In a 1985 study, Judy Galbraith identified “Eight Great Gripes” of gifted students.
- No one explains what being gifted is all about — it’s kept a big secret.
- The stuff we do in school is too easy and it’s boring.
- Parents, teachers, and friends expect us to be perfect, to “do our best” all the time.
- Kids often tease us about being smart.
- Friends who really understand us are few and far between.
- We feel too different and wish people would accept us for what we are.
- We feel overwhelmed by the number of things we can do in life.
- We worry a lot about world problems and feel helpless to do anything about them.
From The Eight Great Gripes of Gifted Kids: Responding to Special Needs
Let’s use these eight gripes to guide our instruction and interactions with gifted students.
1. Explain Giftedness
1.) No one explains what being gifted is all about — it’s kept a big secret.
Do you need to delve into brain research or the theories about the causes of giftedness?
No, but do talk to kids about what it means to be “gifted.”
It’s not about “being smart” or being “good at school.” Gifted students simply think differently than their peers.
According to Deborah Ruf’s article What Gifted Adults Say About Their Childhoods, this desire for self-understanding continues into adulthood:
In fact, the theme of, “I thought something was wrong with me,” was prevalent among those who did not receive some form of explanation or confirmation of their intelligence. Deborah Ruf, What Gifted Adults Say About Their Childhoods
Share the social emotional characteristics of the gifted with your students and discuss which ones they see in themselves.
Be aware of imposter’s syndrome, a doubt common among the gifted that they aren’t actually gifted.
When choosing books to read, pick up some that feature gifted protagonists, and delve into these characters’ motivations and actions.
2. Get Rid Of Easy and Boring
- The stuff we do in school is too easy and it’s boring.
We can fix this!
- Pre-assess. Be aware of your students’ existing knowledge.
- Develop lessons with high ceilings and scaffold down
- Aim for interesting, not merely challenging tasks
The article “Bored People Quit” absolutely resonated with me as a teacher. Although this article is about bored employees, I see a strong connection to our students.
I especially loved these two recommendations:
- Keeping an interesting problem squarely in front of them.
- Let them experiment.
3. Perfectionism
- Parents, teachers and friends expect us to be perfect, to “do our best” all the time.
My favorite resource I’ve discovered regarding perfectionism is Peter Sims’ Little Bets.
Sims examines how perfection-driven people incorporate a cycle of failure, then improvement, then more failure, then more improvement in their quest for perfection.
After all, Chris Rock, the Pixar filmmakers, Frank Gehry, Steve Jobs, and Colonel Casey Haskins are all perfectionists and yet they accept, even welcome, failure as they develop new ideas and strategies. Peter Sims, Little Bets
He groups perfectionists as healthy or unhealthy. Healthy perfectionists see the value of failing while unhealthy perfectionists fear failure.
As a student, I was fearful of mistakes, yet creative, successful people must continuously fail on a path to success. Let’s guide our students towards healthy relationships with failure.
4, 5, and 6. Social Pressures
- Kids often tease us about being smart.
- Friends who really understand us are few and far between.
- We feel too different and wish people would accept us for what we are.
Grouping gifted learners with other gifted learners may alleviate some of these social pressures and improve academic performance.
Create a place where gifted students can work together with true pers. Be aware of their social and emotional needs. Prepare your room for gifted students’ tendency towards introversion and intuitive thinking.
Much like Hogwarts or Professor X’s School for Gifted Youngsters, turn your classroom into a specialized environment to meet the needs of exceptional students.
7. Overwhelmed By The Possibilities
- We feel overwhelmed by the number of things we can do in life.
The formal name for gifted kids’ numerous possibilities is “multipotentiality.”
Gifted students may have a wider range of potential paths in life than the general population. This seems fantastic, but comes with baggage:
Gifted individuals often possess the ability to do not one but many things at high competence levels. Students with this ability, however, may view their multipotentiality as a mixed blessing. When they hear that “they can be anything they want to be” or “they are lucky to have so many options,” the choices may overwhelm them, or they may feel pressure to become someone different from who they are. Multipotentiality: Issues and Considerations for Career Planning
Make your classroom a place for students to experiment and explore various potential paths. Beware of pigeonholing students based on their obvious talents, as they may have other passions they would like to develop.
8. Moral Awareness
- We worry a lot about world problems and feel helpless to do anything about them.
Gifted students are often aware of moral issues earlier in life than we expect. As teachers, we must help them develop ways to cope with this heightened level of awareness. I love incorporating Kohlberg’s Levels of Morality to discuss morality and motivation.
Use these six levels of moral development to: discuss people from history, analyze characters from stories, build new characters in writing, and dig into students’ own personalities and motivations.
Also, expose students to The Tragedy of the Commons to discuss how difficult it is to solve large problems without cooperation.
Finally, give students experience in solving small but authentic problems before letting them worry about the world’s woes. We attack our ongoing problem of desk arrangement in the classroom. I’m sure you have similar problems that your class could tackle.
Keep It Nearby
I’m keeping a list of the eight gripes next to my desk to use as a guide for shaping my classroom into a place where gifted students succeed: academically, socially, and emotionally.