Bright, gifted or creative...does it matter?

Image from bertiekingore.com

I was thinking recently about how fast the summer holidays have disappeared and half-dreading half-welcoming the back-to-school rush which is upon us already. That got me thinking, as usual, on whether I should ask to meet my children's teachers right away in September to explain their learning differences. One (more!) challenge for teachers is identifying gifted learners and distinguishing them from bright high achievers. So how can teachers figure out who is bright and motivated, and who is gifted? And more pertinently, why does it matter?

This useful checklist will help determine bright from gifted learners, but doesn’t help tell us why schools should make the distinction. In fact, in our current educational system, where rote-learning is rewarded with high marks in State Exams, there may be no way to distinguish gifted students from bright students. And where there are likely to be a good cohort of bright children in every school, the same cannot be said of gifted learners who form a much smaller number of the population.

So, who are the bright, high achievers? They are the ones whose school reports read: “a pleasure to teach”. They are motivated, conscientious and hard-working. They fit in well in the school system, present good work, are motivated and committed to getting good results. They do well in exams and leave school with awards and prizes under their belts. They may be sports captains, head boys, head girls or prefects and are often among the most popular members of the student body. They are seen as having much to contribute to their communities. These children still need adults, parents and teachers to support them in continuing to add to their achievements, but as they are adept at working within the system they usually have little difficulty maintaining their high standards. In short, these children are the ones teachers and parents don’t really have to worry about.

What of the gifted learners then? The common myth is that these are the children who “have it all”, the easy path to academic success. Surely if the bright, high achievers have little to trouble them, the same would be true of the gifted learners? Not always so, unfortunately. Of course, it must be said that there are many gifted learners who are consistent and high achievers, who fit happily in the system and thrive as much as do bright hard-working students. Others, however, look at learning from a very different perspective, one that can cause huge conflict and difficulty between student, school and parent. They question, notice inconsistencies and injustices, they go off on tangents, they challenge, they often irritate! At primary school, some may correct the teacher...loudly. By secondary they may have learned not to do that any more, or may have learned to at least keep it quiet! Some may under-perform in State Exams to the frustration of their parents, teachers and even themselves. They may start to question their abilities when they don’t fit into the exam success box. They may follow their passions which may not “count” in the future points race. They might even question the “point” of the points race before they get to the Leaving Cert! Along the way they may show flashes of brilliance and excellence in certain subjects or areas. They can demonstrate erratic performance in school, from complete mastery to average or mediocre levels, depending on their interest, their teacher or their passions. The creative among them often sing from a completely different hymn-sheet, some may not even see the point of school at all in the pursuit of their dreams. They may have a different vision of their future than the one mapped out by their parents or teachers. They may be right, but the adults in their lives may think they should have a Plan B in the form of formal educational qualifications!

So, why does it matter? Two groups of learners, one for whom the system is a good fit, the other, well, they’ll come into their own at third level. Or will they? Without going down the road of heralding the potential of gifted learners as if they are mere fodder in the pursuit of economic growth and a return to the Celtic Tiger (God forbid!) these young people, as much as any other, do have the potential to make real and significant contributions to our future society. I’m not one who likes to describe gifted children as the future cancer-cure scientists or business and political leaders because I’m uncomfortable with the implication that only gifted children hold this potential. We all know the reality is that children across the intellectual bell-curve can grow into adults just as accomplished as those with the highest IQs. However, these exceptionally able children, for whom the educational system is an uncomfortable fit, are at risk of having their potential snuffed out by it. Whether their chosen path is at the top of academia, as a carer, a teacher or an accountant, they have a right to fulfill their personal potential. In this, gifted learners are poorly served by the Irish educational system in its current form. The inflexibility of rote-learning, the volume of prescribed material to be covered and the lack of opportunity for creativity, problem-solving or innovation in our exam system greatly reduces the chances that these young people will reach that potential. The risk is that they will be switched off learning by the time they have spent 13 or 14 years within a system that does not accommodate their needs.  The result will be that their career and life-choices may be reduced. And that is why it is important that teachers are able to accurately assess who among their pupils may be gifted as opposed to bright. From there, educators may be able to support the differences in their learning needs.

So, back to whether I should have that chat with my children’s teachers? Truth is, we’re into the first week of school now and I still haven’t decided. I don’t want to be labeled as a pushy parent in the first week of term and I don’t want unreasonable expectations placed on my kids either. On the other hand, nor do I want to short-change them by ignoring the fact that they are seldom challenged by classroom work. Maybe by the time they are heading to college I’ll have an answer to my dilemma. I’ll let you know!

Gifted Children and Social Skills

How many parents of gifted children are told that their children have social skills deficits? I suggest, quite a few. But, do they really? Let’s put things in context here. The average child, by definition, has an IQ of one hundred.  The IQ of ninety-five percent of children falls between seventy and one hundred and thirty. A child with an IQ of 70 or below is considered to have an intellectual disability. By the simplest and most common definition, a gifted child has an IQ of 130+. 

Consider, for one moment, a school specially set up to teach children whose IQ falls below seventy. In a school for the intellectually disabled, everything would go at a pace to suit the slow learner and content would be kept relatively simple. Now imagine that an average child, with an IQ of one hundred, ends up in this school. They are eight years old, so they must join the class for eight year olds.

Would you expect this child to be a model student who would sit still and engage enthusiastically with the classwork and their classmates. Would you expect them to make lots of friends with whom they were keen to socialize outside school? If they showed signs of restlessness or inattention, would you immediately wonder about a diagnosis of ADHD? If they preferred to spend time alone reading books, building models or looking up things on the internet after school, would you be frantically trying to arrange playdates for them in an attempt to make them learn social skills and to integrate and be the same as everyone else in the class? Would you wonder about possible Autistic Spectrum Disorder?

On the contrary, I suggest that it would not be long before parents and teachers realized that the problem was simply a mismatch and that a more appropriate learning environment was the answer. Indeed, if a child with intellectual disability found themselves struggling in a mainstream classroom, the same conclusion would be reached and more appropriate arrangements sought.

Why are gifted children treated so differently? Why are they placed into mainstream classes designed for children of average ability and expected to just suck it up, behave and be happy? Why, when they struggle, are they told there is something wrong with them? Have you ever been told that your gifted child has a touch of several disorders but just not quite enough to actually attach the label? How come it is so rarely considered that the problem may be one of a mismatch and that a more appropriate learning environment is the answer?

Not alone is this potentially very damaging to the child’s self esteem and motivation to learn, it also deprives them of the opportunity to learn social skills. Other children mix every day with like-minded peers who have the same intellectual ability and the same interests. Through this interaction, they are constantly honing their social skills. Many gifted children never get this chance. They hover on the fringes, always aware that they don’t quite fit in.

Yes, everyone must learn how to get along in the real world. No, not all gifted children struggle socially. But at no other stage of our lives are we all grouped only according to age. At all other stages, interest and ability are taken into account and there is a degree of choice. During childhood and adolescence, given the opportunity, we all learn skills such as patience, tolerance, judgement and how to take different perspectives. So, judging an eight year old child based on their ability to integrate with other eight year olds in a classroom is hardly a fair assessment.

How many parents of gifted children with “social skills deficits” find that, when exposed to a group of like-minded peers for the first time, their child with the problems transforms into a perfectly happy, normal, interactive child? We owe it to our children to fight for opportunities like these. They deserve to have the same feeling of belonging and fitting in that so many other children experience on a daily basis and the same opportunities to develop their social skills in the company of peers. If exceptional ability was at least recognized as a special educational need and treated as seriously as the others, provision could be put in place to support these children appropriately instead of trying to attach disorder labels to them when they don’t fit conveniently into the box we want them in. Why do we insist on crushing our children in order to put them into this box instead of finding one that fits them?

A Gifted Family Comes Home

As I write, my family and I are nearing the end of an long journey by land and sea from south-west France back to Ireland. One car, two adults, two teenagers, one pre-teen, five sets of Dabrowski’s over-exciteabilities, 900 kms and 18 hours at sea, it's enough to make me exhausted just thinking about it! En route, we’ve had some interesting discussions and some tense moments. We’ve discussed art as an expression of language and whether music or painting can convey feelings and emotions better than prose. That led us to poetry where the teen passengers argued that rap is a powerful form of modern poetry in which young people can express their feelings. Eminem was judged by some as provocateur and by others as poet! We adults wondered if the offensive language used by some rappers was really “art” or used simply for its shock-value, but our teens were of the opinion that the bad language was part and parcel of the art form and the artists could no more avoid it as they could a sneeze. A generation gap if ever there was one!

We got much deeper than rap though. The size of the universe and the existence of God were covered in great detail. Which led to the inevitable subject of the catholic church in Ireland. The role of the Vatican in Irish education and state affairs brought us in a circuitous way to the history of Italian re-unification, Rome versus Florence and the formation of the Vatican as a “state within a state”.

From there opened a debate on religious freedom and religious states which involved the Middle East conflict and the powerful hold religion has on state affairs throughout the world. Dipping into some of these questions prompted me to flick through Philosophy for Kids from the wonderful Prufrock Press, where we explored the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein on language and feelings, Immanuel Kant on belief versus knowledge and Aristotle’s Correspondence Theory of Truth. Powerful stuff, and very lively when five opinionated minds got stuck in!

Of course we had the more mundane conflicts of getting driving directions wrong and blaming each other (the adults!) and numerous invasions and encroachments into personal space (the kids!). Urgent bathroom breaks, wild-goose chases and episodes of near-starvation also peppered our journey. Many times I wished I was somewhere else, even someone else. I wondered why I don’t have those teens I seem to see everywhere, sullen and uncommunicative, hoods up, heads down, earphones in. When things got loud and confrontational in the confines of the car, I half-wished for those disengaged, disinterested children….anything for a bit of peace!

But here I am on the ferry enjoying a quiet early morning, while they are still sleeping in our cabin. I am sitting by the window as the grey light signals that we are indeed getting closer to the familiar Irish climate. The waves are rolling, the ferry creating great white frothing masses of foam and an occasional herring-gull wheels by on the wind. And I realise that, in fact, I do have the family I want. They are lively, opinionated, engaged, interested and interesting. They don’t shy away from debate or verbal sparring. They are unafraid to hold an opinion and able to defend their position. We may not always agree, I am “ancient and out of touch” after all, but we are all learning to respect each other’s point of view. My family is remarkably knowledgeable about subjects I never even knew they had an interest in. Their powers of observation are acute and they hold some carefully considered views on a variety of topics. So while I might wish for some peace and quiet from time to time, while I may even feel I need a holiday after our epic journey home, I wouldn’t change my family for the world. To have three children, and a husband, who are so alive to the world and so passionate about living in it is a gift I treasure.

Gifted Children with Learning Difficulties

Twice exceptional or 2E is a term used to describe students who are both exceptionally able and have a learning difficulty of some description. A lovely term used by Pricilla Vail to describe these children in her book Smart Kids with School Problems: Things to Know and Ways to Help is "conundrum kids".

I am really looking forward to what I am sure will be a lively and inspiring discussion of how best to identify and support these children at #gtchat on twitter this Friday 20th August at midnight...yes, folks in Ireland: MIDNIGHT! 

In advance of Friday, I would like to share one of my favourite videos:



For a wonderful explanation of some of the difficulties faced by these students, I highly recommend this paper by Linda Silverman: The Two-Edged Sword of Compensation: How the Gifted Cope With Learning Dificulties

If you feel inspired after that, please join us on Friday. Full details of how to find the chat can be found here: #gtchat

Gifted Children and the Pressure to Achieve

My children do not go at life full-tilt. I have never had to deal with the “over-scheduling” problem. So far, they haven’t shown any interest in becoming either the Young Scientist, Young Writer or Young Musician of The Year. In fact, they seem like pretty normal kids and sometimes, in the company of the parents of other gifted children, I can’t help wondering…am I an imposter?

We hear so much reference to the need to make sure that the gifted “reach their full potential”. Now, what do we mean by that? I am a qualified doctor, but once my children arrived, I chose to prioritise them instead of my career. As a consequence, I am not a hot-shot surgeon; I have written no earth-shattering papers or devised any clever surgical maneuvers or instruments with my name attached. Does that mean that I have failed dismally to reach my potential? If my daughter follows a similar path, will she also have failed? If my son has the potential to become a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, but chooses instead to become a teacher, will he have failed? And will I have failed as a parent?

With all this talk of fulfilling potential and leaders of the future, I fear we are at risk of putting our kids under pressure to follow paths which may not be of their own choosing. If I bring my children up as decent human beings who are independent and happy, then I think we will all have succeeded. If one or both of them becomes a leader in their chosen field, well that will be fantastic, but it should be because they have chosen that path for themselves, not because they feel obliged  to “fulfill their potential”.

Gifted children are not a homogenous group. They don’t all show signs of setting the world on fire from the minute they exit the womb. Many of them are late bloomers…some of them very late! Some are quiet and considered, some are loud and impulsive. Yes, we absolutely should bend over backwards to encourage and motivate them and to create the right conditions for them to excel. However, whilst some of our children no doubt need a little prodding and cajoling, we must remember to listen to them. We must support them to do what they want, not what we or society feels they ought to be doing. As parents, we must also be careful not to feel under pressure ourselves. Parenting should not be a competitive sport!

A Lesson from Sarah Palin?

I read an article the other day by a favourite author of mine on gifted issues, Jim Delisle. The title was about what gifted educators can learn from Sarah Palin. This I had to read! What he said really made me sit up and think. Sarah Palin, he said, whether you oppose her or support her, has made it clear where she stands on the issues that grip the American political scene. This, he suggests, is something that those of us who advocate for gifted learners could learn. Over the years, the definition of what a gifted learner is has become more and more unclear, to the point where confusion among even those of us who advocate for them is common. Unlike Sarah Palin, who has unapologetically nailed her colours to the mast, gifted education advocates cannot even agree on the student population whose needs we wish to serve. Gifted child advocates need to be precise in their definition of this cohort of children whose needs often go unfulfilled in our education systems, Delisle says. 

On considering his point in relation to our blog, I realised that he is right. We need to rise above our fear of alienating those who see giftedness as a “lucky break” undeserving of further support. Gifted children in Irish schools receive no statutory support for their unique needs. Our goal has to be to bring issues related to promoting support for gifted learners to the fore in discussion of Irish education. It is about recognising that this group of learners have specific educational needs which are not addressed by our school system. It is about explaining that this gift can be as much curse as blessing here in Ireland, but that this does not have to be so. Being a gifted child is not a passport to high grades, the pick of university courses and personal happiness. It is a fundamentally different way of learning, experiencing and living through childhood. These children need a different type of support and guidance, recognition of their difference and celebration of their abilities. There is a certain irony, not lost on us,  that the people who understand this most easily are parents, teachers and advocates for children with special educational needs and other learning differences. There is recognition, comprehension and empathy between parents and teachers of those on either end of the learning bell-curve. It’s the middle we are trying to reach.

Arts and Humanities; Things That Make You Go Hmmm.

This week's #gtchat on Arts and Humanities left me thinking. In Irish schools today, we have such a tightly packed curriculum and such focus on grades that there is little room for exploration of any subject beyond the facts that must be memorized in order to score points in an exam. So, even though we do have subjects which would come under the arts/humanities umbrella, it is perfectly possible to work your way through the junior or leaving certificate courses and fail to reap the potential benefits.

The humanities are in many ways, a study of how mankind and society have evolved. To use Michael Oakeshott's metaphor, they are the conversation between the generations of mankind. They are subjects where there is often no right or wrong or definitive answer, with enormous scope for thinking, exercising the brain, learning how to evaluate information, how to express oneself, how to argue a point while respecting another’s point of view, empathy, tolerance, emotional intelligence, the list goes on. Think of the potential benefits to an individual’s discovery of self, understanding of others and sense of civic responsibility. Think of the possibility of future politicians with high moral standards and a sense of social justice, not to mention an idea of how to run a country and string a few words together!

While we live in hope of across-the-board change, would it be too much to ask for a couple of classes a week where students get to explore the arts and humanities without pressure to memorise facts and sit exams? To discover the joy of learning and that not every question has one correct answer. This is something from which I believe all students would benefit, but for the gifted student it is an area where they might well excel and, in the absence of any special provision for gifted students in our system, it might be the few minutes a week that would keep the spark of motivation alive for some. I also suspect that lights might shine from unexpected quarters; that student who has always kept quiet at the back of the classroom or the one who has caused continual disruption because they just aren't engaged or challenged.  Give them something to get their teeth into and you might be surprised!

As @ljconrad put it so eloquently, “We’ve got to dump the testing or creativity in all areas will die!”

To check out the resources shared at the chat, here is the transcript. (chat starts at 5pm)

For further information on #gtchat, check here.