"What the teachers say..."

by Phoebe Fong-Smith

Cathy is a Grade Prep teacher. Currently studying for the Certificate in Gifted Education, she has also attended several in-service sessions and seminars on gifted children.

"I have two extremely bright girls, Xena and Yasmin, in my grade that I haven't properly assessed as gifted yet. There's one boy, Zack, who might be cleverer than he's letting on. He exhibits classic signs of giftedness. I'll be assessing them using the Peabody Test and the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test soon. The results will serve as indicators to determine their intellectual potential.

Xena and Yasmin are very sociable and mature. They know exactly how to behave in all situations. Last year, I had a Grade Prep early-age entrant, Victor, who was different. Maybe it was because he was 18 months younger than the rest of the class and he had a bit more difficulty in socialising then. He was accelerated to Grade 2 this year where he has since fitted in well.

Xena and Yasmin have excellent reading skills. In writing, they have a go at different words and are willing to make mistakes. They are not attention seekers, are good at sharing their knowledge and co-operating in work groups. Basically, they are teacher-pleasers.

Both girls are outgoing and are capable of working faster when they want to but the work must be a bit boring for them still. Xena occasionally daydreams. Until I've assessed them properly, I just have to keep them going.

I use different strategies to cater to their needs. I encourage them to extend their story-writing a bit more. I give them some individual-type work like I did with Victor last year. And I've also given them extension work, similar to what Victor had last year, to take home to work through with their parents.

Now that I'm aware of child giftedness, my biggest challenge is how best to cater for these children and making sure I'm doing enough for them and not neglecting their special needs. It is easy to overlook these children because they are so good. Take Victor. I could easily have let him slip through because he's such a good boy in class.

I'm constantly trying to make sure I'm doing the right things for them, knowing how to identify them, and what to do with them once I've identified them (which I'm studying now).

The next challenge would be to convince the other teachers, some of whom do have a narrow perception of giftedness. Maybe they feel threatened because they don't understand or maybe they're ignorant (in a nice way). We have to cater for different personalities in the teaching profession. I cater for the lowest and the highest ends of the scale in my grade. I'm going to overcome this challenge (of catering for gifted pupils in this school) even if it kills me.

I have a son who isn't obviously gifted. He lacks attention span, doesn't work well, doesn't like school, exhibit behaviour problems and comes out with shocking sentence structures. But when you have a conversation with him, he has so much in-depth knowledge and uses fantastic vocabulary. I had an inkling he was bright but didn't know until my lecture last week. I'm seeing so much more now and I ask myself if I've failed him as a parent.

Back in 1980, I had this very clever child in my grade. I asked the class to write something about the word 'country'. This child filled half a page with names of all the countries in Africa and I had to get the atlas out to check for myself. He knew all the answers but was happy to be in a class with the others. He extended himself. But in those days, there was no mention of giftedness - just being very bright."

* * *

Lisa is a Grade Prep/One teacher. She has yet to participate in any in-service or special training in the area of child giftedness.

"There are two very different gifted pupils in my class, Alyce and Brian.

Alyce started school early after being assessed and identified as gifted. She's been made very aware of her being gifted and different from other children. She doesn't attempt to interact with her classmates. She refuses to work with anyone except her two close friends because she feels she hasn't anything in common with the others. She has very few social skills and is extremely withdrawn. If there's a topic she's not interested in, she just will not even think about it. She'll just sit there and daydream.

Alyce's also very teary. Last week, she tried attention-seeking behaviour in class. I found out from her parents it had a lot to do with what was happening at home. Her younger brother was getting more attention at home because he was being naughty so she thought, 'I'd try that too' but she didn't get the response she wanted. Oh, she was so heartbroken.

Alyce may be highly intellectual but she's in some ways below average, in terms of social and emotional maturity. She is less mature and less independent compared to children her age. In dress-up and things like that, she's fine. She and her two friends are still into dolls and playing house - things that the other children have already progressed from, like building things and making objects.

Alyce has this perception that other children don't understand things at her level. She will only explain things to me, only share her knowledge with me or her two mates whom she thinks are bright enough to understand her.

We had a situation where one pupil asked her a question: 'What's your name?' Alyce cut him off with: 'That's a silly question. I'm not going to answer that. You already know my name.' She was thinking, 'I want a difficult question.'

So I swapped partners and I had Alyce instead. She had these expectations of mind-blowing questions, thinking my questions would be more challenging. But when I asked her a regular question she couldn't even answer it. I explained to her that it was all right to answer the other child's question and not to just cut people off.

It's just Alyce's perception of what is difficult. I feel that that perception has strongly been reinforced by her parents' behaviour. She won't share her ideas with the class even though she has very good ideas. She just won't try. I know when she's trying and when she's not.

This morning we had Maths. She couldn't work out her sums so I suggested using counters to get her going. She refused, saying, 'Counters represent that I'm dumb, that I'm not gifted anymore.' She was so devastated about not being able to work the sum out but she won't use the crutch even when she needs it.

Brian is very outgoing, sociable, active, open-minded and outspoken. He interacts well with the other children and constantly bursts with imaginative ideas and information he wants to share with everyone. He is very verbal but is not into writing things down. Yes, he is into attention-seeking behaviour because he wants to show off how smart he is.

Brian has also been made very aware that he's very intelligent. He has not been formally assessed as gifted but I do believe he's past the point of just being one of the very bright kids.

I realise some others are very bright, too, but as their grade teacher, you soon know these are the teacher-pleasers. While they may be bright or brighter than the average pupil, teacher-pleasers are not used to thinking in the abstract like gifted children do.

The questions I set for Alyce and Brian are open-ended to allow them to explore their answers on different pathways. Other children will have questions where they stop at a certain point.

I try to keep them motivated, stimulated and interested by constantly coming up with new ideas. You have to get them excited, like making scary faces or growling like an animal. I think sometimes you have to be a bit on the odd side just to get them going.

My biggest challenge is to get them to take risks and to accept mistakes. If they get it wrong, they can have another go, break the problem down and try it a different way. As things are at the moment, it breaks Alyce's heart whenever she can't get it right. She has such high expectations on herself, probably due to parental attitudes and expectations."

* * *

Vicky is also a Grade Prep/One teacher. She has yet to participate in any in-service or special training in the area of child giftedness.

"I have four extremely capable pupils in my grade. Carl is an early Grade Prep enrolment who's a bit younger than the others. He has been enrolled early through the request of his parents. He has had a psychological assessment which showed he wasn't obviously gifted but was nevertheless bright.

Daniel and Ethan certainly show talents above what the average child can do. Daniel has yet to be formally assessed. Ethan's assessment has identified certain areas of his capabilities as being well beyond his age while other areas were below average development. So we're working on building these particular areas that need attention.

Franklyn's parents believe he's gifted and has requested that he be assessed. Unless his psychological report comes back to say he's gifted, I'd rather look at what he can do and what his particular needs are and then provide accordingly.

None of these four pupils shows fantastic skills in work co-operation or social interaction. Carl, Daniel and Ethan have particularly good oral language skills although not so well, in a social sense. Franklyn often exhibits attention-seeking behaviour, doesn't have good task orientation and rarely finishes his work.

Although all four children are capable of doing problem-solving types of activities, they often don't have the perseverance to persist in their work. If they can't get a solution straight away, they get frustrated easily and often will give up just as easily.

The work I set these highly capable children is not a lot different to the work for my regular pupils. Teachers often assess their pupils to see what they can do and then look at the sort of activities that can be used to further develop their skills.

We set tasks along different types of work-settings: as individuals, as co-operative groups and as contracts. Individual-type learning programs allow children to work on open-ended questions and to move at their own pace. Contracts allow individual learning, formalised by contracts, making the children responsible for their own learning in terms of set activities and targets. Some children might complete two or three tasks while more capable ones might get five or six done.

I'm aware that although these children might be very capable, they still often or basically have the social maturity and emotional maturity of a 6 or 7-year-old.

Carl's parents have enormously high expectations on what they think their child could achieve by enrolling early. He happens to be a particularly emotionally and socially immature child with very few independent skills even though he's bright. That has put a lot of pressure on the child to try and meet these expectations. As his teacher, I find that extremely stressful.

Maybe what Carl's parents want to see him achieve is different to what I'm trying to get the child to achieve as a whole person. It's very important to foster their individual talents but we must not neglect the whole development of that child. My biggest challenge is just to get these parents to understand that teachers look at the broad spectrum of a child at school.

A lot of parents had felt their children were gifted but when they were actually assessed, they were found to be just in the capable field. Certainly, in terms of emotional and social development, we have to be aware that children still operate at their chronological age."

© 1997 Phoebe Fong-Smith

 © NSWAGTC 2007

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