Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Other drawbacks to being gifted in regular classes

Like fwtxmom, few of my classmates appreciated formal tutoring. Oh, sure-- they mostly enjoyed having me as a member of their GROUP for group work. More than a few wanted to sit close to me-- for a not-terribly popular kid, there sure was a lot of jostling for those five seats to the sides and behind me. (Not that I'm cynical or anything, but I still remember being chewed out by a total queen Bee in junior high for not being more accommodating during a quiz. Chutzpah, much?) Of course on the plus side, I became pretty convinced that those kids had little of any authenticity to offer me to begin with, and that I was actually better off WITHOUT them.

Having the teacher tell them to listen to me? No way, and it wouldn't have helped anyway since my learning style was so reading and writing intensive. (Again, like fwtxmom.) I do recall being sent to be a 'reading buddy' or some such thing to the Kindy classrooms as a 4th-6th grader, though.

Many of my K-12 teachers eyed me with avaricious, poorly-concealed GLEE once they figured out that I knew how to run a large-batch photocopier and replace both ink and toner in a hand-crank mimeograph before I was eight. (Teacher's kid, here.) I could also fix most problems with overhead projectors and reel-to-reel projectors and recorders.

Yeah. I spent a lot of time at the office making copies, collating (before run-of-the-mill copiers did that) and generally being actually useful. I similarly enjoyed being away from the classroom.

I was also a VERY fast grader with a key-- and accurate. So I graded papers for teachers starting in about fourth grade. I'd been doing my mom's since I was six.

My favorite of those jobs was filing for the high school band program, though-- LOVED doing that. Just me and all the sheet music in a big walk-in storage closet. What a lovely island of relative peace each morning.

Yeah.

Casting back through my memory, I do remember a positive tutoring experience. I formally tutored a friend in a foreign language. I'm very good with languages, and she was very bad (I think she had an LD, actually). It did strengthen my command of the skills to tutor her. But we were both quite mature and we liked each other. IIRC, we also giggled and chitchatted a fair bit.

I just think it's a lot to ask. I am not a natural teacher, even though I'm quite social. Maybe that's my bias here. I know I'm not good at it. I dislike helping with homework. I constantly feel like I'm either giving too much help or not enough. (DD would say not enough.)

Guess I had it good. I was allowed to use extra time to:
--go to the library to make stop-action animated films and slide shows
--diagram sentences
--do logic problems
--read a large novel I kept in my desk
--make elaborate maps

I was far too introverted and bully-bait to be asked to help other kids with their work. (Could have used the social-skills support and practice, really.) But there are plenty of productive things to give a child who is done with her work.

DeeDee

ETA: now that I think about it, the stop-action film was a collaborative project, one of the few joint efforts I remember enjoying.

Since the topic is some overlooked negatives:
- Gaining social acceptance by letting others copy
- Being held up as an example of a good student based on grades when you are really a bad example with poor academic skills and just smart
- Asking questions to expand one's understanding that waste other's in the class's time who have not a clue what you are talking about
- Coping by becoming more introverted and socially isolated
- Having poor expectations about others
- Moving backwards in moral development by the social pressure from kids still at punishment and selfish motivation stages

Dumbing down to fit into the class and be accepted is often an unrealized drawback of a GT child who is most often in the normal class setting.

I just read this two nights ago... how convenient. This says that at least one founding father (plus all the ones who approved this passage unanimously and unaltered, unanimously) found many reasons for education.


From the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, via the sub-sub-committee of one, aka John Adams

Dude, thanks. I would like to live in the place he's describing, and educate my children to all of those ends, social and intellectual.

DeeDee

All I did in my extra time was: talk too much, tutor others, read, or sleep.

Mostly I slept -- this was probably the worst habit I picked up in school. Boredom = nap. Because my grades were so good, no one ever called me on it. Because I talked too much and too loudly when I was awake, I think the teachers sort of liked it. By the time I was an undergraduate I estimated I slept through at least half of the class time in 90% of my classes.

I could just stay up until 2:00 to 4:00 a.m. with the knowledge that I could sleep through calculus and physics in the morning.

So, yeah. Those weren't the best life habits to develop.

I know, right?

The problem did not lie in being in regular classes either. By the time I was in secondary schools, I was in as differentiated a classroom setting as my city was able to provide. I think it was more of a problem like Zen Scanner said:
This!

My sleeping problem probably wasn't actually just a habit (though I often describe it as such). As an adult I see a neurologist and manage it with therapies I learned doing research for my children. My pet peeve is that the behavior was ignored or outright encouraged when I was in school because of my grades. What kind of difference would it have made if the behavior had been identified as potentially life altering and efforts had been made to curtail or deal with when it emerged after puberty? I see this too much with my ds8. He displays numerous behaviors that will eventually be life-limiting for him as he gets into adulthood. But because he's smart and he's not too disruptive when he does them, they're fine. No problems at all.