Hi
I am an English teacher working on my endorsement to teach gifted students. I am taking a course this summer that requires me to interview a gifted student, but it is the middle of summer, so I'm not in school, and I don't really know any gifted students.

If anyone could help me by answering these questions, it would be greatly appreciated.

1. What effect has being gifted had on you as you grow up? How would you compare your experiences to that of other people around you?

2.Does being gifted effect your school work? Does it effect your friendships?

3. What do you feel are your strongest talents? What do you feel are your greatest weaknesses?

4. What is your education like? How does being gifted come into play in your education?

I was once a "gifted" student, but that was a long time ago, and probably in another country, so there may be better people to answer your query. But regarding your question 3, my weaknesses undoubtedly include pedantry and an urge to correct other people ..

I am an English teacher...

... I'm sorry, having just seen a discussion of the decline in educational standards on another group, I can't restrain myself. Please, even if it is the middle of the summer, go and consult your dictionary about the difference between the verbs affect and effect.

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Jul 3, 2009, 6:00pm.

My son is in GATE and will be in 7th grade this year. He said he would be happy to answer your questions: Hope it helps. Here goes:

1. It really hasn't had an effect, I'm just a normal kid who happens to be in a GATE class. Being in GATE seems to make it harder to get good grades.

2. Yeah, it does. I have more homework than most people in the entire school and that really is upsetting. It does make friendships harder because I'm not a "goofball" like most of them. I am a "goofball", just not as much as them.

3. I feel one of my strongest talents is my imagination. (About weakness:) I have very low stamina, I'm not bad at sports but I can't go on for long.

4. My education is like everything that aggravates a kid about school work and actual homework, but times two. Last year they put me in two honors classes. One of them I really wasn't supposed to be there. I was never good at that subject and the work was horrible.

My son was considered "gifted' also. These are his answers. He has graduated from High school and has two years of college classes.

1. More was expected of him because of his knowledge. He says he was treated more like an adult then his friends.

2 Being gifted made learning easier. He didn't really have to try to learn things he just seemed to understand things so homework was boring and he aced all his test. Because of this he would blow any curve which upset his classmates.

3.Strongest talent: learning concepts quickly. His weakness: is dyslexia.

4. His education is is more varied then most because of his ability to learn. And being gifted allows him to delve more deeply into things that interest him.

Out of curiosity- how is your son doing in college? I also seemed to breeze through high school, but things were much more difficult when I reached college as a result.

It is the same for him. He was shocked and stressed when he realized he'd have to work for his grades. He had to learn to study because he never did in high school, and taking notes was really hard for him.

#2 - I'm glad you worded that so tactfully - I would have had trouble reining in my sarcasm!

Speaking as an ex-gifted child:

1. I, too, have developed a strong streak of pedantry. I get annoyed by people who seem to think not using their brains is somehow a good thing (I once heard two students trying to outdo each other, thus: "Oh, I'm SO thick - I'll never pass any exams." "No, you're clever, it's ME who's really stupid!" ad infinitum. Grrrr.)

2. It affected my schooling similarly to others who have commented here - everything was far too easy in primary school, and then I got to secondary school and plummeted to the bottom of the class because no one had ever taught me how to study. And I was bullied constantly!

3. My strongest talent is the ability to be alone - the corresponding weakness is a reluctance to trust people (due to all that bullying). And I'm also lazy as hell, although if I really want to learn something I'm unstoppable.

4. My conventional education was terrible, as mentioned in 2 above. No one knew what to do with me, so I was stuck at the back of the class and told to read a book. Thus I became knowledgeable about lots of things, except how to study effectively!

If you're looking for solutions, what I would recommend (and wish had happened when I was young) is to take your gifted kid and involve him or her as a sort of "assistant". If their spelling is excellent, then let 'em train up the weaker spellers, etc, etc. And don't ever let them think that a genius-level IQ means everything will come easily to them!

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Jul 7, 2009, 4:26am.

I have not been a gifted student for more years than I care to admit, but I want to comment on some of the things said here. I, too, never had to work hard in elementary or high school. I remember in sixth grade I was so far ahead in reading that, after blowing through the seventh and eighth grade materials in about two months, I was told that I could do pretty much what ever I wanted as long as I read when the other kids were reading. In high school I got horrible grades because there was nothing of interest to me to bother myself with doing. I did work very hard in college, but I enjoyed every minute of it because it was of interest to me. I think that is the key to educating the gifted children - give them things that interest them. For any curriculum, there are points of departure that allow these kids to be engaged and contribute to the classroom. As a teacher, I know this is easier said than done, but it can be done.

My daughter was never part of a gifted program per se, but she is very bright and was always at the head of her class in high school. However, this is a very small school, with small classes.

It was a great shock to her to arrive at a small college and find that nearly everybody there was just as bright as she was, and she was going to have to work to get the grades she had always taken for granted. She says that the first time she got a C, she was sure there was some mistake. "No, no. You don't understand. I'm Mary Miller, I don't get Cs!!"

Fortunately, the shock wore off, AND she met her future husband - who is intensely competitive - and they both graduated from college with honors.

My baby brother was in the gifted program in high school. Our dad was so proud he had to tell all his co-workers and friends. Unfortunately for my brother dad always said something like, “ My son’s school put him in the special class”.

My own story is similar to what others have said to a point. The difference hinges on the fact that I had a learning disability and a respectable IQ to help balance it. In the 1960s and 70s there was not much that was done about either condition. The first time I ever heard the term ‘learning disability’ was when the high school counselor shook my hand at graduation and told me he regretted that they were just then learning how to deal with them.

Back then the only thing that they knew to do was steer a student away from problem areas into classes that were easier for them, for me that was away from anything that needed spelling and toward mathematics. The problem was that, other than the logic required for mathematical proofs, the subject did not interest me at all. I graduated with five years worth of algebra, trigonometry, and calculus. The problem was that I had wanted to be a writer since the fifth grade, but I was not permitted to take any class beyond the basic requirements for graduation, that would have helped me.

Lack of interest is not the only reason I did not complete college, but it played a big part in it. Now, thirty years and a major computer revolution later, I am back in college, a history major, and loving it. The spelling came up again in upper level foreign language classes. There you are expected to be able to spell in that language, something that is not possible when you can’t spell in English. However, thanks to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 I was able to take cultural classes instead of the language after being tested by an educational psychologist. That was an interesting experience.

Like Sophie said, a high IQ does not mean that everything comes easy but I am all for letting someone work towards a goal they want instead of pushing them to something they seem suited for.

At University I met many students who, because they were considered "gifted" in High School were both shocked and offended at the level of effort asked of them, in order to receive the A's they expected as their due.

Many very intelligent people do poorly after high school. Being asked to actually expend effort for reward seems to come as a shock to the system, after the relative ease of success in secondary school.

My two cents.

I was bored to tears from elementary school through most of high school. They identified me as gifted in kindergarten, and in first and second grades, I attended an hour of "gifted" instruction every school day. Halfway through second grade, I was moved to a school where the "gifted" instruction was supposed to be continuous.

I never remember doing any homework. Homework consisted essentially of re-working the worksheets we had already completed in class, so I didn't do it. I performed well enough on tests to bring home B's on my report cards.

That really didn't change until my senior year of high school, when I was finally able to take several interesting classes, under instructors who really were top-notch. I took Physics and Calculus as core classes, and Philosophy and Computer Science as electives. Those were fantastic, and I put in a lot of effort in all of them, because they weren't trivial. Meanwhile, I barely passed senior English, because the teacher made it impossibly boring.

I attended a large state university, and was immediately quite at home. I tested out of 33 hours, so I got to skip all the introductory stuff. I had the luck never to have to take a college course that I didn't want to take. I started doing homework, because it was clear that just listening to lectures was not going to lead to mastery of the subject matter. I worked hard and graduated with honors in English Literature, with three minors. I still hadn't developed a general study routine; for most tests, I still just winged it. If there was a task that couldn't be winged (e.g., reproducing the first X lines of The Canterbury Tales, or remembering foreign vocabulary), then I crammed for it, and promptly forgot it after the exam was over.

My inability to sustain a study effort only caught up with me in law school. My first semester took the wind out of my sails; I didn't do badly, but I didn't meet with as much success as I had in college. I finally learned to study the next semester, and knowing that I would need to review my notes prompted me to take better ones. I wound up graduating law school with honors (barely!).

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Jul 7, 2009, 6:13pm.

I found the opposite of most other people's experiences. After I was identified as gifted in grade 3 I was put in a class from grades 3-8 where I was given challenging work above the basic level of the provincial curriculum, with a bunch of other students identified as 'gifted'. So, I actually developed good work and study habits then, being challenged in elementary school so that I wouldn't be able to coast through classes. It was only in high school that these good habits started to drop a bit once I was outside of my secluded gifted classes, and only half my classes were 'gifted' level, so the level of work needed for high marks dropped. But now that I'm in university I find I still have those good study habits I developed during elementary school from having my studies enriched.

I was never shocked at the level of work at university, or annoyed to be doing work. Rather I was happy to get back to actually learning something and not feeling like I was wasting my time.

>13, Kira, would you mind my asking where you went to school? It sounds like they put together a pretty good gifted program, much better than a lot of the ones I hear about. I went to school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S.A. (Louisiana being somewhere near the bottom of the 50 states in education, and the U.S. being pretty lackluster in that regard as well).

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Jul 7, 2009, 7:19pm.

I am jealous of people who got a challenging and useful education in elementary school. I wasn't challenged until (some of) my high school honors classes, and then not again until I was a junior in college. Grad school was plenty challenging, but that had very little to do with any need for study skills.

My son wasn't put into "gifted classes because of his dyslexia, in this school district that made him "Learning disabled", so he wasn't challenged. As a result he didn't learn to study. But he says he never expected good grades just he was breathing or because of his 150 IQ. The shock was in learning how much hard work studying was. He doesn't feel he had any more or less trouble then non-gifted students once he got to college.

#14, I'm up in Ontario, Canada... there does seem to be plenty of variance by area for sure. Even here I think the program varies from school district to school district. Of course, all the districts in the province regularly offer a third stream as well, English (normal essentially I guess), Gifted, and then also French Immersion. So at the time it seemed normally to be differentiated by what/how you were learning.

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Jul 7, 2009, 7:29pm.

I haven't been labelled as gifted per se, but I was always a very bright student and my experiences were similar to those mentioned in this thread.

Primary school and even high school were pretty easy for me and I never had to study much, something which became a bit of a problem at varsity. I've always admired hard working people - I think it's a more valuable trait than intelligence most of the time. Occasionally I would work quite hard and get really exceptional results, but most of the time I expected things to be easy for me, and I felt demotivated when they weren't. I sometimes feel like my brain is deteriorating and I'm becoming stupid, when really I'm just not working as hard as I should.

The primary and high schools I went to damaged my ego, not because of the teachers but the culture of the students. There weren't any special classes for bright students, and as many of you know being smart is often not seen as something to be proud of. People want to borrow your homework but they still scorn you as a snob or a nerd. In primary school I was very outspoken but by the time I reached university it took a huge leap of courage for me to voice an opinion in front of the class. This was mostly due to the way my intelligence had been perceived at school, but also because of the pressure I began to place on myself - if I didn't say something brilliant I shouldn't bother to open my mouth at all.

Regarding friends: well being smart definitely doesn't make you popular. On the other hand, many people bore me and while I enjoy their company in short bursts I don't often want to spend too much time with them and that makes me a bad friend. This makes me sound like a snob, but oddly enough I feel like an intellectual or social inferior most of the time (because I'm smart but not very witty, and I seldom keep up to date on current affairs), even though I eventually get bored and want to go home and read a book by myself. It's a ridiculous contradiction. Consequently, I don't have many friends, and only one close friend - my boyfriend.