The conversation starts like this…

So you’re a teacher?

Yes.

Where do you teach?

Well, I was teaching at Renaissance Academy, a small private school for gifted children, that closed this fall, and I teach in an adult teacher training program at a local college.

Well, I don’t know if my child is “gifted”… but he/she is reading one/two/three grade levels ahead in school, and he’s/she’s bored all the time. The school just said he didn’t qualify for services, but I know there’s something going on with him/her….

What kinds of things do you notice with him?

…..And from there, the conversation rapidly picks up speed as the parent begins to describe either a typical learner who enjoys tackling new things but could use more challenge in school or more hands-on projects and a little more individual attention, or a student who also has some or many markers for “giftedness”… intensity, sensitivity to various emotional or environmental stimuli, substantial advancement of developmental milestones, a preference for older friends, a insatiable desire to learn everything about a particular subject, a sense of self that is not just ’strong’- it’s more like ’steel’,  an advanced sense of humor for his or her age, reading books at home that are one or more grade levels ahead of instruction in class…

And then, I hear:

• She didn’t want to take the test that day, so she didn’t even try, but her test scores say she doesn’t qualify for gifted services.
• The school says they have higher standards here so they won’t accept these test results from another school.
• The school says grade-skipping is a terrible idea because he’ll be overwhelmed in middle school and all his friends will be older.
• The teacher is really trying, but she has so many different levels in the same class that she’s told me there’s just no way to do all that she wants to do to provide challenge.
• This teacher doesn’t refer any of her students for gifted services ever.
• The teacher said, ‘everyone gets bored sometimes.’
• All I got was a piece of paper saying he doesn’t qualify. He’s having melt-downs at home every night- what do I do?
• He/she qualified for special educational services for a learning disability, and gifted services based on the battery of assessments they gave, but then they said his/her CSAP score wasn’t high enough for gifted services…. in the area of the learning disability! How do I help him? He’s so frustrated!

(For an interesting list of characteristics of giftedness, the Rhode Island State Advisory Committee on Gifted Education has one available at http://www.ri.net/gifted_talented/character.html, and Colorado has another great one available at http://www.cde.state.co.us/gt/download/pdf/gt12TraitsGiftedness.pdf.)

My response?

Many schools and teachers are trying to help advanced learners. They really are. However, there’s quite a ways to go. For a long time, gifted specialists didn’t have to have an endorsement on their license or special qualifications to fill that position. New mandates are in place, and districts are trying to get all of their people up to speed and this takes awhile. Many teachers receive very little training (one study found that 61% receive none! see NAGC link below) for working with gifted learners in their undergraduate programs, and myths abound among the general public and teachers as well concerning the needs of these kids (for a list of some of these myths, visit http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/fact/myths.html, http://talentdevelop.com/articles/NMATG.html, and http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=569).

In the meantime, there is a lot of research available in the field of gifted education to help you. And we’re creating a new charter school that will enable these students to have the opportunity to work at an appropriate level of challenge with the necessary support and guidance. This program will also serve as a learning resource center where we invite staff from other programs to come and see some of the best practices in the field at work so that we can facilitate the flow of information and improve learning for all students. In many instances, many of the best practices in gifted education, so very critical for the gifted, are also very beneficial for other types of learners.

These conversations happen frequently, in both likely and unlikely places, as parents seek to find a program that will provide the opportunity for students to dig more deeply and move more quickly than typical programs, with a rare degree of support for social-emotional needs such as managing perfectionism; utilizing skills in leadership, empathy, and creativity; and setting and managing challenging personal goals.

There is no perfect program, and we won’t be ‘perfect’ either. We’re not trying to ‘take all the good students’ out of other programs; all learners are precious, and we are grateful that other programs do what they do. We simply recognize that some learners think very differently and have very different learning needs than typical learners their age, some learners are ready for more advanced work, some learners need time to be really creative, some need both advanced work and extra support in a particular area, and each deserves to work in his or her own learning zone and feel the stretch and satisfaction of conquering new horizons. Tests and ‘labels’ can communicate some information to us about how a student learns, but they’re only one piece of the puzzle. For us, it’s not about a ‘label’ or a test score… it’s about meeting the needs of kids in a unique way, and we’re building a school that will do just that.

These are the conversations that I’m having. How about you?

Nikki Myers, M.A.

Board and Steering Committee Member, Academy for Advanced & Creative Learning