You're Really Annoying Me!

Day 2 of the giftEDnz October Blog Challenge and it's all about how NOT to annoy gifted children.

Gifted Guru - Top Ten Ways to Annoy a Gifted Child

Today's prompt is one that could make you laugh...or cry...depending on the way you look at it and also what your background experience is.  The 10 ways to annoy a gifted child are listed below.  I thought about ways to reflect on these statements.  The author's (Lisa Van Gemert) perspective is funny with a touch of sarcasm.  But this is a serious issue and after nearly 20 years in the profession, I've decided my reflection will be a serious one - with hopefully a dash of humour and a whole lot of positivity around how we can make things better - for our gifted students and also ourselves.

First of all, I was going to reflect on how I have seen every one of these statements for myself over the years - and often despaired - but it's not in my nature to be overly negative. I'd much rather reflect on what I've learned - and am learning - and create solutions for these points.  Have I been guilty of some of these?  You bet I have - you don't know what you don't know, or so a very wise colleague said to me one day when I was beating myself up over something.  So here goes... 

1. Force them to remain at the “right” grade level.

This is a curious one.  Why do we do this?  Often we hear it discussed that it's because students 'wouldn't cope with different-age peers' but hang on...what about the mixed levels in smaller rural schools? Students have been coping exceptionally well in these learning environments.  In fact, when I was head of Year 7 in a large College a few years ago it was always quite easy to identify learners from these environments as they were often - not always - but quite often, more comfortable around people of all ages. It was what they were used to.  So what's stopping us?

2. Insist that they show their work.

This is another interesting one and one that has, in the past, been dictated by people other than those at the whiteboard face of teaching and learning.  The Numeracy Project was good for this.  I remember during one interview where students have to explain their thinking/strategies a student asked me why I needed them to do this.  My reply was the standard one about needing to know what strategies they could use so that I could find the right level for their next learning.  The next statement from the student really made me think - they were one of those amazing students that just 'got' the answer.  A truly gifted mathematician by every definition and description.  The response - "But is the answer right?" "Yes," I replied.  "Well then telling you how I got it isn't going to change it to being anything else then is it?"  The student had a point.  

I think with gifted students it's very different.  With a student who is struggling, explaining or showing their thinking can really help them understand what they're learning and how something works.  For gifted students, this just frustrates the heck out of them when they are more than ready to move on to the next challenge.

3. Force them to read along.

Fortunately, I've never done this (quickest way to kill a passion for reading) but I have seen it happen so many times! Back in about 2003, I developed a NZ version of Literature Circles.  One of the guidelines was around just this.  The group could only DISCUSS what their group was reading up to the part where the slowest reader in the group was up to - and being a slower reader was also a cause for celebration as they were often the ones who were also picking up the finer details as much as the gifted readers.  We really pushed and valued this in my class.  It was always something to be as proud of as being a gifted reader.  The more capable and gifted readers could read as much as they wanted.  It was all about flexibility.

You can read more about this version of Literature Circles by clicking through the presentation image.

Putting the 'Oomph' Back into Reading - Literature Circles, blogging and Twitter - the key to developing a passion for reading. from Justine Hughes / PhD Candidate/Teacher

4. No differentiation.

There's differentiation and then there's real differentiation.  It's not about giving more of the same to our gifted students or slightly harder work.  It's about truly knowing our students and differentiating to meet their specific needs.  This is becoming increasingly challenging as class numbers increase and the primary sector relies more on relief teachers to fill gaps.

Differentiation is not about putting our gifted students in the 'top group' or mixed ability groups all the time. To really meet their needs, our classrooms need to be organised to have clusters of gifted students in them so that they have the opportunity to learn and teach with like-minds.  This is crucial for their social and emotional development and careful grouping - and ranges of grouping are key.  Differentiation is all about differentiating the content, process and product.  The toolbox link below explains qualitative differentiation for our gifted students really well.

The Differentiation Toolbox- Brooke Trenwith

and from Carol Tomlinson...

We may have better opportunities for this with the new FLEs (or ILEs/MLEs depending on which acronym you use).  However, a caution with the new environments is that they may not suit all of our gifted students - particularly the twice-exceptional (2e) students, and there has yet to be a significant amount of research conducted into their effectiveness.  I'm excited about the possibilities though - but we need evidence and we also need professional learning and development (PLD) in order for these to work well as they necessitate a shift in pedagogy.

5. Make passive aggressive comments about their intelligence.

There's not much to say about this one.  We've all heard one of our colleagues say this and it is not acceptable.  Even as a joke.  Gifted students can often be very sensitive and this is just damaging to identity and self-worth. Never start a sentence with "But you're so smart..."

6. Only allow same-age friends.

This goes back to #1 but it is also more than that.  In order to be able to interact with like-minds it's crucial that students can interact with all ages.  Sometimes it's often by this interaction that we as teachers can start to identify a gifted student - or very importantly - one who has been flying under the radar and not indicated a great deal of giftedness in the classroom setting.  These are often our underachievers or students who may have behaviour issues.  Because gifted students often develop asynchronously, it's vital to let them find their 'tribe' - people who can meet their social, emotional and intellectual needs.

7. Don’t let them linger over things that interest them.

This is such a tricky one and the cause of this happening is so often beyond the control of the student's teacher.  The pressures from curriculum and assessment demands have, in the past, put enormous pressure on teachers to 'get through the work'.  It's honestly crazy.  The changes since I began teaching in 1999 have been enormous and the workload and expectations are sometimes out of kilter with what we know to be absolute best practice in teaching and learning.  I hope we can push back on this a little now that National Standards have gone but there's going to need to be professional learning for many who trained under the NS system so that the focus goes firmly back on our fantastic - and I still believe - world-leading National Curriculum.  

This curriculum allows for passions and interests to be followed. Genius Hour and Passion Projects fit so well into this. It has differentiation and personalisation at its heart.  It was designed to begin with the Key Competencies and build the curriculum for our learners from there. There's always 'wriggle room' in our planning and assessment.  Imagine the power of that!!

Davidson Gifted

Genius Hour Resources - crowdsourced resource collated by teachers

8. Give them more of the same level of work.

See # 4

9. Expect perfection.

Meet the Perfectionists

No one is perfect and most certainly I am not!  I have learned so much more from failing than I ever did from getting things right - something I've had to work on being the perfectionist that I am.  We need to take the negative pressure right off our able and gifted students.  They are individuals and a human being first and foremost.  If we don't remove that pressure or teach them how to combat serious perfectionist tendencies then we are contributing to the mental health statistics.

10. Make them repeat the same things over and over.

I will not dye my teacher's hair red.

I will not dye my teacher's hair red.

I will not dye...

Oh - not THAT kind of repetition!!

Repetition kills the joy of learning.  Yes, some students need repetition to help them master new learning but not all do.  We have to ask the question "What is the point in repeating something that a student already knows or has mastered?"

I think the key point in all of this - and helpful in not always annoying your students (let's be honest, we're human, we all annoy each other at some time!) is to keep them (individually and as people) at the heart of everything we do.  If we do that then we can't go wrong - and we'll only annoy them a little bit.