I woke up today to receive two wonderful messages of hope and encouragement- a teacher and a parent sent messages about gifted people they saw in the media recently that made them think of what we are trying to do for  our under-identified and under-served gifted kids in our city. What a wonderful  way to start the day! I wanted to share them with you.
 
Richard Sherman- Resilient and Gifted
I'm sure you have all heard the media coverage of Richard Sherman. I grew a little weary about all the hype myself, but I have to admit I sure was excited this morning to receive the email (below) from one of our wonderful parents of a young child in our school district, referencing this article about Sherman. Check it out yourself if you have a few extra minutes today: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/sports/football/seahawks-richard-sherman-is-much-more-than-just-talk.html?ref=sports&_r=1
 
I was very moved by how well this article highlights the idea that amazing and gifted children can sometimes slip through the cracks if they aren't resilient themselves, and it made me think even more about how we all should be doing a much better job recognizing these kids so they all get the chance to shine. The important part is not that Richard grew up to be famous (although Seahawks fans are sure glad he did!) but even more that he was a very intelligent child who continued to work hard through adversity.
 
Many people see the video of him yelling after the last Seahawks game and automatically stereotype him- some have gone for far as to call him a "thug." Yet this man has an educational background many who judge him cannot boast about. It makes me think about all the other kids out there growing up with stereotypes holding them down. Not all of them are as strong and resilient as Richard Sherman. I hope we all will think hard about the ways our biases or stereotypes in our head might impact the way we judge children. Just because a child's behavior does not fit the mold you may imagine a "highly capable" child
  should have, or if a child does not have help at home for their homework time, or if a child is not the top of every class, it doesn't mean they aren't gifted.  We have to look past the things that hold kids down and discourage them from  achieving before we can truly judge their intellect or the way their brains are  wired.
 
Richard Sherman believes that if you visualize what you want in life, you can create it. Wouldn't it be great if we helped even more brilliant kids visualize ways they can rise above hardships and become even more successful? What a wonderful article and (from what I have seen so far) a role model of a man.
 
Prodigy Child with HIGH ENERGY!
I also received a message this morning from a teacher with this quote: "Here's a gifted kid that is probably no peach in a classroom setting!" And a link to this cute Ellen show clip. http://blog.petflow.com/my-jaw-dropped-when-i-saw-what-this-7-yr-old-did-on-the-ellen-show-this-will-blow-your-mind/
 
Here is an absolutely wonderful pianist who is a young child FULL of ENERGY! Yes, I agree, this kid would be hard to teach in a "traditional" classroom if he wouldn't sit still and had so much to be excited about. But squelching that energy would not be productive. So how can we harness that kind of excitement and love of life and  use it to help  propel this child through learning even more about things in the world? Sitting him in a classroom where a teacher talks and talks and giving him work that he  is not adequately excited or challenged by might hurt the talents he has by taking away that spark. How can we nurish our high-energy kiddos? (Not every  child is a prodigy in some specific area like this kid is with piano, but so many gifted kids show this same level of energy- it's often misdiagnosed as ADHD  and it can really hinder a child's learning to have teachers who don't  understand them...)
 
How can we let these high energy kids be unique and support their interests and yet still get information into their developing brains? Research shows that kids learn best with differentiated learning situations- with teachers who reach out to them in ways that stimulate them with their interests and with interesting things. This is a child who would benefit from the idea of using technology like Youtube videos or other online challenges to catch his interest... a child who would likely soar with  individual research projects he could present to the class... or classes where  drama is used to emphasize information... With these kids we have to stay a step  ahead of them in our own creativity. And yet imagine the benefits of the extra  time we have to take to think of interesting ways to reach them- if you struggle  against them to try to fit them in the box you will
struggle more every single  day than if you help them fly.
 
THANK YOU to those of you who are sharing such wonderful examples of gifted adults and children. This is truly a grass roots effort to reach out to even more of our students who have high intellect but aren't always easy to spot when we are looking for kids to refer for services. We have done wonders this year in increasing our referral numbers from our lower income areas and see a large increase in cultural diversity in our referral pool- but we still have so much work to do. Thank you again for caring so much and for working with us as a village.
 
Have a wonderful week!
  
  
Here is the email I got from a parent: 
 
 
Good Morning 
 
We read this article
 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/sports/football/seahawks-richard-sherman-is-much-more-than-just-talk.html?ref=sports&_r=0 and remembered the discussion we had regarding identifying gifted students
 
  Greg and Jaque

I often encounter a situation while working with gifted children in the education setting, where I have to give them the spiel about standardized testing. You may know this one too- "As you are reading the multiple choice questions you need to think- what would the majority of the population choose as the right answer...? Do not spend a lot of time trying to justify the other answers in your mind because you may come up with reasons every answer could be right... And then the test will be impossible to complete. So do not get stuck like that. Pick an answer that you feel is the best one and then move on."

The more I think about this quandary the more I realize it signifies a lot about life for gifted people of all ages. Sometimes we see every option as a valid one. Sometimes we see all the options as worthwhile. And sometimes having so many possibilities can be
mind-blowing and creates the danger of never completing anything.

Usually the elementary school years are pretty safe- there are a lot of rules and parents make a lot of decisions for children. But as gifted people start realizing there are options(which happens much earlier for most gifted childrenthan their peers,) the arguments and power struggles begin. Even those arguments have limits though. At some point a parent or teacher will find a way to stop the discussion and the child still ends up heading in the direction that the system expects them to go. But as we get older the decisions become more complex and the world opens up even more. What classes should I take? Where should I go to college? What do I want to do when I'm done with school? How should I spend my spare time? Who should I love or let go? What car should I drive? Should I join a community organization? Where do I want to live? And the list goes on and on and on.

Some people who are less adventurous or who were conditioned in more convincing ways may choose to live in traditional
ways that model behaviors or choices made by other people they admire or model their lives after. And some people may find missions in life that define their route. Others may sacrifice their own choices for causes or needs of others.
There are so many ways to "grow up" and be in the world. But the majority of human minds don't stop thinking about "what ifs" and wondering what could happen if they chose to do something else, or add a new element to their lives.


Gifted intensities often add another dimension to these internal conversations. Second-guessing life paths and imagining new journeys and options seems to come with overexcitable minds. Maybe the new adventure is as tame as choosing to try a new membership or product at a neighborhood business, or finding a new hobby to put energy into, or (my current issue) wanting to move to a foreign country/learn a new language/home school the kids/and start a new business on the other side of the world.

The multiple choice test of life keeps adding new answers to the questions that matter the most. Do you choose "a) stay
in your current job that you have built up into what anyone else would consider a great career," or "b) apply for that other equally awesome job at the new company start-up on the other side of town," or "c) start your own business where you can set your own hours and see your family more but have to struggle to pay the bills for awhile"??? It makes it worse when you are studying those types of questions in your mind every waking hour and every answer has equal appeal. And sometimes the answer to one question ends up starting to look even better than the others even though you know without a doubt it is not the "standardized answer..."

Often the more gifted people see different options, the more they don't want to choose the "right" one. And that causes
strife between them and the rest of society. Taking the leap to do things that are out-of-the-box, creative (and usually more complex) than what everyone thinks grown ups should do creates stress and more difficulties for an already frustrated person. By choosing to challenge their friends or coworkers or even family in order to choose a new road, the gifted person can become more isolated and alone and the answers get harder to delineate.

It becomes even more complicated when every option is appealing, especially when you want to try them all.

Unfortunately we haven't yet discovered a way to be in more than one place at the same time... To be in the tropics and the snowy mountains... To have a family life and a single life... To have a life of leisure and enough work to keep from being bored... Although sometimes we can imagine ways to get pretty close to having more than one choice when we find things that can be considered almost compromises. We can live in a location close to both beaches and mountains (maybe not tropical beaches but beautiful ones...) We can take vacations without the kids and enjoy things you can't do with a family in tow. And we can find jobs that make us so happy we forget we are working so hard at times.

The saying "life is full of compromises" is true. But sometimes compromises are not enough. And when that is the case it becomes another set of test questions. Do you think about the options so much that you decide to pick them all? Do you leave the perfect job to try the start-up down the road, while saving up to start that business you always dreamed of having? And if the answer is yes and you choose them all, how do you circle back to option "a" if you change your mind and wish you didn't try to have it all? Because sometimes choosing to try the other options means losing out on some too. Are you brave
enough to take the risk? Will you regret not trying? Or regret not staying in place? And there is where the multiple choice exam becomes even more complicated.

I never liked the saying "you can't have your cake and eat it too," because I thought it was silly to imagine only baking one cake. Why not bake five and keep one, eat one, save one, and give a couple away in trades..? If only I could come up with a way to bake five cakes instead of only one. I try to always have several cakes in the oven but it is indeed a balancing act. Not every one of them firms up, and often none of them even get "done." I keep changing ingredients and messing with the recipes. I keep changing my mind about who I want to give the extra two cakes, and I'm never exactly sure where to store the one I'm saving, or which one I want to eat.

When you started reading this article you may have hoped there would be answers at the end to help you figure out how to balance all those questions in your own mind. But no one can answer your questions for you. All I can do is advise you that you are not alone... That gifted people everywhere feel this same way... And I share your misery. But life is much more interesting when you can see all the possible options and the best way to know what you are supposed to do is to weigh all the pros and cons and then go with your gut in the end. Besides, if you always answer the life quiz with the standardized answer you will always end up in a crowd and that's not always the most interesting place to be.

Every day I hear (usually from members of the older generation of educators and administrators) that there is a controversy regarding whether kids who do not score high on tests in classrooms are gifted, or if we should preserve the label of gifted for those who perform at the top. It offends me for many reasons because it seems to only further perpetuate that kids who start school with advantages due to family income levels and often race and ethnicities continue to receive advantages while other brilliant but disadvantaged or diverse students are left behind.

That being said, I am excited to see that some schools and lobbyists and legislators are starting to work more on finding the hidden gifted kids who are out there- the ones who are  as bright or brighter than the ones who are scoring high grades in classes or on  tests, but who are underperforming, and often not willing to jump through the hoops of being top performers without some inspiration/encouragement/motivation that moves them in a way that doesn't usually come from traditional schooling.
 
We have tons of gifted children who are gifted at being in the middle- who don't want to play our academic games or who are missing skills because of other issues in their lives, and yet who are wonderfully talented and brilliant when their interests are tapped. Those are kids who we can reach and make a huge difference for- who could be achieving with the other more  acceptably-acting students, but who are at risk of being the lost students who drop out, drop down to lower classes, hurt themselves, self-medicate with illegal drugs, join gangs when they don't feel they fit in, end up in prisons when they do dumb things with their intensities, etc. These kids are not any less gifted than their peers- but they usually come from disadvantaged backgrounds, or are limited by stereotypes that teachers and administrators and even their own parents and themselves believe about what a "gifted" child must look like or act like.
 
I'm hopeful that as we look beyond kids who can perform well on tests, hand in their homework, and behave well in school, that we will find kids with untapped potential and use their brilliance and energy to improve the way we all think about education in general.
 
I was one of those kids and I scored well when I wanted  to, and bombed tests when I found something was more interesting to do than study... I caused just enough trouble to keep life fun and novel, but not too much that my parents would be too upset (ok, except for in middle school when they moved me to a private Christian school in the hopes that they could
keep me  in line. Lol.) I did not like sitting still (still don't)... or following directions (still have this problem at times when I don't think the directions are good for children!)... and I certainly did not like to hang out with other kids who always did everything  they were supposed to do. I know a lot of kids like that, and I love teaching those kids. And when all is said and done, often those are the kids who will make big changes in our world and do things that we haven't even dreamed of to move our civilization forward. They are the risk-takers, but they are also  at-risk themselves because they don't play all our education
games as well as  the stereotypical top performers do.
 
Looking at our statistics in most districts in our state, we have allowed those stereotypes, and sometimes even comfort levels of staff, limit what students we serve. Looking at diversity, we have failed to be equitable with placements of African American, Hispanic, and Native American students- compare district population percentages with actual gifted program 
statistics for just about any school district and you will find a discrepancy that is alarming. We have alternative high schools full of highly intelligent students who otherwise would drop out, and certainly the drop out population is full of brilliant kids too.
 
It's the underperforming, nonconforming gifted kids we should all be focusing on. Just as we hate how people discount smart kids who are performing at the top- there is the same tragedy (if not a worse one) happening to our smart kids who are performing under their abilities. Those kids face the same gifted characteristics that make the top performing kids stress,  plus add biases and homelife disadvantages and stressors on top of those and just think how hard life can be for those kids.
 
I'm all for opening the sky to top performing gifted kids (and any kids who are top performing, even if they are not gifted but are bright, hard working students too.) But just as our state definition of highly capable students in Washington says "...students who perform or show potential for  performing at significantly advanced academic levels...", (and like what the Javits definition says, or just any other gifted definition out there...)  we need to identify those students who have potential and are underperforming too and support them to the greatest extent possible.

What do you think? Do you believe we should just restrict the gifted classification to those who are already performing at the top?