Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Interesting article: Teaching as Self-Sacrifice

What Val said too. DW is a high school language arts teacher who incredibly intelligent and motivated but I have seen her have to deal with being downstream of crappy teachers too.

Most forum participants, while intelligent, would not have known about gifted or 2e unless these issues manifested themselves in our families. Similarly teachers (and even doctors) who may be experts in their fields may be unaware of gifted or 2e.

Ultimately raising awareness through advocacy may be more effective than negatively labeling those who are unaware (which may be seen as smacking the oobleck with a spoon).
Most children's educational needs may be well served; gifted kids and 2e kids are a very small minority.

Indigo, I agree with what you say: they might not know.

But getting to the point in the OP's link to that blog post about professionalism among teachers --- part of being a professional is knowing stuff about your field. Ergo, those in the education who want to be seen as professionals have a duty to know that a small segment of students will move much faster than the usual pace (just as a small segment moves much more slowly).

Agreed. Teachers may be inadequately prepared by a system which considers gifted studies optional and/or advanced degree material. That said, I'll play devil's advocate with this: "a small segment of students will move much faster than the usual pace" seems to be the sticking point for teachers/schools/districts which have "solved" the "problem" of gifted by setting the maximum pace in the classroom. (Voila! This small segment is no longer moving much faster than the usual pace).

How would teachers learn about appropriate curriculum and pacing for gifted learners?
- through college/university programs at the bachelor degree level so that every teacher encounters basic training in gifted
- through well-prepared parent advocacy efforts, especially where gifted studies may only be taught as an optional course... or a masters level course for those wishing to specialize.

If parents were to provide input for a curriculum... ideally, what would college/university teach every new educator? What would you include in a semester-long course in gifted studies required for a bachelor's degree in education?
- Common characteristics of gifted children?
- Common variations of observable gifted attributes based on ethic/cultural differences?
- Common variations of observable gifted attributes based on SES differences?
- Common variations of observable gifted attributes based on personality type and/or learning style?
- Common myths?
- Common IQ tests and a brief understanding of their scores?
- Common Achievement tests and a brief understanding of their scores?
- Common problems caused by lack of challenge?
- Common grievances of parents of gifted children?
- Common means of facilitating advanced academics within a school?
- Emerging news from Neuroscience illuminating brain differences?
- Needs-based education plans?
- Levels of gifted?
- Interrelation with 2e and Wrightslaw?
- Resources for further exploration and reference on gifted issues throughout their career?
- Conduct research on a parent forum and write a paper including case studies and solutions?
- What resources or books would you recommend for the course, hoping students may keep them to refer to often throughout their teaching career?

The blend of expertise, open-mindedness, and creativity likely to be impressed on new teachers through a course in gifted studies may help restore the sense of teaching as an art, rather than an act of charity.

You could make the same (bolded) statement about just about any group in the US. Also, I don't think the GRE measures on education majors apply very well beyond elementary school, because in junior high and high school you start running into teachers who majored in the subject they're teaching (or something very much like it), and then tacked on the teaching credentials. You also encounter people teaching vocational classes, home ec, and PE.

Given the basic levels of instruction involved, I don't expect a K-3 teacher to have much more than a high school education. There's no calculus involved in understanding place value.

I think we agree that the people teaching foundational skills can make mistakes when they misrepresent concepts which force students to unlearn at higher academic levels, but this is where academia is supposed to be partnering with educators to make sure the curriculum lines up. And to me, that's the real problem... academia is almost completely absent from the scene, having been pushed out by Big Publishing.

I think the post resented being the profession being marganilized. Tv commercials show teachers as being like mothers on steroids. I can think of one headache commercial in particular. They don't want to be called mothers, they want to be called employed workers.
The link inside the blog pointed out another problem teachers have. They have to take underachieving students from a culture that doesn't value education and work on getting their "buy in" to even be willing to be educated. Imagine that, condescending yourself to accept an education! How low will you go?! And who are the teachers told to focus on? The one that doesn't want the education.

The high school teachers still score at the 49th percentile for math (and the elementary crowd averages the 33rd, which implies that a lot of their right answers are guesses). I 'd like to see a lot more for people who are supposed to know algebra 2 well enough to teach it to above-average kids.

You made a good point about home ec. and vocational ed. teachers, so I checked. In my son's large high school, there are 13 math teachers and 5 teachers in practical arts, which includes both home ec. and voc. ed. There are 7 PE teachers, so PE + Voc. Ed. + Home Ec. < Math. And there are 11 science teachers. I remember the same distributions at the high schools I attended, and suspect this distribution is generally true.

If a sizable number of the secondary ed. teachers had majored in a technical subject, their scores would at least be above the mean. What I suspect (no evidence, just anecdotal observations) is that the high school teachers are somewhat more knowledgeable, and the math average is being pulled down by the 6-8 teachers.



I disagree. I think they need to understand what's coming in order to lay a proper foundation. Their lack of understanding is one of the major reasons for all of our problems. For example, they get easily taken in by fad curricula like Everyday Math. Etc.


While I agree that Big Publishing has done a lot of damage, I can't accept that Pearson is to blame for lack of teacher knowledge. This gets back to the "we're professionals!" argument that teachers make. A professional doesn't blame someone else for her knowledge deficiencies and let it go. Professionals take initiative to solve a problem --- this is a fundamental characteristic defining them. In this case, this might mean something as simple as sitting down and listening to Khan Academy videos or reading websites like Math is Fun or PurpleMath, etc. Or taking a summer training course/workshop for teachers.

Agreed

I think that Dr Wu makes that exact point and that his take is that the quality of educators needs to be improved which is why the Core Core materials include fundamental teacher training and that Academia has to shoulder some of the blame for ignoring Maths education generally speaking.

Val, tell me it ain't so, are you confounding percentages with percentiles? Or is this a deep statistical thingy from the raw score of 22 of 40 correct that corresponds to the 33rd percentile? Not discounting your arguments, just being a petard.