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Getting Started for Educators

"Educators play an important role in nurturing genius. Good teachers learn to recognize common characteristics of gifted children in their classrooms and plan an appropriate education. They lobby their schools to be flexible with these children, and they create classes or programs that meet their needs. They foster an educational climate where intellectual inquiry is celebrated, and they insist that learning be the primary goal of school."

-Genius Denied, p.162

Questions and Answers

How can I tell if a student is gifted?
Gifted students are often difficult to identify, as they are a very diverse group.They come from all socio-economic groups. They are represented in all ethnic groups.They come from rural and urban areas.Some are good students and others are not. The only common denominator gifted students share is that they think and learn differently: they learn more rapidly than other students and think more deeply about what they learn.Gifted students learn beyond basic knowledge and understanding to synthesis, analysis and evaluation. Here are some of the specific characteristics you are likely to find in a gifted student:

• a precocious ability to think abstractly
• a need for constant mental stimulation
• an ability to learn and process information quickly
• a precocious ability to perceive patterns and form connections
• a prodigious ability within a particular area, such as math, music, etc

What can I do to make my class more academically enriching for gifted students?

For highly gifted students, advanced curriculum in a self-contained classroom with intellectual peers is the best environment for meeting their educational needs. If gifted students must be placed in a regular heterogenously grouped classroom,one that focuses on individual strengths and utilize flexible strategies is essential. There are some exceptional books that offer practical ideas for teachers to use with their gifted students in the regular classroom:Re-Forming Gifted Education: Matching the Program to the Child by Karen Rogers and Teaching Gifted Students in the Regular Classroom by Susan Winebrenner.

I teach high school. Aren’t honors and/or AP classes enough?

It depends on the student, the curriculum, and the teacher. Honors and/or AP classes might be appropriately challenging for some gifted students, however it may not be enough for others. For those students who need more challenging work, you may need to consider alternative options such as subject or grade acceleration or a college course substitution.

How do I find a mentor for a gifted student?
The first step in finding a mentor is to have the student evaluate what he/she hopes to gain from a mentoring experience. The most productive mentoring relationships are those that are focused on a specific outcome, such as the completion of a project.Once students know what they want to learn, they should put together a query package that contains a short biography, a description of the project they wish to pursue along with a summary of what they already know about the particular topic. Next,create a list of knowledgeable individuals. Universities and colleges are a good place to start, as are, museums and science centers.Don’t forget about local businesses, retired professionals, and high school teachers. Tele-mentoring is another option to consider. The National Mentoring Partnership may be a useful resource.

Educators ~ What You Can Do!

High-achieving young people often credit their accomplishments to the help of a caring educator who fueled their interests and guided their learning. Don’t miss the opportunity to be this type of educator.

• Learn about the educational needs of gifted learners. See the Recommended Readings for Educators list below.
• Take a course on gifted education as part of your certificate renewal or continuing education requirement.
• If you have gifted students in a mixed-ability classroom, implement lesson plans using themes, rather than specific curricular materials. This will help you to adapt the curriculum to each child’s ability level, while maintaining continuity.Offer more “projects” than worksheets. See Successful Strategies for Teaching Gifted Learners.
• Offer students access to books that contain challenging vocabulary words and complex themes. Work with your school or community librarians to find challenging books with appropriate content.
• Allow gifted students to work on long-term projects with tangible results. Create opportunities for them to share their work with their classmates, schoolmates and with the community at large. When appropriate, encourage them to enter their work in competitions.
• Even if your school currently has a “pull-out” program for gifted students, be aware that it may not be a good match for all gifted students. Highly gifted learners need to be grouped with their intellectual peers in more rigorous self-contained academic classes.
• If a student has shown mastery of a concept before the rest of the class, give him permission to work independently on a more challenging project, either in the classroom, in the library or in the computer lab. Use distance-learning materials. Collaborate with other teachers to see if the child can attend a higher-level class.
• Learn to recognize when a bright child is underachieving in order to “fit in.” Offer other opportunities to develop her abilities, such as independent research projects. Read more articles about underachievement.
• Start discussions with other teachers in the break room or cafeteria about gifted education. Brainstorm what your school and district could do to improve the educational experience for bright children. See “What the Research Says about Gifted Learners."
• Grade according to each child’s ability. For instance, writing “Super” on a gifted writer’s essay does little to help nurture her talent. Correct grammatical problems; give her tips on word choice, paragraph order and persuasiveness. Encourage her family to locate a writing mentor who can develop her talents further.
• Let students from lower grades come to your class for certain subjects if their abilities are a match for your curriculum. Mention this possibility to other teachers in your school.
• Copy articles on gifted education for other educators;you’ll find many relevant articles in the Davidson Database.
• Share what you learn with your fellow educators to help your school be a place where excellence is encouraged. See “Best Practices of Schools that Nurture Excellence."
• Help students with particular talents find mentors within the community. For example, introduce a promising young mathematician to a college math professor.
• Lobby your school district to create a magnet school for the gifted or a magnet program within another school.
• Lobby your school to identify gifted children, or if your school already has an identification program, lobby to begin the process in Kindergarten.
• If you suspect a child in your class is gifted, send a note home to her parents encouraging them to have her assessed.
• Work collaboratively with parents to better meet the needs of gifted children. Numerous studies confirm that parents provide valuable information about gifted children’s abilities and needs and should be consulted in planning educational programs.
• Volunteer to coach academic teams after school. Recruit top students.
• Write or call the university where you received your teaching degree and encourage the school to offer more classes (or a certificate) in gifted education.
• Join the Davidson Institute’s Educators Guild to interact online with other educators, and to get valuable information and resources for your gifted learners.

- Excerpted from Genius Denied, pp. 183-185, with minor modifications and links added.

Recommended Readings for Educators

Strategies for Meeting the Needs of Gifted Learners

Assouline, Susan & Lupkowski-Shoplik, Ann, Developing Math Talent. Prufrock Press Inc.

Clark, Barbara, Growing up gifted: Developing the potential of children at home and at school. Prentice Hall.

Davidsons with Vanderkam, L.,Genius Denied: How to stop wasting our brightest young minds. Simon & Schuster.

Davidson Institute for Talent Development, "Best Practices of Schools that Nurture Excellence."

Davidson Institute or Talent Development, "Educational Options for Highly Gifted Learners."

Davidson Institute or Talent Development, "Successful strategies for teaching gifted learners."

Kearney, Kathi, "Highly gifted children in full inclusion classrooms."

Robinson, Nancy, "Necessity is the mother of invention: The roots of our system of providing educational alternatives for gifted students."

Rogers, Karen, "Grouping the gifted and talented: Questions and answers."

VanTassel-Baska, Joyce,"Basic educational options for gifted students in schools."

Stanley, Julian,"Helping students learn only what they don’t already know."

Underachievement of Gifted Students

Emerick, Linda,"Academic underachievement among the gifted: Students’ perceptions of factors that reverse the pattern."

Peterson, Jean & Colangelo, Nicholas, "Gifted achievers and underachievers: A comparison of patterns found in school files."

Reis, Sally & McCoach, D. Betsy, "The underachievement of gifted students: What do we know and where do we go?"

What the Research Says

Acceleration Institute, Iowa acceleration scale: A guide for whole-grade acceleration K-8

Acceleration Institute,  A nation empowered: Evidence trumps the excuses holding back America’s brightest students

Acceleration Institute, A nation deceived: How schools hold back America's brightest students

Davidson Institute for Talent Development, "What the research says about gifted learners."

Gross, Miraca, "The use of radical acceleration in cases of extremely intellectual precocity."

Kulik, James,"An analysis of research on ability grouping."

Stanley, Julian, Lupkowski, Ann & Assouline, Susan, "Eight considerations for mathematically talented youth."

Permission Statement

This article is provided as a service of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted young people 18 and under. To learn more about the Davidson Institute’s programs, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.