I really like your project as well.
Let me ask my daughter, who is almost 15.
If you like, I can also answer for myself-- though this reflects what I
remember about being an exceptionally gifted female student. I have very clear recollections about some things that I
still recall from when I was 12 to 16 years of age, and some pivotal moments (mostly conflicts with teachers) from when I was younger.
* What I wish teachers had known about me is that I was, aside from my brain's abilities, just like any other student. I had the same insecurities, the same worries, and the same problems-- and the same desire (but not the ability) to fit in with my peers. So
telling the entire class just HOW impressive my score was on the class "fun" IQ test? That may have been the single most mortifying thing in middle school, and in related news, I'd love to point out how this turned me into a lodestone for the three distinct sets of bullying girls that then targeted me and made my every minute at school a living nightmare.
I also really didn't like being expected to be "smarter than that" with respect to social, typical adolescent problems. Shaming me with my IQ was not a favorite part of my school experiences. I also wanted-- sometimes desperately-- to be able to occasionally have a BAD DAY once in a while.
The thing that I'd have wished for from a wish-granting magical object was
to be invisible. This may also be related to the fact that I had already figured out that most attention just brought a lot of trouble. It also tended to come with unrealistic expectations of perfection from others, I noticed.
I enjoyed teachers that seemed to have a genuine passion for their subject, were themselves highly insightful about that subject, and were flexible and clearly eager to extend their OWN understanding. Beyond that, I wasn't too picky about pedagogical style. I only realized in my late 30's that this type of teacher (more or less benignly neglectful, VERY rigorous with the subject, and into their OWN relationship with the subject-- students free to tag along, but the journey was independent of them)-- is not one that most students, and maybe not even most gifted students, find works for them at all. I see some of the same things in my own daughter and in my highly gifted spouse, though, and remember it in my profoundly gifted father's approach to learning, so I suspect quite strongly that it is associated with higher levels of giftedness.
What do I like about being a gifted person? I like being able to learn whatever I want-- fast. Love that. I like how the air kind of crackles when you get more than a few of us together in a room. I like feeling amazing when I'm doing something that I love and doing it with all of my ability-- it's an amazing feeling.
Music, writing and geometry were the only school experiences that really gave me that. I loved everything about ensemble performance and obsessively practicing/playing an instrument. I love listening to all kinds of music even now, and my daughter and her friends find it disconcerting that I can talk to them about music that THEY like, too. Being able to FEEL music that way is a lovely gift, and one that I do not take for granted. I need music the way that I need sunlight or fresh air.
I hated winning awards. It just highlighted what kind of freak I was (in my mind). I won a lot of awards for my writing, and could have gone on to do well (better than regional, probably) for the spelling bee, too-- but I deliberately threw competitions so that I wouldn't have to advance. My teachers couldn't understand it.
I never wanted to write
too well, because it meant having it used as an "example" and sometimes, it meant the teacher accusing me of plagiarism. Not very likely when they had
watched me write a poem or essay in class, but whatever.
I would like to think that teachers handle adolescents more sensitively
in general now-- and would not shame teens as was done to me. On the other hand, some of that sense of shame/guilt was a very real sense of wanting to fit in and desperately, epically
failing. It was as though I was filled with electricity or light, and it kept leaking through.
It was mortifying to do something without thinking it through, and for adults (and my peers, sometimes) to GAPE at me like fish. I always hoped that cognitive dissonance would make them question it later-- and sometimes it seems to have worked that way.
What I would want teachers to know about being HG+ is this, actually:
it takes SO MUCH ENERGY to hide what you are all of the time. Nobody without that experience can really understand how much energy this takes, I think, and how empty and exhausted you feel at the end of each day. Underachievement can come from perfectionism or a desire to fit in-- but I know from experience that it can also come as a side-effect of the kind of existential fatigue that saps so much mental energy that even a PG person doesn't have enough remaining capacity left to perform even acceptably well, never mind at "expected" levels.
That's MY answer. I'm now in my late forties, but my memories of school are quite keen.
I'll edit in my daughter's answers in the morning.
