Our biggest dilemma as educators is often the identification of giftedness. The amount of time money and attention allotted to gifted education has steadily decreased in the school system. At BCS we are looking for not only identifying who gifted students are, often students who have been overlooked, but also how to more effectively educate and inspire them. Unfortunately many children are overlooked in large schools and even smaller schools for a variety of reasons. For example, there is an over reliance on standardized tests and our identification process does not effectively embrace the theory of multiple intelligences. That is, there is an overly narrow definition of what intelligence is.
Effective identification processes take time and attention to the individual. They must take into account a variety of social and experiential factors. In addition, they should examine the relationship between school achievement, medical history, social emotional factors and sensory-motor development. Giftedness involves evaluating a child’s creativity, reviewing multiple sources of information and interviews with parents.
Standardized measures can be very useful but they need to be evaluated in light of other individual achievement measures. A student can be gifted in writing but not spelling. Student can be gifted in math but not reading.
How do you know if your child is gifted? The Association for the Gifted suggests looking for hints and clues of giftedness in all students. BCS does this no matter what the current level of reading or math is. Why? Because in looking more deeply, in taking the time to understand the individual and their story we can design and plan a program in which they can show their skills, grow to their fullest potential in an exciting, dynamic and promising school environment. WE provide support to teachers for further professional development so that they in turn may more effectively nurture students.
Quite often, despite common misunderstanding, gifted people are disorganized, have poor planning skills, lower executive function skills, are lacking in confidence or are suffering from medical problems that effect performance and emotions. The list is quite long and includes circulatory problems, sleep apnea or low oxygen levels in the blood. The list goes on and on and as we are better able to diagnose medical problems we are beginning to connect the dots between health issues and how they relate to classroom functioning. But who are these children that we fail to identify? There are three major categories.
Some are students who have been identified as gifted at some point in their past, often grade school but who exhibit difficulties in school. They are “under achievers” and this is often attributed to a personality characteristic. They are labeled as lazy, neurotic, unmotivated or manipulative. Their parents, too, are often labeled as ineffective, poor disciplinarians or overly indulgent. Sometimes the word co-dependent is used to inaccurately describe one or both parents. This is just the short list. Unfortunately, their learning differences remain undefined and hidden for many years.
Then, paradoxically, we have another major group of students who have been identified as learning different but whose giftedness has been overlooked. Parents’ attempts to bring attention to their gifted child’s attributes have been politely shunted aside. Such children end up in classrooms for much lower functioning students. They are often bored, frustrated and situationally depressed. Many, many students fit this category. They often present as sad with regard to their school experiences. In our estimation, at least 30% and maybe a much higher percentage of students who have been labeled as LD are actually of superior ability. Such students are most often not given the opportunity to take advantage of gifted programs and even if they were, the programs themselves would not know how to effectively educate them in most cases.
Finally, there are many students who are “average” on their standardized evaluation data; that is grades and standardized test scores. But in reality they are very gifted and they also have learning differences. They are so capable, so intelligent that their giftedness is hidden because they can achieve “average” scores on most criteria with little effort. In short, the giftedness hides the learning difference among such students. But with the correct, structured mentoring environment they can work in the gifted ranges of intellectual achievement.
BCS holds to a high level of achievement and utilizes many strategies to help students effectively learn our curriculum.