How do you have time? Our gifted students only receive 45 minutes of daily gifted resource education. They work on such in-depth projects that time is precious.
Allyson
Hi Allyson - Welcome - Glad you are here...
Sad to say that each child is different, and it is probably best if you try brainstorming specific issues with Child X, etc. Of course that may not be appropriate on this open forum, have you tried ?
http://www.davidsongifted.org/edguild/Article/Educators_Guild_Online_Community_332.aspxAs a parent, I'll put in a plug for talking to the parents and seeing what they see as the most important way for you to use the time availible. Sometimes Gifted Specialists have been able to set up a lunch date with a group of kids to adress the social needs in a more relaxed atmousphere. Sometimes social issues come up with kids within the identified group.
I think a lot of the ideas in Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook by Lisa Bravo can be modified for the classroom to work on building social skills. I know that Bravo has a new workbook orriented towards the classroom, but I don't think it's quite in print yet -
Amazon.com: Notching Up The Nurtured Heart Approach Workbook ...www.amazon.com/Notching-Nurtured-Heart-Approach-Workbook/...Cached
... Up the Nurtured Heart Approach, Howard Glasser gave us specific techniques on how to deepen our practice of the approach. In this accompanying workbook
Another good approach to use this forum, is to review your own gifted history - to talk about your own life, the lives of gifted friends or family members, so that you will be as baggage-free as possible. As a parent, this has been an important step in being the best possible parent for my gifted child. Hearing that what I went through is the same as what other kids went through makes so much of a difference. As I let go of my own fears and worries, I have more space to see that what my son is going through is both similar and different in very important ways to what I went through, and his needs are different that what mine were.
A different thought, what lots of gifted people of all ages need is a place to be proud and admired for their accomplisments - an audience, if you will. As a student in elementary school, I knew that I was outperforming my classmates in certian ways, but that didn't bring any satisfaction because there was no effort involved, so it made me distrust that whole aspect of life. I tried competing with adults, and found myself very much a failure in comparison to adults. So if you have any brags to share, your own or your students, we would love to hear about it.
Finally, I like to think about contingency. I was always looking for my son to be in situations where if he put in more effort, he got a better result. Elementary school was tough, because he got *100* and Smiley A+ for work that required almost no effort, but in other areas, he could work and work and work and see zero imporvement. Finally, now that he is 15, and in a very good fit school, he has unlocked the key inside himeslf to be able to persevere and keep working until he sees the payoff. I'm so proud of him. Yippee! I knew that it was my job to keep looking for opportunities for him to have the experience of 'more effort=more reward.'
Smiles,
Grinity
