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Gifted Education Is Not a Wall Street Bailout

Posted on November 5, 2011 by in Gifted

No Bailout (by Joe Newman)“Unfair.”

That is the word that I have often heard used to describe the 2008 bailout of Wall Street finan­cial firms. The think­ing of detrac­tors is that these are com­pa­nies which already have amassed obscene amounts of prof­its, and have exec­u­tives who get paid more in a day than the aver­age worker earns in a year. And then they have the nerve to run to the gov­ern­ment for free cash when some of their high risk gam­bles turn out to be—surprise—unwise and they are in dan­ger of mak­ing a smaller profit than they hoped.

Sup­port­ers of the bailout, of course, argue that it was a cri­sis sit­u­a­tion, and that they were “too big to fail.” They say the con­se­quences of allow­ing all of those firms to fail would have been cat­a­strophic, rip­pling down to thou­sands of small busi­nesses that depended on the big ones for financ­ing and insur­ance, poten­tially caus­ing the whole econ­omy to collapse.

I’m not here to argue either side of this par­tic­u­lar debate, but it strikes me that the tone is not far removed from the con­ver­sa­tions I hear around gifted education.

While no one argues that we shouldn’t edu­cate gifted students—that would be an awfully rad­i­cal posi­tion to take—I do hear peo­ple argue that we should not be doing any­thing “spe­cial” just for gifted stu­dents. After all, they already have had so much handed to them, they are already priv­i­leged to be smart, and now we are going to give them even more? It’s the bailout all over again.

The counter to this is usu­ally some­thing along the lines of argu­ing that gifted stu­dents are the future lead­ers and inven­tors and job-​​creators, so to do any­thing short of max­i­miz­ing their poten­tial is to short­change our entire soci­ety. In short, they say, gifted kids are too big to fail.

This is the wrong argu­ment, how­ever. For one thing, under­ly­ing the debate is the assump­tion that gifted stu­dents are supe­rior to other chil­dren in some way, which log­i­cally implies that other chil­dren are infe­rior. The argu­ment that gifted stu­dents are des­tined for great­ness pre­sumes that such great­ness will elude all other chil­dren. I do not believe this.

What I do believe is that dif­fer­ent peo­ple learn dif­fer­ently. Some peo­ple have a capac­ity for learn­ing more and faster than oth­ers. This is not an elit­ist thing. It is sim­ply a recog­ni­tion of the vari­a­tions in human beings. Just as some peo­ple have a nat­ural capac­ity for sports or music, oth­ers have a tal­ent for math or lan­guage or under­stand­ing human relationships.

These capac­i­ties do not develop on their own. Pey­ton Man­ning has an unde­ni­able tal­ent for foot­ball, but he did not reach the high­est lev­els of the sport by coast­ing on that tal­ent. He works very hard to hone his skills, to iden­tify his rel­a­tive weak­nesses and improve them, and to keep his nat­ural abil­i­ties at the absolute peak of performance.

Edu­ca­tion is not a zero-​​sum game. Pro­vid­ing some­thing to one group of stu­dents which helps them to grow does not some­how deny it to another group, unless you explic­itly build it that way. Rec­og­niz­ing high abil­ity and nur­tur­ing it does not mean that we ignore the needs of stu­dents who strug­gle to learn.
Instead of a bailout metaphor, then, I sug­gest that gifted edu­ca­tion is more like infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment. The growth of our country’s econ­omy is depen­dent on hav­ing suf­fi­cient infra­struc­ture to allow it to func­tion. Roads, bridges, util­i­ties, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems aren’t sexy, but they allow us access to peo­ple, resources, and ideas out­side of our imme­di­ate neighborhood.

Every child has the poten­tial to become an adult with some­thing valu­able to con­tribute to our world. Each one’s con­tri­bu­tion will be dif­fer­ent, how­ever. I do not pro­pose we should begin try­ing to iden­tify in sec­ond or third grade what a child’s des­tiny is; how­ever, we should begin try­ing to iden­tify what a child’s capac­i­ties are and to find out how they learn best. Is that not what school is about any­way? And if a child learns more effi­ciently, then pro­vid­ing that child with the right match of con­tent and instruc­tion to allow them to develop fully is not giv­ing a hand­out to a rich CEO, it is rec­og­niz­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties in an untapped region and build­ing the infra­struc­ture there to allow it to fully develop.

And here is the really excit­ing part about it. If we shift our focus from “what’s best for all” to “what’s best for each,” then it will ben­e­fit not only gifted stu­dents, but every stu­dent, and the out­come can only be good.

Gifted Education in the 21st Century

Posted on May 1, 2011 by in Gifted, Leadership

Damian Bariexca (@damian613) brings us the sev­enth in what is now an ongo­ing series of posts on the future of gifted edu­ca­tion. Damian brings a unique per­spec­tive to this con­ver­sa­tion from his expe­ri­ence as both a school psy­chol­o­gist and high school Eng­lish teacher in New Jer­sey. This arti­cle is cross-​​posted at Damian’s blog, Apace of Change.

I’m a school psy­chol­o­gist, so my pro­fes­sional life is a mine­field of labels and acronyms — FAPE, IEP, SLD, OHI, IDEA, PLAAPF, ICS, FBA, “gen ed >80%”, “gen ed 40%-80%”, “gifted”, “learn­ing dis­abled”, etc. While labels like these are the real­ity for now, I have a vision of edu­ca­tion in the 21st cen­tury that reduces or pos­si­bly even elim­i­nates the need for these labels. Although my pro­fes­sional focus is on stu­dents with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties (gift­ed­ness is not a spe­cial ed clas­si­fi­ca­tion in NJ), I believe that LD and gift­ed­ness fall under the same umbrella in that they rep­re­sent atyp­i­cal learn­ing styles and abil­i­ties, and must both be accom­mo­dated accordingly.

My issue with labels stems, in large part, from my own child­hood, when I was iden­ti­fied as a “gifted” child in grade 3. I remained in my district’s pull-​​out “Gifted & Tal­ented” pro­gram through grade 8, when the pro­gram ended. While I did enjoy get­ting to leave class to work on more chal­leng­ing projects, there were the con­stant com­ments of “there goes the nerd herd”, etc., when­ever my class­mates and I would leave. A friend of mine was rec­om­mended to the G&T pro­gram in 6th grade but declined; when I asked him why, he said, “Because every­one will think I’m a nerd like you guys!” At age 11, that cut me to the quick, and it’s awfully telling that I can remem­ber that con­ver­sa­tion and his response ver­ba­tim over two decades after the fact.

From early on, my “gift­ed­ness”* was a double-​​edged sword: it was seen as desir­able in terms of school (was it a com­pe­ti­tion that I was “win­ning”?), but socially it became an alba­tross around my neck. I’ll spare you the tor­tured self-​​analysis, but suf­fice to say I’ve thought a lot about it over the years and have drawn some pretty solid con­clu­sions that are prob­a­bly bet­ter dis­cussed over some beers than in a blog post. While I don’t think this is the only issue, con­sider, for instance, the phys­i­cal removal from the gen­eral class­room: if my aca­d­e­mic needs could have been met through in-​​class dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, per­haps that stigma would not have been so sig­nif­i­cant (and per­haps my friend would have got­ten the chal­leng­ing cur­ricu­lum he deserved).

But for­get about the aca­d­e­mic impli­ca­tions for a minute; labels and cat­e­go­riza­tion are detri­men­tal to our stu­dents as peo­ple. They over­whelm­ingly inform stu­dents’ sense of self and their rela­tion to oth­ers; they pigeon­hole, they seg­re­gate, and they ulti­mately do more harm than good. Even when those labels are more socially desired, like “gifted”, I feel it’s still kind of like say­ing, “but say­ing all Asians are good at math is a good stereotype!”

My vision for gifted edu­ca­tion in the 21st cen­tury is much the same as my vision for spe­cial edu­ca­tion in the 21st cen­tury, which also hap­pens to be sim­i­lar to my vision of gen­eral edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tury: to reimag­ine not only the cur­ricu­lum, but also the phys­i­cal and geo­graphic ele­ments of our schools. I wrote about this a few months ago, but to briefly re-​​cap: rethink the neces­sity of the 7.5 hour, Monday-​​Friday school day, rethink the role of the instruc­tor as deliv­erer of con­tent, and rethink the role of the stu­dent in terms of steer­ing their learn­ing in ways other than choos­ing a few elec­tives each year once they’re in high school. My hope is that indi­vid­u­al­iz­ing stu­dents’ for­mal edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence as much as pos­si­ble will reduce the need for labels such as the ones I describe above, either by allow­ing a wider vari­ety of needs to be met within the tra­di­tional class­room, or by elim­i­nat­ing the tra­di­tional class­room completely.

In the ini­tial email Ger­ald sent me to invite me to write this post, he indi­cated when he unveiled his new mis­sion state­ment for his district’s gifted edu­ca­tion pro­gram, “In among the many pos­i­tive and encour­ag­ing responses, a few peo­ple com­mented that, while the state­ments were nice, aren’t these things we should be doing with every stu­dent?” Indeed, none of what I’m putting forth in this blog post is rev­o­lu­tion­ary; Vygot­sky, Piaget, and Dewey laid the ground­work for this type of think­ing a long time ago. Despite, or per­haps espe­cially in light of, that fact, the ques­tion remains: why are we not doing this for all our stu­dents? Are the road­blocks phys­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, geo­graphic, finan­cial, or other?

*Yes, I’m prob­a­bly con­sid­ered “smart” or “bright” by most aca­d­e­mic mea­sures, but con­sider: doing sim­ple men­tal math is very dif­fi­cult for me, I still take pause to con­sider my left from my right (bonus fun fact: up until my mid-​​twenties or so, I relied on a trick I devised when I was about 5 and owned shoes that had Win­nie the Pooh on one sole and Tig­ger on the other), I must write down every­thing I need to do or it won’t get done, I can’t change the oil in my car, and the most basic of house­hold hand­i­work tends to flum­mox me. Who’s gifted now?

What If Every Child Was Gifted?

Posted on November 26, 2010 by in Gifted

The sixth post on 21st Cen­tury gifted edu­ca­tion comes from Brandi Jor­dan, a for­mer ele­men­tary class­room teacher who now home­schools her three chil­dren. She is the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of The Teach­ers’ Lounge, a Really Good Stuff blog that is ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing teach­ers with prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion and resources. She also posts on Twit­ter as @ReallyGoodStuff.

Although it has been over 20 years, I dis­tinctly remem­ber being given the choice to stay in my cur­rent ele­men­tary school or trans­fer to the new mag­net gifted pro­gram at another school for my fourth grade year. I was one of only three stu­dents who were labeled as “gifted” at my cur­rent school and, while I enjoyed the once a week spe­cial lessons, I was excited about the oppor­tu­nity to spend a whole day being chal­lenged. So, the next Sep­tem­ber I found myself in an unfa­mil­iar school with no one I knew and a home­room that I was pulled out of every­day to go to my gifted class.

We read The Lit­tle Prince and did sci­ence exper­i­ments out­side. I remem­ber writ­ing poetry and cre­at­ing a bound book. How­ever, the thing that I remem­ber most about that year was the tran­si­tion back into the reg­u­lar class­room at the end of the gifted program’s day. It was a strange sen­sa­tion, going back into a room where a com­mu­nity of learn­ers was being built with­out me, yet where I was expected to fit in. I often won­der what those stu­dents thought about those of us who left the class­room at 9am every morn­ing and returned just before lunch.

Although I now home­school my own chil­dren, I taught for almost a decade in the class­room. I got to see how gifted edu­ca­tion has changed and how many times, being labeled as gifted was as dam­ag­ing to a child as any other label. Now some may argue that a gifted label is a bless­ing or a boon, because it pro­pels a child for­ward on a path of so called chal­leng­ing edu­ca­tion. I dis­agree. I think label­ing and pulling a child to a gifted class hurts not only them, but the rest of the stu­dents in the classroom.

Imag­ine for a moment that you are ten years old. You are sit­ting in your fourth grade class­room and sud­denly, the child at the desk next to you stands up and leaves the room to go to a spe­cial class. A class that you can­not go to. Why? Because you are not smart enough. Now, pre­tend that you are the child leav­ing. Every­one knows where you are going and why. Is it an awk­ward, uncom­fort­able feel­ing? Of course it is.

Instead of rais­ing the expec­ta­tions for all stu­dents, gifted edu­ca­tion has sug­gested that the expec­ta­tions should be lower for some stu­dents than they are for oth­ers. What does that say to the child who does not go to the gifted class about his poten­tial? Should that influ­ence how the gifted child is edu­cated? I think it should.

Now, under­stand that I am not sug­gest­ing that a gifted child should not be chal­lenged sim­ply because his peers might feel bad. I am sug­gest­ing that gifted edu­ca­tion move toward a place where all stu­dents are given the oppor­tu­nity to excel within the reg­u­lar class­room. I am sug­gest­ing that we raise the bar for every­one, not just those who have “gifted” stamped on their IEPs.

In Jerry Blumengarten’s arti­cle in this series on The Future of Gifted Edu­ca­tion, he sug­gests that real life expe­ri­ences are more valu­able to the field of gifted edu­ca­tion than tra­di­tional lessons. While I would agree with his state­ment, I also dis­agree that this is a method that should be used solely for gifted stu­dents. If an intern­ship or a web project chal­lenges and enhances the learn­ing of a gifted stu­dent, will it not also do the same for a stu­dent with­out that label?

What would hap­pen if we labeled all of our stu­dents as gifted? What would hap­pen if we chal­lenged them all in the same way as we do our gifted stu­dents now? While I can­not see the future of gifted edu­ca­tion tak­ing this path, I can­not help but feel that we are doing a dis­ser­vice to all of our stu­dents when we do not chal­lenge them in the same way and give them the oppor­tu­ni­ties that we now reserve only for gifted students.

Gifted but Lacking?

Posted on October 22, 2010 by in Gifted

Kevin Wash­burn (@kdwashburn on Twit­ter) brings us the fifth post in our series on gifted edu­ca­tion. Kevin is Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Clerestory Learn­ing and author of The Archi­tec­ture of Learn­ing. He is also a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tional Mind, Brain & Edu­ca­tion Soci­ety, the Learn­ing & the Brain Soci­ety, and is a con­trib­u­tor to The Edu­rati Review.

First the nec­es­sary dis­clo­sures. I am not a gifted ed. teacher. In fact, my only direct expe­ri­ence with gifted edu­ca­tion occurred in ele­men­tary school. As a fifth grader, I was admit­ted to my school’s gifted pro­gram and got to attend one ses­sion. My con­ser­v­a­tive mother, how­ever, believed that any­thing that took a child out of the reg­u­lar class­room must be part of the “hip­pie agenda.” I was removed from the pro­gram at her request.

Since then I’ve observed gifted edu­ca­tion and its stu­dents, but always as some­one at least one step removed from the process. I’ve been con­sulted on stu­dent selec­tion for such pro­grams, served as an edu­ca­tional leader in schools that had such pro­grams, and watched as var­i­ous nephews and nieces had the expe­ri­ence I missed. So, I only offer the fol­low­ing thoughts as an observer. There is no research base for my thoughts; they are merely a com­bi­na­tion of what I’ve seen and what I know.

Have you ever looked beneath the bridge that car­ries you across the canyons in your com­mute? Sure, the ele­vated road­way is what you rely on to get from Point A to Point B, but under that road­way is a care­fully con­structed cacoph­ony of sup­port. Gird­ers and struts make the main thing, the road­way across, possible.

Learn­ing is like that; it has its own cacoph­ony of sup­port­ing pil­lars. Of these, one that can be eas­ily over­looked with gifted stu­dents is self-​​regulation. Self-​​regulation is the abil­ity to con­sciously sup­press or delay responses in order to work for a higher goal. (You’ve prob­a­bly heard of the famous “marsh­mal­low test.” Here are some of its sub­jects in action dur­ing a recent repli­ca­tion of the orig­i­nal study.)

If there is any­thing often (but, impor­tantly, not always!) lack­ing in the gifted stu­dents I’ve observed, it’s a lack of self-​​regulation, specif­i­cally the abil­ity to per­se­vere when encoun­ter­ing chal­lenge. For exam­ple, sev­eral years ago I led the devel­op­ment of an instruc­tional read­ing pro­gram. The pro­gram empha­sized think­ing as the means to com­pre­hen­sion and trained stu­dents in var­i­ous skills related to cog­ni­tion. As schools imple­mented this pro­gram, I began receiv­ing inter­est­ing phone calls and emails. “We love the new pro­gram and our usu­ally strug­gling stu­dents are excelling,” the mes­sages began. “But we’re con­cerned about our gifted stu­dents. They seem dis­ori­ented by the program’s empha­sis on deep thought rather than the typ­i­cally easy answers. In fact, many of them are earn­ing grades lower than an A for the first time in their lives.”

As the year pro­gressed, these schools saw these stu­dents rise to the chal­lenge, but not until the stu­dents rec­og­nized that greater think­ing, and there­fore effort, was expected. The stu­dents were not sin­gled out; they were fail­ing to meet the expec­ta­tions of the reg­u­lar class­room because the chal­lenge increased, and many were not accus­tomed to hav­ing to work to learn.

No one is born know­ing every­thing, though some­times it can seem that way with gifted stu­dents. Learn­ing always requires effort. What often dis­tin­guishes gifted stu­dents is the ease with which they appear to learn in the typ­i­cal school struc­ture. If they are not chal­lenged at a level that requires effort, they can develop mis­con­cep­tions about intel­li­gence, and they can fail to develop crit­i­cal self-​​regulation capacities.

Self-​​regulation is much like a mus­cle. It can be devel­oped and strength­ened. By engag­ing stu­dents in activ­i­ties that require delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion or per­se­ver­ance, we pro­vide a self-​​regulation work­out. Just like exer­cis­ing yields slow but steady results, grad­u­ally increas­ing the amount of self-​​regulation required for tasks slowly builds capac­ity. It is just such expe­ri­ences that gifted stu­dents often lack due to their remark­able abilities.

I was recently talk­ing to a stu­dent who is cur­rently par­tic­i­pat­ing in his school’s gifted pro­gram. We were dis­cussing how easy school was for him, and I asked him if he thought there were any draw­backs to almost effort­less learn­ing. “Yes,” he remarked. “I’m pretty good at run­ning 50-​​yard dashes, but I don’t have the per­se­ver­ance to run some­thing like cross coun­try.” From the mouths of per­cep­tive gifted students…

All stu­dents need to develop sup­port­ing capac­i­ties, such as self-​​regulation. With­out it, even gifted stu­dents will never reach their potential—a real loss because the solu­tions to many prob­lems lie beyond the 50-​​yard fin­ish line.

I Don't Know

Posted on September 18, 2010 by in Gifted, Networking

For the fourth post in our series on gifted edu­ca­tion we turn to Jeff Aga­menoni, who posts as @teacherman79 on Twit­ter. Though rel­a­tively new to gifted edu­ca­tion, Jeff’s expe­ri­ence in edu­ca­tion and hon­est per­spec­tive on teach­ing made him a nat­ural choice to invite as a guest blog­ger here. Jeff is also active in Sec­ond Life and Quest Atlantis.

My name is Jeff Aga­menoni and I have been teach­ing for 17 years in a vari­ety of posi­tions, mostly mid­dle school, in Great Falls, Mon­tana. I am in my sec­ond year as a gifted and tal­ented spe­cial­ist and I learned a ton in my first year. I hope to con­tinue learn­ing about how to be more effec­tive with my stu­dents as I move into my sec­ond year.

When Ger­ald asked me to guest blog, he posed the ques­tion, “How are we going to meet the needs of the gifted pop­u­la­tion as we con­tinue mov­ing into the twenty-​​first cen­tury?” My ini­tial response was that we need to be chang­ing the way we deliver instruc­tion for all kids in much the same way. I told this to Ger­ald and he said I needed to think it through more thor­oughly. So I did, and the truth of the mat­ter is, I really don’t know. There are a cou­ple of things, how­ever that I am fairly cer­tain of.

I believe the answer lies some­where within the con­cept of Con­nec­tivism. New tech­nol­ogy, to me, is not about the machines, the appli­ca­tions, or the search engines; but about its abil­ity to con­nect us to oth­ers. Most experts I have read talk about the impor­tance of group­ing gifted stu­dents as a means of pro­vid­ing them with increased learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. They also talk about con­nect­ing gifted stu­dents to experts in their fields of inter­est. Not only do cur­rent tech­nolo­gies increase our capac­ity to con­nect gifted stu­dents to one another, but they increase our capac­ity to con­nect our stu­dents to other great teach­ers and experts in a vari­ety of fields. I believe I have begun doing this on a small scale and I believe my job is to con­tinue to try and increase the scale at which I con­nect my stu­dents with each other, to other great teach­ers, and to experts in a vari­ety of occu­pa­tional fields.

The sec­ond thing I began think­ing about last night is some­times it seems in edu­ca­tion we focus more on what we need to be doing dif­fer­ently instead of what we are already doing right. I believe most teach­ers really want to do what is right for kids, but every year, no mat­ter what hap­pened in the pre­vi­ous year, it seems it has never been enough for some peo­ple, usu­ally peo­ple who haven’t been in the class­room since last cen­tury. So, teach­ers who are read­ing this: you did a great job last year, and keep up the good work. I am cer­tain that in some way, you touched a kid’s life.

Finally, I love con­nec­tivism and hav­ing a PLN. I con­nect to my PLN in a vari­ety of places includ­ing twit­ter, blogs I read, and sec­ond life, among oth­ers. I believe that with­out it (my PLN), I would be lost and extremely unsure of how to approach issues like the one that Ger­ald asked me to guest blog about. I think it is impor­tant to con­tinue look­ing at and dis­cussing how we can improve the way we deliver instruc­tion to our stu­dents. Hav­ing a strong PLN and a will­ing­ness to be a lit­tle reflec­tive gives us the abil­ity to accom­plish that very impor­tant goal.

The Future of Gifted Education

Posted on August 18, 2010 by in Gifted, Policy

The third post in our sum­mer series on gifted edu­ca­tion comes from Jerry Blu­men­garten, bet­ter known to many as Cybrary Man (@cybraryman1 on Twitter). Cybrary Man taught sev­eral sub­jects over 32 years in one of the tough­est areas of NYC, the last 12 years of that as the teacher-​​librarian of his mid­dle school. He started Cybrary Man’s Edu­ca­tional Web Sites as a library site and it now serves all grade lev­els and sub­ject areas. He has also writ­ten edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als for the util­ity indus­try over the past 30 years. Most recently, Jerry gave the keynote at ntcamp in Philadel­phia.

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have per­se­ver­ance and above all con­fi­dence in our­selves. We must believe that we are gifted for some­thing and that this thing must be attained. (Marie Curie)


Stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents need us to change the way we deliver and sup­port our gifted edu­ca­tion programs.

One of the great­est learn­ing expe­ri­ences that my son had was while work­ing on his West­ing­house Sci­ence (now Intel) project. He had the oppor­tu­nity to work directly with sci­en­tists once a week at a Sci­ence Insti­tute. I did not mind car­pool­ing until he got his license, because I saw the great value in this con­nec­tion between stu­dents and spe­cial­ists work­ing in the real world. Local busi­nesses and med­ical facil­i­ties could pro­vide stu­dents with hands-​​on train­ing and intern­ships and the pro­fes­sion­als there could act as men­tors. On a Mid­dle School level, my school had a Health Careers Pro­gram that gave our stu­dents a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to do com­mu­nity ser­vice while learn­ing along with med­ical and sup­port staff in hos­pi­tals, clin­ics, nurs­ing homes and senior centers.

We should be tak­ing this same approach with our gifted stu­dents. We can eas­ily accom­plish this with the plethora of great web tools and our abil­ity to con­nect with Skype, etc. Dis­tance learn­ing has to be revived with the lat­est tech tools. We should also be mak­ing bet­ter asso­ci­a­tions with higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions. Pro­vi­sions can be estab­lished for gifted high school stu­dents to earn col­lege cred­its with col­leges. We have to do more to join our stu­dents with experts out­side the tra­di­tional class­room walls. I can envi­sion Ellu­mi­nate ses­sions with experts in a wide range of fields address­ing and answer­ing ques­tions from stu­dents. This should be stan­dard pro­ce­dure in classes. It would also be nice to have stu­dents shadow pro­fes­sion­als in dif­fer­ent fields We also have to exam­ine how indi­vid­ual stu­dents learn best. Some need struc­tured learn­ing envi­ron­ments where oth­ers need less struc­tured learn­ing experiences.

All pre­ser­vice, grad­u­ate and lead­er­ship edu­ca­tion pro­grams should include spe­cial­ized train­ing for teach­ing and men­tor­ing gifted learn­ers. Empha­sis should be focused on dif­fer­en­ti­ated edu­ca­tion of gifted learners

Teach­ers must also reach out to local muse­ums. The Philadel­phia Museum of Art, for exam­ple, has the Wachovia Edu­ca­tion Resources Cen­ter that helps teach­ers use art and art images to enhance lessons in core cur­ric­u­lar areas. The Explorato­rium in San Fran­cisco pro­vides tools to make your work eas­ier and more enrich­ing, includ­ing things to do at the museum, hands-​​on activ­i­ties, and a wealth of Web fea­tures about impor­tant sci­ence top­ics. Each year more than 10,000 edu­ca­tors take advan­tage of The Field Museum’s resources for pro­fes­sional development.

Reflect­ing on my own edu­ca­tion I felt that the best classes I had on the under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate lev­els were ones that were taught by peo­ple who actu­ally worked in that field or were called in as experts.

I feel that there has to be a strong com­mit­ment to gifted pro­grams, the ongo­ing train­ing of gifted teach­ers as well as all school staff mem­bers, and follow-​​up research on chil­dren who have gone through these pro­grams. Coun­sel­ing and guid­ance ser­vices must be pro­vided on a con­tin­u­ous basis for gifted students.

More sup­port ser­vices not only for the chil­dren but their par­ents to help them deal with their chil­dren are also needed. Every school dis­trict should have a gifted edu­ca­tion school committee.

Much should be done to improve the deliv­ery of edu­ca­tion for our gifted stu­dents to meet the chal­lenges of the 21st Century.

[Please check out Jerry’s Gifted and Tal­ented page: http://​cybrary​man​.com/​g​i​f​t​e​d​.​h​tml]

What Does it Mean to be Gifted Now?

Posted on July 16, 2010 by in Gifted, Learning

For the sec­ond in our sum­mer series, Tony Bal­dasaro (@baldy7 on Twit­ter) brings us this reflec­tion on his views about gifted edu­ca­tion. Tony is the Chief Human Resources Offi­cer and the Per­son­al­ized Path­ways Admin­is­tra­tor for the Vir­tual Learn­ing Acad­emy Char­ter School. This arti­cle was also cross-​​posted at Tony’s blog, TransLead­er­ship.

What excites me about the shift in edu­ca­tion away from the classroom-​​centric model we have all been a part of over the last cen­tury, is the fact that stu­dents are less depen­dent upon the teacher and/​or the sys­tem for all knowl­edge.  Stu­dents no longer have to attend school to attain their knowl­edge, they are as Nagel describes, “free agent learn­ers”.

Because of that, stu­dents have the oppor­tu­nity to break from the long-​​standing cat­e­gories we so often use in edu­ca­tion.  Terms such as “slow learner”, “hands on learner”, “trou­bled stu­dent”, “active stu­dent”, “solid stu­dent”, “middle-​​of-​​the-​​road stu­dent”, “tal­ented stu­dent”, “straight A stu­dent” and yes “gifted stu­dent” are sim­ply con­structs of our edu­ca­tional sys­tem and they most often only pro­vide clues as to how the stu­dent learns within the nar­row con­fines of that sys­tem. The “straight A” stu­dent may be intel­li­gent, but I’ll bet they are also also very com­pli­ant and dili­gent in get­ting their home­work done and being atten­tive in class.  They are very good at play­ing the part of the indus­trial model school stu­dent that the “con­spir­acy” of school was intended to cre­ate but are they good at solv­ing prob­lems, being cre­ative, unlearn­ing that which they have pre­vi­ously learned so they can be rel­e­vant?  Do we really chal­lenge these stu­dents to use their gifts to their fullest poten­tial or do we sim­ply moved them along the con­veyor belt, send­ing them off to col­lege with the tools to con­tinue to be “good” students?

The “active” stu­dent is one that doesn’t fit our sys­tem well, yet fits in the world’s chaotic and unpre­dictable sys­tem very nicely.   To make that stu­dent fit within our edu­ca­tional model, we drug, pun­ish, and belit­tle the stu­dent until they either com­ply to a degree in which they can be tol­er­ated, or are pushed out of our sys­tem all together.  The real shame here is that many times there is an assump­tion that these stu­dents are not gifted, when in fact they are, they sim­ply don’t play the game by the indus­trial model rules that were estab­lished a cen­tury ago.  Our choice has been to change the stu­dent to fit the model instead of chang­ing the model to fit the stu­dent and by doing so, we have missed an oppor­tu­nity with a whole bunch of gifted students.

How often do we work to con­trol our stu­dents?  Think of that stu­dent who chal­lenges our sys­tems.  Think about your reac­tion to that stu­dent.  Now think about your reac­tion to that stu­dent when you know they are right and our sys­tem in wrong.  Unfor­tu­nately, most of us squelch that stu­dent and often with­out a true expla­na­tion as to why.  We say that it is, “com­pli­cated” or “for their own good” or “they will under­stand when they are older”, instead of embrac­ing those stu­dents, their ideas and their input.  Instead of acknowl­edg­ing that they are right­fully chal­leng­ing the way we edu­cat­ing them because our sys­tem is not work­ing for them and they want it to.  Their “chal­lenges” are pleas for help, not the acts of betrayal we so often por­tray them to be.

My point here is that we have so nar­rowly defined what it means to be “gifted” in our sys­tem of edu­ca­tion, that we fail to either see the gifts within each stu­dent, or we fail to push stu­dents beyond the model we have been a part of for so long.  I fear that as long as we define “school” and “learn­ing” so nar­rowly, we will con­tinue to miss the the oppor­tu­nity to cul­ti­vate the gifted stu­dent found in all stu­dents.  As long as we con­tinue to define what it means to be “gifted” by the sys­tem which so nar­rowly defines how we learn, we will not truly find each of our stu­dents’ gifts.  It is why this shift toward free agent learn­ing, with the cat­e­gor­i­cal free­doms and the power to self-​​define our gifts, is so intriguing.

Empowering the Future

Posted on July 13, 2010 by in Gifted, Thinking Skills

This is the first in a sum­mer series of guest posts by mem­bers of my personal/​professional learn­ing net­work. Mary Beth Hertz is the tech­nol­ogy teacher and tech­nol­ogy inte­gra­tor at Alliance for Progress Char­ter School in North Philadel­phia. She can be found on Twit­ter at @mbteach and blogs at Philly Teacher.

What I want to express in this blog post is not any­thing new or inno­v­a­tive. It is noth­ing that hasn’t been said before.  How­ever, it is some­thing that’s been mulling about in my brain while I was drink­ing my morn­ing cof­fee and watch­ing the Twit­ter stream from the Dis­cov­ery Edu­ca­tors Net­work Lead­er­ship Coun­cil Symposium.

A video kept get­ting re-​​tweeted in the stream so I fig­ured I’d bet­ter check it out.

You can watch the 2 minute video, Microsoft Labs 2019 Vision:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQdGvfV4WnU

As soon as it started I felt like I was watch­ing a car com­mer­cial. It was flashy, well-​​produced and fast-​​paced. I hon­estly was not that impressed. I guess what peo­ple felt was that it was a win­dow into what the future holds for tech­nol­ogy and dig­i­tal devices.

That I won’t deny.

The name on the video is “Microsoft Office Labs 2019 Vision Mon­tage.” This is the vision that Microsoft has for our future.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Many things.

For one, why are we let­ting Microsoft dic­tate what the future of dig­i­tal life will look like? We could make the same state­ment about Apple or Sony or any other com­pa­nies who man­u­fac­ture dig­i­tal prod­ucts.  Many of these com­pa­nies do use cus­tomer input and feed­back to improve their prod­ucts, but in real­ity we are all con­sumers of what these com­pa­nies feed us.

What does this mean for edu­ca­tion? It means that we need to be putting our stu­dents to the task of decid­ing what THEY want their future to look like. We live in a time unlike any other in his­tory. Our nat­ural resources are dis­ap­pear­ing, we have devices that are more pow­er­ful than ever before and we have tools that allow us to con­nect with peo­ple thou­sands of miles away in a mat­ter of seconds.

Com­pa­nies like Microsoft are not in the busi­ness of plan­ning for the future of our chil­dren as mem­bers of soci­ety or for the future of our global com­mu­nity. We must empower our stu­dents with that charge. It is they who will inhabit the future. We must also ensure that we empower ALL stu­dents to take part in the build­ing of future soci­ety, not just the ones who are priv­i­leged and can afford it.

There are many obsta­cles to over­come when we begin to ask our stu­dents to solve real world prob­lems. Solu­tions to real world prob­lems don’t fit on a stan­dard­ized test. Solu­tions to real world prob­lems take time to under­stand and even more time to solve. Solu­tions to real world prob­lems require a restruc­tur­ing of school as we know it.

I have been hav­ing var­i­ous con­ver­sa­tions (and some­times debates) about what it means to be a teacher and a learner in the 21st Cen­tury. Some of the con­ver­sa­tion has been focused around guid­ing stu­dents to under­stand­ing rather than deliv­er­ing con­tent, cre­at­ing learn­ing envi­ron­ments where learn­ing is a con­nected and social expe­ri­ence, and infus­ing tech­nol­ogy into learn­ing when it can trans­form the learn­ing expe­ri­ence.  The world our stu­dents will inhabit will require them to col­lab­o­rate with peers, under­stand social media tools and be prob­lem solvers within their own com­mu­ni­ties and the larger world.  We need to pre­pare them for that world.

Schools need to allow for tin­ker­ing. Tin­ker­ing with ideas, tin­ker­ing with mate­ri­als, tin­ker­ing with stu­dents’ per­ceived lim­i­ta­tions. Tin­ker­ing teaches chil­dren how to learn from fail­ure. Tin­ker­ing teaches chil­dren how to think about a prob­lem or a project from many per­spec­tives. Tin­ker­ing allows chil­dren to build self esteem and feel pride in what they do. Stu­dents who tin­ker are the stu­dents who build our future.

Some exam­ples of what I’m talk­ing about:

There are those who will look at these words as a ‘pipe dream,’ ‘utopia’ or ‘fairy­tale.’  To them I would argue that we must have a Vision. If Microsoft can con­struct a vision of what it thinks the world will look like in 2019 then we as edu­ca­tors, par­ents, com­mu­nity mem­bers, law­mak­ers and gen­eral stake­hold­ers in the world need to have a vision, too. Even more impor­tantly, we need to let our chil­dren begin to build their own vision for their own future and give them skills to make it real.

What Is 21st Century Gifted Education?

Posted on June 19, 2010 by in Announcements, Gifted, Policy

Gifted edu­ca­tion has been around for over a cen­tury. Researchers have stud­ied what it means to be gifted, and what are the best meth­ods for edu­cat­ing the gifted. It has been an uphill jour­ney for many rea­sons. A great num­ber of peo­ple believe that there is no need to pro­vide gifted edu­ca­tion, that it is elit­ist and unfair, and that gifted kids will do fine any­way, so why waste energy and resources on spe­cial pro­grams for them?

It is not my pur­pose today to engage in this debate. But I keep com­ing back to a com­ment that was made to me recently in con­nec­tion with a project I’m doing at work. My dis­trict is in the midst of a com­pre­hen­sive review and analy­sis of our gifted pro­gram. As part of that review, we have cre­ated a new vision and mis­sion state­ment for the gifted pro­gram. (For the curi­ous among you, it is posted here)

I shared the draft of that doc­u­ment with my admin­is­tra­tion, then unveiled it pub­licly for the first time at a school board meet­ing. In among the many pos­i­tive and encour­ag­ing responses, a few peo­ple com­mented that, while the state­ments were nice, aren’t these things we should be doing with every student?

This echoes sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments I’ve heard for as long as I’ve been teach­ing. Of course the answer is yes; though the empha­sis for the gen­eral edu­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum and pro­gram will be on dif­fer­ent kinds of things, the “stuff” that for so long was the core of gifted edu­ca­tion has become part of the main­stream 21st cen­tury emphasis.

It got me think­ing about what gifted edu­ca­tion should look like in today’s schools. Is it still nec­es­sary in an age when high level think­ing and prob­lem solv­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tion, tech­nol­ogy, dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, and inclu­sion are grow­ing in their impor­tance and reach in our schools? I believe it is, but my thoughts are con­tin­u­ing to evolve about what it should do and how.

So what should gifted edu­ca­tion be in the 21st cen­tury? I don’t know. Yet. But I’ve invited a col­lec­tion of peo­ple who have had a tremen­dous influ­ence on my learn­ing and think­ing to help me answer that ques­tion. Over the next sev­eral weeks, eleven peo­ple who I con­sider col­leagues and friends will be guests on this blog, wrestling with that very ques­tion. I am look­ing for­ward to read­ing what they have to say. I hope you are too.

Posts in this series:

Empow­er­ing the Future, by Mary Beth Hertz
What Does It Mean to Be Gifted Now? by Tony Bal­dasero
The Future of Gifted Edu­ca­tion, by Jerry Blu­men­garten
I Don’t Know, by Jeff Aga­menoni
Gifted but Lack­ing?, by Kevin Wash­burn
What If Every Child Was Gifted?, by Brandi Jor­dan
Gifted Edu­ca­tion in the 21st Cen­tury, by Damian Bariexca

Lessons Learned from Pawn Stars

Posted on June 8, 2010 by in Gifted, Learning

Ear­lier today, Tony Bal­dasero posted this:

There are times when I think #pawn­stars on the His­tory Chan­nel is more rel­e­vant than many his­tory classes I have been inTue Jun 08 02:43:02 via Tweet­Deckbaldy7
baldy7

As his posts tend to do, it got me think­ing about what I’ve learned from the show, not about his­tory, but about teach­ing and learning.

For those read­ers who haven’t seen Pawn Stars, it’s a real­ity show about a pawn shop in Las Vegas. In each episode, cus­tomers bring in var­i­ous objects they want to pawn or sell. The shop own­ers have to appraise the value, nego­ti­ate, and some­times spot the fakes among the real items.

At first blush it seems like an odd fit for the His­tory Chan­nel. But the items that peo­ple bring in are such things as antique firearms, his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments, sports mem­o­ra­bilia, even Jimmy Hoffa’s photo album (in the Back­room Brawl episode). As the series star and store owner Rick Har­ri­son says, “Every­thing has a story.”

The stars of the show are a col­lec­tion of not-​​so-​​sophisticated guys who are more likely to trade an item for a new tat­too than to appre­ci­ate the cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance of a native artifact.

But there is no deny­ing that these guys know their stuff. Rick, his dad (the “Old Man”), and his son “Hoss” all have a depth of knowl­edge about his­tory and antique objects that never ceases to fas­ci­nate me. In one episode, a cus­tomer walked into the shop with what looked like a rusty hunk of metal, and Rick imme­di­ately iden­ti­fied it as a set of 19th cen­tury Frog­gatt Plug 8 handcuffs.

A few semi-​​random thoughts that came to mind as I con­sid­ered the show:

  1. Learn­ing is not the same as aca­d­e­mics. Rick Har­ri­son dropped out of high school in tenth grade, but he prob­a­bly knows more about his­tory than most col­lege grad­u­ates. Rick has obvi­ously learned an incred­i­ble amount in the years he has been in busi­ness. He works in a par­tic­u­larly unfor­giv­ing field, too—if he’s wrong about an object or its ori­gin and pays more than it’s worth, no one is going to buy it from him out of pity. He’s out of luck. The only way to be a suc­cess in his busi­ness in the long term is to know what you’re doing.
  2. You can’t know it all. Despite the exten­sive knowl­edge and exper­tise of the pawn shop staff, they don’t pre­tend to know every­thing. When an item comes in that Rick ques­tions, he calls in a spe­cial­ist. He has a col­lec­tion of experts who he asks to exam­ine items and ver­ify their authen­tic­ity. He’s not afraid to tell a cus­tomer, “I have no idea if this is real or what it might be worth.”
  3. There is no “proper” expres­sion of an intel­lec­tual gift. Some might say that the Har­ri­son family’s tal­ent is “wasted” in such a low class oper­a­tion as the pawn busi­ness. But who are we to judge the value that this shop and its own­ers con­tribute to the com­mu­nity or soci­ety? Who or what deter­mines if some­one is a suc­cess, or is achiev­ing at his or her poten­tial? Rick seems to love what he does, and he is good at his cho­sen pro­fes­sion. If we have a stu­dent who is a tal­ented writer, who’s to say that we have to guide that writer to pro­duc­ing “great lit­er­a­ture?” What if his or her pas­sion is to write slap­stick car­toons? Isn’t South Park just as valid an expres­sion of writ­ing tal­ent as Mans­field Park?

I believe we spend a lot of time in edu­ca­tion try­ing to cram stu­dents into the molds we have pre­de­ter­mined are best for them. While we do have an oblig­a­tion to take raw tal­ent and shape it, per­haps we need to look at it the way Michelan­gelo looked at sculp­ture:

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculp­tor to dis­cover it.


Our job is to dis­cover the poten­tial that is already inside the stu­dent and help them real­ize it, not to maneu­ver the stu­dent into becom­ing what we believe they should become.