Truth:
*Some kids don't want to skip, even when they're years ahead of their peers. (Like my son, who is 4 years ahead in math and 5 years ahead in LA. He likes to be around kids his own age.)
*Most kids would rather be challenged than coast.
*Even PG kids need and want to be taught. (My son's teacher gave him a math book in 4th grade and told him if he needed help, to ask. My son never asked, but he HATED math that year.)
*Not all gifted kids are able to advocate for themselves, and therefore they seem like they don't care about schoolwork, when they actually do.
YES!!!
Especially point 2-- if you see signs of avoidance of challenge in a gifted child, that ought to be a klaxon of warning for
perfectionism. Time to examine the relative level of challenge in that child's life-- and to look at the history of how well (or poorly) that child's needs have been met.
The third one, I've been
around-and-around-and-around with my DD's school over. She
needs a teacher. She also doesn't always
know what she needs, she just knows that it's "wrong" when she doesn't have those needs met. That doesn't mean for one second that she is not HG+. No "NT" student can truly
learn-- and retain-- a full year of mathematics in just 2 or 3 days. But she needs a teacher. Not YouTube, not Khan, not another 'workbook.'
IMO, some truths are self-evident:
Autodidactic =/= gifted.
(Global) avid interest and cooperation =/= gifted.
Gifted students
may look that way, particularly when they are interested in a subject-- but they don't necessarily have those things as core traits. My DD is often quite a difficult student for teachers because of her rate of learning-- and her lack of cooperation with instruction over material she knows-- not to mention her disproportionate responses to constructive criticism due to her perfectionism. She's amazing all around, and I do
not always mean that in a positive manner. She needs teachers who pay attention to her-- and who won't back down when she puffs up like a porcupine.
Gifted children
can do things that NT ones cannot. A child that spontaneously displays thinking, reasoning, or understanding which is not developmentally "possible" is gifted. Full stop. Do
not write that off or rationalize it as a "fluke." It doesn't matter that s/he doesn't do it all the time, or that s/he won't do it on command (what? like a trained seal??). You cannot
train a child to do things that his/her cognitive development won't support.
I'd think that experienced people in education would recognize this and respond appropriately-- but you'd never know it from talking to (or advocating with) educators.
