Top Ten Myths in Gifted Education

Tamara Fisher of edweek's blog Unwrapping the Gifted posted today about myths of giftedness and gifted ed. Her post is a great summary, but this video, made by Baltimore students, is its pièce de résistance. This should be required watching for all who work or live with gifted children.

Walking the rail

This morning, after school drop off, an unofficial meeting of parents of gifted second graders was called to order. The mothers of two of AJ's friends, O. and N., and I stood around chatting after the lines had disappeared into the school. These are two of my favorite parents. Both are smart and have done interesting work but are taking time off to be home with their young children. O's mom is an engineer. N's mom is a former middle school science teacher. This year, as last year, O and AJ are in the same class and N is in a different class. We were talking this morning about how O and AJ have challenging spelling lists. N's class isn't getting a challenge list and N is bored. I was urging N's mom to ask for it and told her what we did with AJ last year. O's mom told her how the challenge lists work this year (any kid who gets 100% on the pretest on Monday gets the week's challenge words instead of the regular words. The first week it was just AJ. But this week, as the kids are settling in, there were 6).

We also talked about the ways classroom boredom can lead to errors or slacking off and can often give a teacher the impression that the kid is either lazy or not very bright. We talked about the way our kids have a tendency to take the easy way out if given the opportunity and how having other kids to be competitive with can either spur them on or shut them down, about how their tendencies toward perfectionism can yield them to be unbelievably hard on themselves, and about how this latter tendency is something we all live with too.

It was a nice conversation of commonalities. It's nice to feel that you're kid is not alone, that you're kid is not alone. And yet, whenever I have a talk like this, afterwards I walk away worried that I've said something I shouldn't. Do I sound like I'm bragging about my kid? I don't mean to. I want to help other people get what they need and I feel like I know a little more about working the system at this point. But do they think I'm an insufferable bore who needs her kid to be better than everybody else? Or am I actually an insufferable bore who needs her kid to be better than everybody else? I don't think so. But if I were totally innocent, I doubt I'd be so anxiety-ridden after these encounters. I wish it weren't so hard. I'd love to have a more united front. Next year, when there's a formal gifted program, it will, I think, be easier.

It should be easier for AJ too, I think, as long as the classroom teacher doesn't think that the gifted program absolves her of responsibility for giving him appropriate work. I'll be interested to see who shows up there. All the kids I know who would seem to meet the criteria are boys. This flies in the face of my own experience of gifted programs, which were heavily female, even as the high level academic awards were mostly given to boys. Interesting.

Back to School Lists

AJ starts second grade on August 27, a mere two and a half weeks away. The summer that seemed endless back in early June is now racing to a halt.

Like most families of young children at this time of year, our lives are consumed with lists at present. There are the lists of things we want to do before summer is over, the things that will make it feel like we had a summer. There are the lists of things we need to do before summer is over. AJ's Cub Scout homework comes under this category. AJ's school doesn't, at least for his age group, have summer homework; but many families we know are also racing through those last summer books and essays and journal entries. We've given AJ some unofficial homework -- to finish a long story he's been writing, to write in his journal. He's behind on those too, because we are all behind on our summer work. Same as every summer.

There are a couple of things we're doing well on, though. We've got all the school supplies except a pencil box, for which we were given very specific instructions as to dimensions. Such a box does not appear to exist, but we persevere in looking for it. We also haven't bought the requested flash cards for home use because they require a long drive in a car to the teacher supply store and because if they are as described, I'm pretty sure they will be totally unnecessary for AJ, as they contain math facts he's known by heart for years. But we'll probably get them anyway, because he likes flash cards in general, and sometimes a few bucks spent on having the same things as everyone else is worth it.

The other thing big thing checked off my list this week was contacting our school's principal to see about setting up a meeting with AJ's teacher and the gifted ed coordinator for the district. Our school doesn't announce class lists until a week before the first day of school. Old timers in the district tell us it wasn't always this way. I don't know whether the policy exists because they want maximum flexibility to deal with last minute changes in enrollment or because a few argumentative parents trying to change their kids' classes caused trouble for the rest of us. But I was pretty sure that the class lists were made up far earlier than a week before school began. So I emailed the principal asking if he could help us set up a meeting. I was careful to phrase my request in a way that would allow it to be met without me knowing the teacher's name: I asked the principal for help, not the contact information for the teacher. He responded almost immediately and positively about the meeting and agreed to arrange it with the mystery teacher for as soon as possible after the class lists went up.

In preparation for this meeting, I've been tweaking a document that began as an exercise for myself and will probably end up being handed out at our meeting in some form or other. After my meeting with the gifted coordinator last spring, when she told me IEP's could not happen at this time, even though she thought they were a good idea, I started thinking about writing up a sort of dossier on AJ which would include information about where he is academically -- both anecdotal and quantitative data -- and what kinds of interventions have been implemented in the classroom in the past ("intervention" sounds like something you do to a troubled case in the classroom, but it is the language the schools use; when possible, I always try to speak their language), and what kinds of goals we're thinking about for the coming school year. After a couple of months of sketching out ideas and poking around the internet for things other parents have done, I've ended up with a document that looks something like this:

I. Personal data: Name, date of birth, address, phone, brief sentence about his parents, schools attended and past teachers at his current school,etc.

II. Extra-curricular interests: What AJ likes to do outside of school. Originally this was lower down, but since the first part of this document is designed to give some basic info about AJ, it seemed more appropriate here. It may still move down the list, though. I stress his interests in academics and athletics. My point is that he's not just a brain behind a desk but a well-rounded kid.

III. Academic skills and interests: This is sort of a short (1 paragraph) anecdotal summary of how we realized AJ was performing a little differently than his peers -- we mention his learning to read at 2 and telling time on analog clocks by 3 because those are markers we know that past teachers have paid attention to. But I also give specific examples of his favorite books, which demonstrates a pretty wide range of difficulty and also the way he delves into topics that interest him in depth, using examples from both independent work and also school projects from last year. Because I'm concerned about him being pigeonholed as a good reader, his most salient gift, but not the only one (he's probably more interested in math at the moment), I wanted to make sure that he looked well-rounded here too.

IV. Test Scores. This is a summary of his independent (outside school) testing from last spring that the school does not yet have a record of. We will attach copies of the formal reports, but since they are long, I thought 1 paragraph summary might help as well.

All of the above sections will, once I edit them down a little, take up one page. The following sections are longer and more descriptive.

IV. History of Curriculum Modifications at [his] school. This is my summary of what has been done for him already. I break it down by subject (Reading, Spelling, Math) and I name names -- who did what (Gifted teacher, classroom teacher, us) and with whom (kids who were paired with him for projects). I stress here that both social and intellectual development needs to be taken into consideration and that this has already been done successfully. I stress that this description is from a parents point of view and it is possible that the teachers will have other information or a different take on my descriptions. But because of the way the changes were often made on the fly as opportunities presented themselves, I'm not sure to what extent the school keeps records of these things or passes them along to AJ's future teachers, and I thought it might be helpful to a future teacher to see the big picture and also to get an idea of what we've come to expect.

V. Goals for Second Grade. I begin by stressing that I feel strongly that goals need to be a collaboration between the classroom teacher, the gifted educator and us and that I'm not trying to dictate what the classroom teacher does, but that these are the things that are of concern to us as parents who are educators ourselves. My goal with this opening is that we are showing support of the teacher and the school, that we are offering to help, but that we are not trying to threaten classroom/school autonomy. But at the same time, I want them to know we are paying a lot of attention to what goes on. The rest of this section is set up to more or less parallel the structure of the previous section. The goals are broken down into subheadings of General, Reading, Spelling, and Math. Built into the goals is an assessment of AJ's strengths and weaknesses. Some goals are curricular -- studying multiplication and division, for example. I've kept these relatively vague for the moment, because I want to see what the teacher and gifted teacher, who are much more familiar with the overall curriculum than I am, think is possible. Some are social -- working in reading groups with other children. And some are about classroom skills -- learning to focus when there are many things going on in the classroom; learning to keep track of his things and organize and prioritize tasks for a bigger project. Many of these will be goals for other children in the classroom as well. Many are also goals that will be pursued at home. My point in this section was to give a fair assessment of AJ and what I think he needs, but also to demonstrate that we are not just parents trying to push for special treatment for our special, special child. We know he's got strengths and weaknesses just like everybody else. I also wanted to get across that AJ's classroom behavior problems, when they occur (rarely), usually stem from his not having work appropriate for his level. When he's bored, he acts up. But I also mention that I want him to learn that less interesting tasks sometimes need to be done to accomplish more interesting things. I wanted the teachers to know that I wasn't expecting them to entertain him, but to make sure he had appropriate work and to help him learn good work habits.

I conclude by reiterating how happy we've been with his education at this school to date, by acknowledging that it can be a lot of work for a classroom teacher to make accommodations for a student who is not working with the rest of the class, and by offering to help in any way that we can.

I think it's a good document, but I'm still not sure if it's something I should hand out to everyone. I don't want to appear confrontational, at least not until it might be necessary. And even though I've bent over backwards in this document to say that I want to follow the teacher's lead and that this is information I thought she might find useful, I'm concerned that just by putting it in writing I'm looking like I'm itching for a fight. But even if I show it to no one, I'm going into the meeting prepared.

Out of the frying pan

Amazingly, school starts in just over a month. AJ is ready. He printed out his school supply list yesterday and we went to buy his supplies. AJ loves school supplies, but he especially loves them in a huge pile waiting for the start of school. He was disappointed that the school has specified notebooks and folders without pictures on them this year, but he was won over by the fact that he gets his very own ruler and, finally, scissors with pointy ends.

One of the items on the list was flash cards of addition and subtraction facts. AJ looked skeptical. "We don't need those, do we, Mommy?" And I hesitated, because I want AJ to understand that there are some things he will need to do with the rest of the class even if they are easy for him. I want him to have respect for his teacher and the rules he or she will set in the classroom. At the same time, I want to teach him to stand up for himself and what he needs to do in a way that isn't just bragging. It's a hard line to walk with a seven-year-old. Seven-year-olds are not inherently tuned into nuance. But the cards were not inexpensive and frankly, AJ can add faster and more accurately in his head than I can. He already knows these facts by heart. So I really didn't see the point.

"I'm not sure, AJ. It says here, though, that these are for use at home. So maybe we'll check with your teacher after we know who it is. And it doesn't hurt to practice even the things you already know sometimes, to make sure you're paying attention."

This might actually be an argument to pick up the flash cards. When things are easy for AJ, he rushes and sometimes misses key details, like whether it's an addition or a subtraction problem.

But the flashcards are now another thing to add to my list of things to talk to the school about. And the question at the store reminded me that I needed to write up something for the school so that we can have that meeting we've been planning with us, the gifted teacher, the new classroom teacher, and maybe his fabulous last year's teacher and possibly the principal.

Last week, I heard from the mother of one of AJ's friends and my partner in gifted advocacy, that the class lists had been drawn up. She's a former teacher so she has some inside contacts. She only knew where her son had ended up and that, since they've decided to loop his class, AJ probably won't be in the same class, although that is not definite. The school won't announce the lists until the week before school, a policy I'm pretty sure has arisen because of parents badgering the school for classroom changes. But if they know the class lists, I may be able to arrange an earlier meeting than we'd thought. It's at least worth an email to the principal to see.

I didn't really have a plan when I sat down to write, but I ended up with a five-page draft of a document that summarized AJ's interests and abilities and his participation in extra-curricular gifted programs this summer. I included a summary of test scores and will attach copies of documentation, and I outlined the curriculum modifications that were used last year. The second half of the document I laid out as the opening to a discussion on establishing concrete educational goals for him this year, along with some of the things I've been thinking about. I was careful to say that while these were things that were on my mind, that any actual plan would need to be a collaboration between us, the teacher and the gifted teacher. Although I was extremely diplomatic, I'm not sure that everyone would receive it well. My intention is to help bring the new classroom teacher up to speed, not to take over, and also to begin the conversation that needs to happen in order to establish individual educational goals for AJ this year. But the fact is, that some people might be threatened by my proposal of involvement. I don't want to come across as if I'm telling the teacher what to do, but as a concerned parent who wants to help. I'm going to sit on this for a few days and see what will happen. In the mean time, I will draft an email to the school's principal to start the ball rolling. Wish us luck.

There should have been coffee

Yesterday, it was my turn to take AJ to camp. After I walked him to his class, I stopped by the information desk to look at some of the literature they had displayed. One of the people behind the table said, "Oh, the parent meeting is in 216." I hadn't heard about the parent meeting. I'd been planning on asking if there was some place I could hole up with my laptop for a couple of hours. But since it sounded like I was supposed to go to a parent meeting, I found my way to room 216.

It was not what I was expecting. I had assumed they were going to talk to us about some of the other programs that the place that runs the camp has to offer. Instead, it turned out to be a sort of airing of issues of gifted education. And I was really surprised by some of the things I heard.

All of us had come to the camp because we were looking for some additional challenges for our children. All of us were very active in our schools (some public, some religious or private; none for gifted kids only. I was the only person dealing with no gifted program at all). There were cub scout leaders and school board members and PTO presidents. The thing that surprised me was that with all that experience in the schools, no one seemed to have done much to advocate for their kids in their schools, to try to get different programs, to questions policies in place. They mentioned being afraid they would look like one of those parents just trying to push their kid too far (been there. done that. got over it.). Or they didn't want to bother the teachers. Some, like the woman who said her school didn't want her son working ahead in the math curriculum because they didn't know what they'd do with him when they finished it, were frustrated, but they didn't know what to do about it. In talking with them and telling them about my experiences this year with AJ, I realized just how much I have learned. The reason it was so shocking to hear some of these things was that it was exactly where I was about a year ago.

In the end, I came home feeling like I'd taken over the meeting. I was asked a lot of questions and I talked a lot. I felt like a bit of a blowhard. But I do feel that working with your school is something every parent needs to learn how to do. Every kid deserves it. And we all need to get past what other people may think of us. Because if we're embarrassed and hold back, the only people who suffer are our kids.

Beyond the discussion of school advocacy, there were some other things I found interesting. We talked for a while about the way our kids tend to obsess on different subjects, drag you into it, and then often give up on it when they've gotten all they needed and decide to move on to something else. This is challenging for parents. Adults are more interested in achievement and commitment. But we need to get over that too. There's a time to push, and there's a time to let your kid explore. AJ was almost afraid to tell us when he'd decided that space was no longer his most favorite thing. He's still interested. He still likes it, but it's not the same as it was for a couple of years when he could hardly be induced to talk about anything else. Now it's Pokemon. In a few months, it will probably be something else.

We also talked about how we're collectively on the fence about grade skipping. I stand my my previous statement that it may be a good option for some kids, but not for every kid. And I still think it can cause nearly as many problems as it can solve. But it depends very much on the student and on the school and teachers involved.

We also all have trouble getting our kids to eat breakfast. I found this a funny coincidence, but it also made sense. These kids wake up in the morning with their brains running in overdrive. Although getting AJ to sit still for any meal is hard -- he's always begging for a book or a game or to watch TV because the boredom of mealtime is too much for him and apparently talking to his parents is not good enough -- breakfast is definitely the worst. This may seem like an unimportant detail, but it drove home a point, which is that gifted children don't just learn more quickly, they learn differently. I think this is a point I did not drive home enough in my post responding to Miss Self-Important's post on gifted children as victims a few days ago. It's not just about finding advanced work: It's about finding appropriate work and methods. This includes identifying gifted children not only by their test scores, but also by observation in the classroom. Plenty of gifted kids do poorly on tests or in their grades because they are bored and therefore inattentive or because they think it's stupid and don't bother. Giftedness often manifests itself as a behavior problem in the classroom. Appropriate work can make for a better learning environment for everyone.

Although the meeting was not particularly productive, it was interesting and it gave me a lot to think about.I