Often profoundly and highly intelligent young people are not properly identified. Research shows this can lead to underachievement or even dropping out of school. Studies indicate that 40 percent of all gifted students may be underachievers (Handbook of Gifted Education, p. 424).
To help identify gifted students, educators are encouraged to look for students who:
- Are easily bored by routine tasks.
- Can play and work independently.
- Prefer complex tasks and open-ended activities.
- Rebel against conformity.
- Creatively make toys or tools out of anything.
- Ask probing questions.
- Make connections between ideas that classmates "don't get" (but you do).
- Have an "adult" sense of humor; understand irony and puns.
- from
When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers, by Dr. Jim Delisle and Judy Galbraith, pp. 58-59
For additional characteristics, visit the Davidson Gifted Database article, Characteristics of intellectually advanced young people.
The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau.
- Dan Rather
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