Gifted programs in elementary school should serve kids who often learn in a different way and at a different rate than other children. The whole point of gifted education is to provide children with appropriate opportunities to meet their needs so they can reach their full potential. So what should parents look for?
#1 An education that fits their intellectual level and talents
In point #3 below, I run through the different ways gifted education approaches play out in America. The gold standard is the rarest: individual subject acceleration (which I don’t even cover below because it’s basically a unicorn). Gifted students need and deserve to learn something new every day, to be challenged, and to be understood and valued in the classroom.
So what if you’re in the situation where there are no gifted programs in elementary school? At a minimum, the regular curriculum needs to be adjusted or differentiated to be effective for high performing kids.
In many school tours, what I’ve heard is that teachers will differentiate. In practice, when I go into classrooms on those tours, I see none of that. Either that school has no gifted students in any of their Kindergarten classes or I’m being lied to or the truth is being stretched. It’s probably a function of the latter two, TBH.
Also, just allowing a kid to do extra reading while the rest of the class learns something he/she has mastered is not doing parents a favor. I love how parents are forced to accept this option as a solution.
While it is true that curriculum and programming for gifted students is good for all students, gifted students can handle more complexity, greater depth, and faster pacing than their classmates can. So here’s an unpopular truth:
A curriculum that truly meets the needs of gifted students would leave many classmates struggling.
This is not good or bad. Dem’s the facts.
By differentiating the curriculum, educators argue that gifted students are served. Maybe. But the reality is that most classroom teachers, faced with 20 students (best case scenario), are not equipped to provide personalized or small group learning at many different levels simultaneously or consistently.
Finding appropriate instruction for a talented student is hard during the early years, and rare for gifted programs in elementary schools.
#2 Learning with their true peers
A 6 year old with an IQ of 180 is intellectually basically on the same level as an 11-year old. But of course emotionally the 6 year old is not an 11-year old, and physically, he is not a teenager.
If there are no gifted programs in elementary schools near you, it’s important to look to special programs outside of school to find true peers. Gifted children typically report they feel greater peer acceptance, social comfort, and self acceptance when they are in programs with similarly inclined peers.
The NYC gifted and talented program has diluted the quality of the students being accepted thanks to the subjective nature of evaluations, so in this case, parent beware. Your child may not find true peers even if he/she is deemed eligible.
#3 A supportive, responsive learning environment
Programs should be matched to the needs of gifted students by providing a spectrum of options. This happens in a variety of ways across gifted programs in elementary schools:
- Special schools and separate programs – magnet schools or separate programs for specific subjects for kids who have the potential to excel
- Enrichment programs – these are the most common and what I saw in my National Blue Ribbon School district. They vary from an hour a week (what I observed) to an hour or more a day (rarer). These programs might involve using a resource room (our case), implementing pull-out programs, offering mentorships, hiring specially trained teachers, inviting community professionals to teach or make presentations, or setting up individual projects or contracts with students.
- Resource rooms – these are usually libraries, computer labs, or other specially equipped rooms that gifted kids use at the teacher’s discretion. If students are done with an assignment for example, they can go to the resource rom to research an area of interest or work with the librarian or other specialist.
- Pull-out programs – these remove gifted kids from the regular classroom for a period of time. They provide special activities not offered in the regular classroom on a part-time basis.
- Mentorship programs – pair gifted students with an adult or another student who’s an expert in a particular subject or profession.
- Independent study – allows students to work at their own pace on a program of their own choosing with a mentor or teacher serving as a guide (unlikely to be appropriate for Kindergarteners).
#4 Professionals who can respond to their needs
There is no such thing as an ideal teacher for gifted children because there are so many differences within the gifted popularion. But what’s important is someone who is interested in and eager to work with curious, highly able students. For gifted kids, it’s important to have an adult who understands both their academic and their social and emotional needs.
Concluding remarks on gifted programs in elementary schools
It’s important for advanced learners – certified G&T or not – to develop self-motivation skills. There will be times they may surpass their teachers’ knowledge level, but if they know how to do research and how to learn they can keep progressing. For Kindergarteners, the first step is to become an independent reader as this opens up avenues to keep occupied while basic reading is being taught.
Even though I don’t believe that being given free time to read is much to write home about, it’s better than suffering through phonics recognition yet again when a child already knows all the sounds and then some!
It’s also important to start a dialogue with your child’s teacher – particularly when it comes to identifying gifted children. These can be awkward conversations, but the same principles for acing parent teacher conferences apply!
Though my anxiety level around gifted programs in elementary schools is admittedly high at the moment, my husband said something the other day that I realized is true:
We will survive another year of supplementing school
I was going to supplement school anyway. I had hoped to be able to do less. But we can continue as we have been doing all these years.
And if we truly hit rock bottom? Well, you know what we’d do next…
PS: A super interesting read on how gifted and talented programs provide little to no academic boost.
