Everyone seems to be so concerned with how, exactly, gifted children should be educated. The most insulting thing a teacher ever said to me was, "Our job is to teach you how to learn." I know that she meant that sincerely and that is what many teachers believe they are charged with doing; but believe me, that is not necessary. We are designed to learn from the minute we are born. We--all of us--are learning machines. For gifted children especially, learning is like eating candy; even when it's not a consciously activated process, they learn every waking minute regardless of what's going on. As long as you provide them with plenty to learn, inspire them, and let them do their job, they will become educated.

Becoming educated then, that is not the most pressing problem I am concerned with. What makes growing up as a gifted child difficult is simply surviving through the environment of childhood--to be emotionally intact at the end of that experience so that your intellect can start doing what it's been preparing for throughout adolescence. Many times a gifted child will not "fit into" their educational environment. There may be endless speculations as to why not, but the only solution I have ever seen work is a social one. In fact, I believe that it's not very important how much measurable learning students do at a place so as long as it's a good experience for them and one which they enjoy.

The Perfect Way To Learn
Let me start by telling you about the single best educational experience I ever had. During my freshman year in high school, I took a geometry class in an extracurricular program for "talented youth" offered by the local community college, the College of Du Page. It was taught by an exceptional teacher named Mr. Samide. Instead of making us do endless amounts of problem sets from a book, he gave us just five extremely difficult problems to do each week. He either came up with the problems himself or took them from ones he had encountered through- out his teaching experience. I spent countless hours sitting at home working on those math problems until they were solved, when I wouldn't even spend five minutes on easy problem sets that I had gotten from my regular school. He gave us geometry problems that forced us to use everything we had ever learned about mathematics in order to solve them, and one of the great aspects of the class was that there was never the "right" way to go about solving a problem. Each of us would work on them on our own and then, in the next class, we would openly discuss our approaches. Mr. Samide even gave us group problems in which we had to work together and feed off each others' ideas to come up with a strategy for solving each problem. Also, if anyone came up with an original problem or conjecture, it would become part of our weekly problem set.

For me, this was the perfect way to learn. It forced me to work on the mechanics of proofs, geometry, algebra, and arithmetic because it was necessary to master those basic skills in order to solve the problems; and I was really inspired to find answers for them. Instead of trying to teach us disjointed blocks of math skills in the conventional bottom-up approach, he gave us coherent problems which we had to break down, learn specific math skills, and then put together to solve the problem at hand-a top-down approach. It was a brilliant way of teaching, and I will always cherish that class.

Later though, I came to realize that a good educational experience is really a double-edged sword. A child's education is bound to be mixed with good and bad teachers, classes, and programs. Unfortunately, the better an educational experience is, the worse it can make mediocre or bad experiences seem. I'm not saying educators should give up trying to provide students with a good education, but be prepared to help them cope with their bad experiences after they have discovered a great teacher or program. It is precisely that contrast that adds a sense of bitter irony to the pursuit of a great education.

Alienation in Junior and Senior High School
Most of my junior high and high school experience was a marked contrast to my class with Mr. Samide. Despite my occasional straight" A " performance, I had an absolutely horrible time! I was alienated from the rest of my peers; I was depressed a lot; and I hated the kids, the teachers, and the administrators. It was so bad at times that I even listed the school building and the tap water in the water fountains as everyday things I hated. Consequently, I ended up staying home frequently and missing a lot of school. At least once a year I would switch schools, and I had to repeat my freshman year in high school in hopes of wiping my records clean.

If I had no interest in a class, I would simply not put any effort into it. This meant that I would not do any of the homework, and that typically translated into an "F." By that point, I was already disenchanted with the whole notion of school as a learning institution and subsequently rejected grades as being a motivational factor or fair measure of learning. I found out that even if I received an "F" in a class, many times I would still take away more from the class than the students who got good grades. Everyone who tried to help me was fond of telling me that school was just a game that I had to get through and I should just learn to play that game. Once I was out, they said, I could complain about it as much as I liked, but no one would listen to me while I was still in school. However, I was stubborn and consciously chose not to play that game: I just accepted "F's" and continued my crusade to expose the hypocrisy of the educational institutions I was stuck in.

A favorite story of mine is of a biology class I had in my second freshman year in high school. I did very well during the first half of the year and had one of the highest grade averages in class. Later on, however, I started experiencing problems at school and stayed home a lot. My attendance was so sporadic in fact, that kids kept asking me whether I still went to that school or not. Suffice it to say, my grade in that class dropped from an "A+" to a "D-" by the end of the year. Fortunately, my teacher was very nice and believed in me so she let me take the final exam, despite the futility in it. Lo and behold I got an" A " on it! There was definitely no cheating involved, so she ended up with a dilemma on her hands: should she give me an" A " for what I knew, or should she give me a "D" for my lack of work in order to be fair to the other kids who worked hard for their grades? Well, to my great surprise and joy, she decided to give me an " A" because I had learned the material despite my "situation."

Geeks, Nerds, and Brains
I have found that the most difficult thing about being gifted is simply not having many people like yourself around. Unlike being a jock or being cool, there's no tangible, positive identity to which you can associate yourself with or model yourself after. There are only the geeks, the nerds, or the brains. These terms don't have universal meanings, but in my circles, a geek was someone who had a lot of knowledge, usually technical, which could be applied-like computer skills. A nerd was someone who had very esoteric interests such as bug collecting or trivia in which they engrossed themselves. The brain was the person everyone considered the smartest kid in school and was usually an academic performer with straight " A's. " If you chose to accept any of them as who you were, the penalty was ostracism. I believe that if you put kids together with others like themselves, even for part of the year, they can begin to go through a normal childhood development.

Childhood is fraught with an endless series of rites of passages, and it's important to have someone who can help guide you through that. What saved me through my journey of educational institutions has always been programs in which I interacted with other kids like myself, or adult role models who understood me and weren't condescending. There will still be those who do not fit into even those environments; but the goal should be to have enough exposure to others similar to yourself so that you have a chance of finding others you can identify with. Once that occurs, you can begin to grow a foundation of emotional stability. Suddenly, there are people who understand you, understand your problems, and can be there for you. Having them helps you to have more confidence in your own identity and who you want to become.

Programs That Worked
In retrospect, I've been very lucky. My mother always strove to provide my sister and me with an extraordinary education. Every year she researched all the local and national programs she could find and sent us to them all year around. They ranged from extracurricular activities such as Suzuki programs for music, St. Louis area SAGE/FOG gifted workshops, an advanced math program called MEGSSS, classes for "talented youth" at local community colleges, and summer programs such as Northwestern University's cm program, Purdue University's GERI programs, and Johns Hopkins University's cry program. There have been so many I can't even remember them all to give a complete list. The common experience that I had though, was that they were all fun environments in which I was free to learn without the threat of grades or ostracism from other kids. In those programs, I was with kids who were similar to myself so I didn't have to worry about being myself. Everyone there-both teachers and students-were there because they wanted to be. That made a huge difference! The summer boarding programs were especially great because there was an additional sense of independence. We had fun learning in the classes during the day and had a blast in the afternoon after classes were over. After experiencing all these programs I started to wonder, "Why can't school be like that?!?!"

It was not until I went to Simon's Rock College that I started to feel comfortable with myself and my peers. Simon's Rock is a college for high-school-age kids. However, what made this place such a valuable experience for me was not its academics; it was the people I found there. In fact, I ended up neglecting my academics, spending most of my time playing ultimate frisbee, volleyball, and staying up late. Consequently, I was kicked out after the first semester and was only there for a short time. However, while I was there I found a group of people whom I could relate to. For the first time in my life I had a circle of good friends whom I understood and who understood me.

My parents still believe that sending me there was a huge academic mistake, and I wouldn't sell it as the holy grail of educational solutions; but the truth is that it was a profoundly positive experience which irrevocably changed my life for the better. To this day, many of us who met at Simon's Rock are still very good friends and live near each other or at least keep in touch. To me, Simon's Rock's greatest asset is the sense of community it instills in its students. Whenever I meet someone who went to the Rock, there is instantly and automatically a shared bond between us. Just having gone there and experiencing that small community gives us something in common which transcends all of our experiences since leaving there. That sense of community is what I continue to look for no matter where I am because it helps me to get through the day- to-day activities of life.

I have experienced many extremes of education on the long journey of my academic career. I have known blissful learning as well as complete academic failure and everything in between. In the end, though, it's all the same. Whether or not I had a good or bad academic experience, what lasts to this day is what I got out of the class and the personal experiences I had while I was in those institutions.

Reflections
Today when I look at all the friends I've met over the years, I know for certain that they are all intelligent. Probably most of them were or could have been considered "gifted" when they were in school. What I have come to realize, though, is that the label no longer has any meaning to us. Together, we represent a diverse set of educational experiences; some of us have gone through private schools, while others have experienced the conventional public schools; and I have an eclectic mix of institutions and programs under my belt. Through it all we survived and emerged from our cocoons of education to find that our paths have converged on the same point. All of us have become well educated adults who work hard, have fun, and try to be socially responsible. Basically, we strive to be good people and decent citizens. So, in the end, no matter how we were educated, we've ended up in the same place; what remains and continues is the social bond that we have with one another.

Gifted kids are really no different than any other in terms of what they need during their emotional development. While growing up, adults always seemed to be too caught up in my "potential" and never my current state of being. I would plead to the parents and educators out there to pay more attention to how they are growing up instead of how much or how quickly they are learning. At least make sure they know that there are others like themselves so they know that they're not alone. They will learn for the rest of their lives, but they can only be children once. There are numerous options for educating kids: public schools, private schools, magnet schools, home schooling, and boarding schools. If the "perfect" school is not accessible or a practical educational solution, strongly consider clubs, extracurricular programs, or summer programs tailored for gifted and talented youth as good supplemental experiences to regular education. I think, though, that no matter how you educate a gifted child, it is important to keep in mind that the true goal is to have a healthy, fully functioning member of society at the end of it. I mean, you may end up with the smartest kids in the world, but if they aren't happy and can't fit into society and apply that intelligence, what's the point, right?

Permission Statement
Reprinted with permission of the author and publisher, the California Association for the Gifted.

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 under 18. To learn more about the Davidson Institute’s programs, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.