Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How do you all define gifted?

There's a lot I'd like to discuss in this bit here, but my mind is going in about three different directions. Let's see if I can get this sorted out.

First, let me situate myself. I am a[n allegedly] grown-up PG kid who became a public school teacher after a few careers. Although I have had many gifted kids in my classroom, I have never worked in a school that has a formal, functioning gifted program.

The quirk of my career is that I have much more experience dealing with students who have disabilities, but also working with school to meet the needs of students who do not have IEPs or Modification Plans. My district has allegedly implemented a Comprehensive Student Support System, and when there was funding for it, that was allegedly my job.

With that background, I have to say that the notion that you can only provide services to a certain number of kids, or that kids must compete for slots in a program, is alien to me--unless we're talking about some pretty intensive services that involve agencies outside the school district.

Under IDEA, the question is not "What can we provide with the resources and the staffing that we have in place?" The question is asked, again and again, "How do we meet the needs of the individual student?" If the student has a demonstrated need, the school finds a way, or they find themselves in a world of hurt, paperwork, due process, civil rights complaints, and/or federal consent decrees. However, gifted education is not funded and regulated the way IDEA is in the USA. Even when there are laws on the state books about gifted education, those laws are often just ignored.

When my sister and I were in middle school, the school district got a gifted program [huzzah!], went around testing all these kids by teacher recommendation, yadayadayada. When all was said and done, I made the cutoff, and my older sister did not. OK, fast forward 30 odd years, and I'm a teacher. My older, better-focused sister is a medical doctor, making, perhaps, 12 or 20 times as much money as I am. What Renzulli's 3-Ring concept means to me is that both of us should have been in the gifted program, and that seems right to me.

However, an ideal gifted program would--like a special ed. program--have an array of services for a variety of needs. In SpEd, most students are in general ed classes most of the time. In my general ed class, I provide some differentiation for students with disabilities as well as some challenge assignments for students who can do a little bit more. A tiny percentage of SpEd students have such intensive needs that they end up with home-based instruction, in special schools, or in residential placements.

It's this array of services that we do not generally have for gifted students, even when there is A Gifted Program in the school.

As far as bumping a kid out because they're slacking off, that's a separate issue that I'll call motivation leverage. People whose brains have been fully matured by hard experience are trying to influence the behavior of a brain that is not fully mature in order to make things easier for the immature brain in the long term. That's what parenting and teaching are all about, right?

Well, when you are trying to get motivation leverage on the issue of decent grades, you are very interested in finding positive and negative consequences that actually mean something significant to the child. For a gifted student, participation in the gifted program may be a carrot. To me, that's what the work habits clause is about. Your mileage may vary.

But motivation, executive function, social and emotional concerns are all educational needs that would ideally be addressed in an array of services for gifted students.

OMG! I think I finally ran out of things to say!