Helping your gifted students Go for the Gold requires exceptional teaching

Would we ever consider sending our Olympic athletes to Sochi without a coach?   How are the athletes in Sochi similar to intellectually and creatively gifted learners?  How are they different?  How do we as teachers coach our gifted students toward academic and creative greatness?  

According to Renzulli, giftedness occurs when we have above average ability, commitment to task, and high levels of creativity.   This definition fits our Olympic athletes, although I wonder how much creativity it takes to ride the luge.  I guess I will have to ask Erin Hamlin of the United States.  

Athletic ability is one area of giftedness according to the Marland Report of 1973.  That proves that our best athletes are highly gifted.  But with millions, perhaps billions, of people watching the Olympics from around the world that seems like a given. 

According to the Columbus definition, "Giftedness is asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching and counseling in order for them to develop optimally."  I can’t imagine our athletes experiencing asynchrony.  

Perhaps when they were young and trying to do difficult “tricks” they saw their heroes performing perfectly that might have caused some feelings of asynchrony.  Asynchrony is more common for our intellectually and creatively gifted kids?  They have these amazing ideas in their heads but they sometimes cannot get those ideas out onto the paper.  The sculptures or models do not come out quite the way they had planned.  This can lead to complete emotional breakdowns.  Shaun White experienced a failure to medal in this year’s Olympics.  Things didn't quite come out the way he wanted them to.  But, he showed children everywhere, how to lose with grace.  That is a lesson I hope every child brings with into adulthood.  Especially our gifted kids because it can sometimes be difficult to deal with failure when you always do things well.  It is easier to learn how to fail when you are young, with the help of a wise parent or mentor, than when you are older and haven’t failed until you hit your first difficult class in college or a situation you didn't handle correctly in the workplace.  Those kinds of failures can seem far more crippling if you haven’t had instruction or modeling in how to fail gracefully and pick yourself back up.  I image Shaun has had many failures along the way and learned lessons that he was able to share with the world.  

The Olympics begin with a dream.  For most athletes, reaching their dreams requires countless hours of training for both their mind and their bodies.  In the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, he says that is takes 10,000 hours to master a topic.  That made perfect sense to me until I read an article by Tony Manfred discussing a book called The Sports Gene.  If both Shaun White and I began snowboarding at the age of 5 and roughly spent the same number of hours on the half pipe, with the same level of coaching, I cannot imagine that we would be at the same level of mastery in the sport.  Our genetic makeup is quite different and I am not so keen about being upside down over hard packed snow. 

This seems true for gifted kids as well.  It takes gifted kids 1-2 repetitions to master information, where it might take the average student between 8-15 repetitions to understand the same piece of information.  This means that a gifted student will need far less practice than the average student.  It would also mean that the 10,000 hour rule would be debunked because the number of hours of practice is far different depending on the skills and level of task commitment each person possesses.  It stirs up the age old question of nature vs. nurture.

There is a lot of competition to get into gifted programs.  Like Olympic athletes, some students are recognized early, while others do not start “training” until they are in Jr. High or even High School.    For gifted students, great “training” comes in the form of highly trained gifted teachers and/or intellectual mentors.  Ideally a student would train with someone who knows more than they do about topics they are interested in.  In some cases, this intimidates teachers.  If the student is working beyond the teacher’s level, then together they need to find the best print, digital, and human resources for the gifted learner so they can proceed to the next level.

It would be a crime to keep our best athletes from reaching their dream.  If the talent is there and the desire is strong we help them achieve their goals.  The same should be true for our best and brightest students. If they are committed to the task, have a high degree of skill and creativity, we should challenge them beyond where they are currently working, and help them take the intellectually journey toward greatness.  Not offering gifted students well equipped coaches, would be like the ring malfunction at the opening ceremony in Sochi when the final ring of the Olympic symbol didn't open.  It is very noticeable to us and those around us when we do not reach our potential.  

Exceptional teacher and coaches come alongside their gifted students as an advocate/ally, adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of each student, creating an architecture that maximizes their potential, aggregates the best resources, and creates an atmosphere that eventually leads to complete autonomy.  This model works for coaches and teachers.  In education the A+ model creates exceptional gifted teachers who help their students “Go For the Gold.” 

Differentiating for the digital native

Technology is like learning how to drive, we are familiar with transportation from the vantage point of the passenger seat, but getting into the driver’s seat is an entirely different experience.  As an ally of young learners striving to understand technology, I adapt to their needs and build an appropriate architecture through aggregating the necessary resources, and promoting autonomy along the way.

 As an ally, it is my role to build rapport with students and join them in the passenger seat as they begins their learning journey.  Sometimes students knows exactly what they want to accomplish with technology, while other times I support them by asking thoughtful questions and sharing skills needed to reach a goal.  I must adapt to their needs.  Young digital natives see the world through a different lens and I have come to understand that we can both learn from one other.  We share our ideas and often combine them to discover roads we could have never found on our own.  As a mentor, it is my role to aggregate the best print, digital, and human resources to lead young people towards a high level of excellence.  Throughout the journey, I encourage students to one day become autonomous learners.  Once autonomy is achieved, the mentee will be able to complete the circle of mentorship and help another by riding coming alongside them in the passenger seat.  

How are you coming alongside your gifted learners? How are you preparing them for college and beyond?How do we do that anyway?  What is their future going to look like anyway?  Much different than mine, that is one thing I am sure of.  Another thing I am sure of is that their learning experience must be more than a one size fits all approach.  We must differentiate to meet the learner where they are in the learning process. 

The first thing teachers need to do is determine what content the student needs to learn.  There is no need learning something they already know.  What is the point of that?   Read the content objectives within the curriculum, state standards, or what your child has expressed interest in.  

Next, choose the areas your child does not know.  This could happen through formal or informal assessments.  Your role in this process is to knock out the fluff and get to the heart of what needs to be taught.  

Now, you can connect the content to your child's unique learning styles.  How do they learn best?  Do they prefer to act things out or create learning games?  Are they talented at memorizing or would they rather chant the 50 states.  Find out their preferences and help them connect the content to their natural abilities. This will create a learning experience weaving together the content with your child's unique learning profile.

Finally, you want to help them communicate what they have learned.  Encourage the child to share with an audience bigger than family, school, or community.  Encourage them to make a difference in their world.  We want to move our children to producers of new information rather than consumers.  We want them to join the conversation the world is having about ideas that are important to them.  

Here are some of my favorite tools to reach out to a broad audience--with step by step directions on how to use them.

Teaching Gifted Students the Art of Struggling

Have you ever had to struggle?  We all do on a regular basis, right?  I seem to be in the center of a couple struggles right now in my life.  Usually things come easy for me, but I am working on a project that is really stretching me.  I find myself turning ideas over and over in my head as I try and understand the best way to serve gifted students in the age of Common Core Standards.  This piece is not about Common Core, we can talk about that another time, rather it is about struggling through something when you are not used to struggling.

My own son is struggling in school right now.  In the age of high stakes testing I see the frustration in his eyes when we begin a topic he doesn’t understand and he feels like he is never going to get it.  As parents, we teach him to persevere by saying “It isn’t going to be easy, but I promise you it will be worth it.”

Gifted kids on the other hand, are not used to the feeling of angst that comes along with struggling on something.  Things come easy to them and when they have to struggle they often break down because the feeling is so foreign and they do not know how to cope with it.   We need to teach them the art of the struggle.  Here are a few suggestions that parents and teachers can do to help students who are struggling.

1. Help students take a deep breath and calm themselves.  In order to tackle difficult things they have to be in a good place emotionally.
2. Through storytelling, share a time in your life when you struggled with something and how you worked through the struggle.  Be sure to add that it wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.
3. Teach them some positive self talk by modeling it aloud.  Their brain should be reacting positively to the task at hand.  At first use your voice to teach them the kinds of things they should be saying to themselves.  
4. Transfer the ownership to the student by having them share with you what their brain is telling them.  Correct the child if they are experiencing negative self talk.
5. Remind them that the struggle isn’t going to be easy, but it will be worth it.

It is my nature as a mother to want to protect my children from struggles.  I think many of us feel that way.  But like the story of the butterfly that has to fight her way out of the cocoon in order to survive, I have learned that we must give our children wings to fly.  I will tell you something—it is much easier to help your child through struggles on “small” things when they are younger, rather than them having to experience their first struggles in high school or college when the stakes are much higher.  Find the little things that might create struggle and be the voice on their shoulder to help them through the difficult moments.  This voice will be with them as they face bigger challenges in the future.  Remember, it isn’t going to be easy but I promise you, it will be worth it.

Beyond Average

There is something to be said about being average.  I had the pleasure of being an average learner at a Denapalooza event in Boise this past weekend. 

What is average you ask?  Here is the best explanation I have heard.  Think about a Bell Curve.  The average is the highest point of the Bell Curve.  The average is dead center.   When we think of gifted people we look at the people who are on high end of the curve, or the far right.  You might note that those on the far left are equal distance from the midline as those on the far right.  In school, those on the left qualify for special education services and if a child on the right side is lucky, there school provides gifted education services for those students who need them.  I use the word need here because if you fold the Bell Curve in half, both students are equal distance from the middle, or average student.  Both sides are entitled to services because we are part of a system, out of necessity, that teaches to the middle. 

I experienced being in the middle this past weekend and it was glorious.  I was fully engaged and learning from those around me as an attendee at the Denapalooza event.  I was a speaker and shared what I knew with the audience and loved every minute, but the highlight was getting to hang out with people who knew more about technology than I did.  I love being around really bright people, especially in my area of passion which is technology.  I learned about using green screen technology to do videos in the classroom, how to organize a classroom so every student is working at their own level, and we even delved into creating our own apps to share with the world.  Now that really intrigues me. 

I came home feeling like I had really learned a lot.  There is something to be said for attending events and coming away with new and exciting ideas and opportunities.  This is the kind of learning out gifted students may rarely experience.  They know over half of the material when they walk into the classroom and when they do not know something, they can learn it in 1-2 repetitions.  As an average learner, I was fully engaged and taking notes like crazy as those around me shared what they were doing in their classrooms.  How do we give this kind of opportunity to our gifted children and help them to have the best experience ever as a learner?  I believe it boils down to 5 things.

1.        We come alongside our students as an ally.  This means that we are a servant teacher, one that practices the art of Servant Leadership and puts the needs of the students first. 

2.       We are adaptable to the needs of the students.  In gifted education this comes in the form of differentiation.  Differentiating as much of the curriculum as possible to meet the learners where they are in the learning process.  It also means that we are willing to adapt our own view of education and allow ourselves to be both a teacher and a learner.

3.       We are architects of the student’s learning.  We know how to build learning experiences that are at just the right level of readiness for our students, in their zone of proximal development.  We know how to structure learning so it is engaging and builds on a student’s strengths and interests.

4.       We are resource aggregators.  We know how to pull the best print, digital, and human resources together to meet the needs of the students.  As my friend Ginger Lewman likes to say the teacher is not “the source, but a resource.”

5.       Finally, we must promote autonomy.  We will not always be able to be alongside the student so we need to teach them how to learn on their own, promoting lifelong learning.  This is not always easy, but it is always necessary.

My bog is going to focus on these 5 areas as it relates to teaching, learning, gifted education, and 21^st century learning tools.  When I mention the idea of an educator as an adaptable ally, who is willing to aggregate resources to create a learning architecture that promotes autonomy, the idea can be awesome and overwhelming, all at the same time.  We are going to break it down through a series of blogs and trainings that will help you to see the whole picture and how to accomplish it.  In the meantime, what strategies are you currently using to educate the gifted learners in your life?  If you are a gifted person, what strategies work for you? Please leave your ideas below.

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