Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments School misunderstands PG kids

The one thing I sometimes finds throws on a lightbulb - certainly for a lot of parents, and occasionally for some teachers too - is to talk about frequency in the classroom. IQ numbers and percentiles mean nothing. They truly have no concept that there is a meaningful difference between 98th and 99.9+ (or a meaningful difference between percentages and percentiles. urgh). Discussing LOG would just get their backs up so high they couldn't see over their shoulder blades.

But - - - where I've seen a little resonance when doing advocacy presentations is to talk about two things. One, is divergence from the norm. (But avoiding ALL mention of IQ. It's linguistically challenge but doable). Start by recognizing that gifted (in our district that identifies by IQ test results) is a purely statistical construct: by definition, it means being a certain distance from the norm in cognitive functioning. And as that distance from the norm increases, so do differences in functioning increase from the norm, often in an increasing range of ways (from divergent ways of thinking, seeing and experiencing the world, to OEs, to the seeming increased likelihood of multiple exceptionalities). As brains get more and more different from the norm, in other words, they seem to be more likely to be more different in more ways, and therefore more likely to have increasingly different needs in the classroom.

Then, a few numbers, which we put together using local stats on number of students, class sizes and length of teacher careers, to make a table which showed: Percentile.... IQ.... Rarity of this IQ and higher 1 / x.... A teacher will experience every... I don't expect anyone listening to absorb the table, but it supports a narrative along the lines of: We identify gifted as at the 98th percentile, or, statistically as we discussed before, two standard deviations away from the norm, which is a bit more than 2 out of every hundred children. So a typical elementary teacher will have worked with many such children, as they are likely to have one in their classroom once every two years. Our primary gifted program, in contrast, accepts only children who are much further from the norm, and therefore tend to have a greater range and level of need for different classroom approaches. These children start at the 99.6th percentile, or about 1 in every 260 kids. A typical elementary teacher will have such a child in their class once every 13 years or so, so they have limited opportunity to build up a lot of experience in understanding and meeting their needs. Our primary program also serves quite a number of children who are 99.9th percentile and beyond. Statistically, we would expect that there are probably 60 to 80 such children total in elementary school in our district. That means any individual elementary teacher would probably have one in her class once about once for every 50 to 100 years she teaches....

I'm not claiming to have ever hit it out of the park with all this, but it seems to at least shift the conversation into terms that teachers and school boards understand and are more comfortable in dealing with. It helps move from gifted=better=elitist=bad, to gifted=increasingly different=increasingly different needs=increasingly different educational approaches.

I admit to having been a bit annoyed (although I try really hard to hide it) when my son's teachers comment on how nice, caring and helpful he is to the other kids despite his intelligence. They must have really run into a set of nasty gifted kids along the way...

Lots of really interesting stories and advice here. I do think that the frequency of PG could be helpful, but I am currently not able to think of how this could be worked into the conversation, for us, specifically. If it comes up naturally, I am going to be prepared to talk about it.

Another thing I have been thinking about today is, what is it that makes teachers and schools reject parent input? I feel like this is something that has happened to us a lot and maybe if I understood it more, I could more effectively communicate what I need to.

It could be lack of time/resources - in which case, maybe you just need to be the squeaky wheel?

It could be unreasonable requests from other parents, but I am not sure I know any parent who had wildly unreasonable requests, so I cannot comment further.

I think most of the teachers around here are paid reasonably compared to the workforce in this area, so I don't see that to be as big of a problem as it could be elsewhere.

It may be that the teacher thinks they will personally get in trouble or lose job security if they cannot meet a certain student's needs without help. This is what I think is more likely. In this case, it is more the fault of the administration. How could one support the teacher while fighting the administration?

ETA: I had forgotten to add that it seems like a lot of people still think that if you say one person is more intelligent than another, it means you think they are better. I guess the way to deal with this is to talk more about meeting their need to learn and grow.

Anyhow, that is where I am at today.

howdy, the possible reason that I think is missing from your list and from your thinking is that teachers are professional educators that are trained in (normal) child development. Our children are outliers who do not really have normal development, so they challenge the beliefs of those who have been teaching professionally (especially for a long time, but even newer teachers can fall prey to this). That's why the "one every fifty or hundred years of teaching" statistic can be so powerful, because it gives them an understandable reason why they should set aside their professional knowledge in considering this particular kid.

Definitely a great point, that helps a lot! Thank you.

Add to ElizabethN's (very excellent) point that much of the time, what outliers need tends to be well outside of the range of what is reasonable or even prudent for children who fall closer to the mean.

That is, until one understands that the child in question is an outlier, then naturally what that child needs is going to seem potentially outrageous.


The clearest way of envisioning that is to imagine that a child who is cognitively and/or developmentally at the other end of the spectrum were to be in a particular teacher's mainstream classroom...

honestly, any child who is more than two standard deviations from the mean is effectively a special needs student, educationally.

Most educators wouldn't dream of taking two such students as fifth graders, neither with literacy skills, and immediately stating that they were "the same" because they couldn't read and the rest of the (NT) class can... but that is the error that they tend to make at the other end of distribution. If two first graders can both read beyond grade level then naturally, they are "the same."

There is both a floor and a ceiling in that band-pass filter. Advocacy has done much to remove the floor (thankfully)-- but not as much about the ceiling.

I find that it helps me to keep my patience for longer to bear all of those things in mind.

As much as I agree with HK's main point, I do have a small quibble--I have actually seen many teachers lump all the -2 SD kids together. (For example, insisting that a child with an IQ below 60 couldn't possibly read independently, when, in fact, that child could decode beautifully at grade-level--comprehension was another question, of course. Many of them do have splinter skills, just as 2e learners, in the other tail, can have focal deficits. This can create a similar dynamic of simultaneously excessively high and excessively low expectations.)

But yes, teachers expect substantial modification to the curriculum to address the needs of a -2 SD student, but not for a +2 SD --or much more-- student. And the field has had subclassifications for -2 SD and beyond for decades (mild, moderate, severe, profound), but can't come to an agreement on +2 SD and beyond, nor teach the descriptive categories to even special ed teachers.

And just musing about the criteria for special education (as they apply to GT): a) a documented exceptionality (a disability, for traditional special ed), b) inadequate educational progress (for GT, it would be access to appropriate educational progress), c) need for specialized instruction, which means changes to content, methodology, or delivery of instruction.

I am grateful for all of you who share your struggles as I am also in a very difficult situation in regards to my DD8 school situation. We were able to see a ray of light last school year when we enrolled her in a ver well known gifted school; to our surprise, the emphasis of the school has been changing and they are more interested in high achievers and pay little to no attention to gifted kids, let alone a PG one. We have met several times with the school principal and the teachers to find a way to help my child stay motivated and just make her feel she belongs ( raises her hand to participate in class, and has never been called in 2 years!, she has never been chosen to present in front of her class or any event, talent show and she played a very, very difficult Bach piece on the piano in her effort to be noticed by her room teachers...no comments were made whatsoever, and the list goes on and on..) and this is supposed to be a "school for the gifted" where we pay 23,000 a year for each of our 2 kids. Last meeting I had, we asked for math acceleration of my DD and the teachers reply that the groups needed to have a certain amount of students and they could just not move students to cram the next group up. In the meantime my DD tells me she wishes she could fall asleep during class like one of her friends....
My daughter is competitive but is highly creative, she has the need to create and explore new ideas and new different ways to do things, all these is a priority for her. Is she is given the freedom to explore, create and contribute, she could care less about being "the best" or the "winner". Sadly in her classroom there is a very high achiever who does what she is told when she is told and does not give any extra work to the teacher. My heart goes to the 2e kids in the classroom whose need are not addressed either.
Needles to say we are looking for a new school and are planning to make the change. Unbelievably the neighborhood public school offers grade acceleration if we need it and offers math acceleration as well, the principal told us they have a few kids who go to middle school for math classes and then they drive them back to the elementary school for their regular day of classes.
Who would've thought we were going to find more support at a public school than a "gifted" school!
BTW did I mentioned that in the current "gifted" school they do not like girls in math classes? the girls are assigned to science because "they don't want them to feel uncomfortable in an all male classroom".....too bad the founder of the school passed away already, she would have been heartbroken to see the direction her school has taken...

I'm pretty sure that this is a normal feature of human cognition and psychology.

Severe intellectual deficits ----> Relatively easy to understand

PG kids ----> Relatively hard to understand

So, this problem is not going away and will remain perpetually frustrating.

Elizabeth - beautifully put and succinct (not my strong suit).

It's very much about trying to shift the discussion from the teacher hearing "you are a bad teacher, you are not meeting the needs of this student." To: "this student has needs you have probably never seen before, and will therefore need approaches you have never needed to try before."