers have to be able to identify these gifted students in order to really maximize their potential and push them to the next level. The teacher who took me into her third grade class after my parents switched my classroom and the teacher who told my parents that I wasn't crazy, just gifted, both had significant impact on the trajectory of my life. Now imagine the power that a teacher can have on the gifted, young, African-American male who is continuously confronted with images of violence and who is conflicted about how he can be both smart and street smart.

We need to be champions of our gifted students. They have to be encouraged, pushed, challenged, and developed. We cannot continue to have an educational system that requires conformity as the mainstay of elementary school instruction and that does not allow students to find appropriate challenges until middle or high school. We cannot hold them responsible to a higher standard of behavior because they are bright. They should not be punished for being precocious or challenging the system. We need to teach them to use their voices - to speak articulately and to channel their passion into causes that are meaningful to them. We must give them purpose. We must push them to imagine, to innovate, to develop their ideas and their skills, and to exceed our expectations and our own skill sets.

When my oldest son was in Kindergarten, he read on a 2nd grade level. The teacher did not believe me when I told her at the beginning of the year, but at parent teacher conferences in October she was excited to tell me that my son could read. When I pushed for instruction at his level, she sent him to another teacher for work on his handwriting for an hour and a half each week (he is now 16 and his handwriting is still completely illegible). My point is that we miss so many opportunities to meet children's needs when we think we are the only ones with the answers. If there is a student in your class who is gifted and you cannot meet their needs, find someone who can. Find a way to push them, engage them, and show them how they can succeed!