Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion potential versus performance

LOVELY!

Fantastic responses. If the general concensus is output seems more dependent on discipline, consistency of effort, and other intrinsic factors, if the GT children of our school are not seeming to be able to execute these traits and are therefore not fairing as well as the non-GT children, should we and how do we address this?

As the children get older and the curriculum becomes a little more enriched will these traits listed above suddenly appear or is there a need for the parents to intervene?

Personally I think it IS important to address this, but it sure is tough to find a receptive audience. It seems to me that output issues for an individual child can be based on personality/personal organization traits but just as important (and probably more important) are early opportunities to work and recieve feedback in the zpd.

Maybe a good analogy is the "culture shock" some people experience when they move to another country. Those who make those transitions successfully/happily are those who can take novelty and uncertainty in stride. Too many g/t kids do not experience either novelty or uncertainty in their early years of school, while most other students do. Which students will be best equipped to approach open ended assignments, or to embrace and enjoy the struggle of revisiting and improving a first attempt? Which will see it as part of the learning process rather than as a negative commentary on their overall intelligence?

On another thread someone described a testing situation in which their child had a tester who didn't accept "that's too hard" or "I don't know that". It sounded like they recognized the responses as learned behaviors. I am GREEN with envy. Those answers are frequently accepted by adults who work with or test my children. There is a dent worn in my wall from banging my ahead against it so often.... (sigh).

There are only fairy tail answers on how to fix this�or lots of money
The current focus of our school system is to bring every student up to the standards bar, NCLB. It is a sad fact that many gifted students can underachieve and still reach the bar, so their real potential gets overlooked. They may not be fairing as well as the non GT but, they reach the bar and that is all the school is required do.
The average kids make up the majority and the under average kids need more attention, that leaves very little time and funding for the higher than average kids.

`All we can realistically hope for is to find a good school who will take the time to acknowledge our children and even better if we can find a good teacher who can see potential, even if it is hiding.

It is exactly because performance is what counts, not potential, that many parents of GT kids (or nonGT kids, too, for that matter) try to optimize their kids' learning environment so that kids have the opportunity to realize their full potential--transforming it into high performance. School tests as I see it, especially at lower grades, depend less on intellectual abilities but more on being patient and thorough. I do think a huge number of kids, not just GT kids, are under-challenged in our schools. And kids who are used to not being stimulated--their minds always working way below capacity--do develop bad working habits.

I think it's incredibly important to make sure that kids have good work habits, but good work habits will be useful only when people do MEANINGFUL WORK. So I don't agree with the attitude prevalent among many schools and teachers that kids should receive challenging work ONLY WHEN they can do perfectly on the unchallenging work. I think kids should receive challenging work, and then be required to do well. And in an ideal world (in my ideal world at least), GT or not should not even be an issue, every kid should be challenged according to their individual abilities and every kid should be required to do well.

If it is hard for regular gifted kids, just think what school is like for twice exceptional kids.

I wish our school was more like yours.
From what I have heard about our school from gifted students and a former gifted student with dysgraphia, and even a few teachers, our school seems to have more in common with the schools these twice exceptional kids went to--see the part about negative school experiences: http://ldonline.org/article/Counseling_Needs_of_Academically_Talented_
Students_with_Learning_Disabilities

The focus at our small town school seems to be more on sports than academics and one of their sports is picking on kids like my son.

My bright, very coordinated, former cheerleader daughter, who I am sure would have scored higher on the performance section of an IQ test than her little brother, did not learn as much as she should have in school. She admits that she did not pay much attention in school, just enough to pass tests, never studied, and then quickly forgot every thing she learned for the test. She could color in the lines at an early age, could draw very well, is very good at puzzles, is creative, but she was distracted in school because she was so social.

My daughter's uncoordinated little brother seems much more academically gifted than she was. She was a high achiever until she became a cheerleader. Where she learned just enough to pass the tests, my son continues to build on what he knows because he has that drive to learn more. On his own he finds additional information on the internet to go along with whatever we are studying. For example, for history we are studying the 1970's and he found online copies of Popular
Science magazines dating back to the 1800's. He is even interested in the advertisements and took time to look up the history of the tobacco warning labels. Because he has all this interesting history knowledge and popular culture knowledge he is a good conversationalist, unless he has had too much caffeine or Red Dye #40 which causes him to talk too much. Whatever topic comes up, he has knows something about it, enough to make a joke with history, popular culture or current events references.

Because of his disability, he will never be an artist. He will have to create pictures and express his ideas with words. Since we homeschool he has the freedom to look up extra information and it is this freedom to learn that makes up for the hard things he is dealing with in life.

At our school, my son would not be allowed to learn at the higher level he is capable of at home.

School is stupid and a wast of time so she or he would rather daydream about something. Its very easy for kids to lose respect for teachers whom they can reason rings around.