What excites me about the shift in education away from the classroom-centric model we have all been a part of over the last century, is the fact that students are less dependent upon the teacher and/or the system for all knowledge.  Students no longer have to attend school to attain their knowledge, they are as Nagel describes, “free agent learners”.

Because of that, students have the opportunity to break from the long-standing categories we so often use in education.  Terms such as “slow learner”, “hands on learner”, “troubled student”, “active student”, “solid student”, “middle-of-the-road student”, “talented student”, “straight A student” and yes “gifted student” are simply constructs of our educational system and they most often only provide clues as to how the student learns within the narrow confines of that system. The “straight A” student may be intelligent, but I’ll bet they are also also very compliant and diligent in getting their homework done and being attentive in class.  They are very good at playing the part of the industrial model school student that the “conspiracy” of school was intended to create but are they good at solving problems, being creative, unlearning that which they have previously learned so they can be relevant?  Do we really challenge these students to use their gifts to their fullest potential or do we simply moved them along the conveyor belt, sending them off to college with the tools to continue to be “good” students?

The “active” student is one that doesn’t fit our system well, yet fits in the world’s chaotic and unpredictable system very nicely.   To make that student fit within our educational model, we drug, punish, and belittle the student until they either comply to a degree in which they can be tolerated, or are pushed out of our system all together.  The real shame here is that many times there is an assumption that these students are not gifted, when in fact they are, they simply don’t play the game by the industrial model rules that were established a century ago.  Our choice has been to change the student to fit the model instead of changing the model to fit the student and by doing so, we have missed an opportunity with a whole bunch of gifted students.

How often do we work to control our students?  Think of that student who challenges our systems.  Think about your reaction to that student.  Now think about your reaction to that student when you know they are right and our system in wrong.  Unfortunately, most of us squelch that student and often without a true explanation as to why.  We say that it is, “complicated” or “for their own good” or “they will understand when they are older”, instead of embracing those students, their ideas and their input.  Instead of acknowledging that they are rightfully challenging the way we educating them because our system is not working for them and they want it to.  Their “challenges” are pleas for help, not the acts of betrayal we so often portray them to be.

My point here is that we have so narrowly defined what it means to be “gifted” in our system of education, that we fail to either see the gifts within each student, or we fail to push students beyond the model we have been a part of for so long.  I fear that as long as we define “school” and “learning” so narrowly, we will continue to miss the the opportunity to cultivate the gifted student found in all students.  As long as we continue to define what it means to be “gifted” by the system which so narrowly defines how we learn, we will not truly find each of our students’ gifts.  It is why this shift toward free agent learning, with the categorical freedoms and the power to self-define our gifts, is so intriguing.

What I want to express in this blog post is not anything new or innovative. It is nothing that hasn’t been said before.  However, it is something that’s been mulling about in my brain while I was drinking my morning coffee and watching the Twitter stream from the Discovery Educators Network Leadership Council Symposium.

A video kept getting re-tweeted in the stream so I figured I’d better check it out.

You can watch the 2 minute video, Microsoft Labs 2019 Vision:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQdGvfV4WnU

As soon as it started I felt like I was watching a car commercial. It was flashy, well-produced and fast-paced. I honestly was not that impressed. I guess what people felt was that it was a window into what the future holds for technology and digital devices.

That I won’t deny.

The name on the video is “Microsoft Office Labs 2019 Vision Montage.” This is the vision that Microsoft has for our future.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Many things.

For one, why are we letting Microsoft dictate what the future of digital life will look like? We could make the same statement about Apple or Sony or any other companies who manufacture digital products.  Many of these companies do use customer input and feedback to improve their products, but in reality we are all consumers of what these companies feed us.

What does this mean for education? It means that we need to be putting our students to the task of deciding what THEY want their future to look like. We live in a time unlike any other in history. Our natural resources are disappearing, we have devices that are more powerful than ever before and we have tools that allow us to connect with people thousands of miles away in a matter of seconds.

Companies like Microsoft are not in the business of planning for the future of our children as members of society or for the future of our global community. We must empower our students with that charge. It is they who will inhabit the future. We must also ensure that we empower ALL students to take part in the building of future society, not just the ones who are privileged and can afford it.

There are many obstacles to overcome when we begin to ask our students to solve real world problems. Solutions to real world problems don’t fit on a standardized test. Solutions to real world problems take time to understand and even more time to solve. Solutions to real world problems require a restructuring of school as we know it.

I have been having various conversations (and sometimes debates) about what it means to be a teacher and a learner in the 21st Century. Some of the conversation has been focused around guiding students to understanding rather than delivering content, creating learning environments where learning is a connected and social experience, and infusing technology into learning when it can transform the learning experience.  The world our students will inhabit will require them to collaborate with peers, understand social media tools and be problem solvers within their own communities and the larger world.  We need to prepare them for that world.

Schools need to allow for tinkering. Tinkering with ideas, tinkering with materials, tinkering with students’ perceived limitations. Tinkering teaches children how to learn from failure. Tinkering teaches children how to think about a problem or a project from many perspectives. Tinkering allows children to build self esteem and feel pride in what they do. Students who tinker are the students who build our future.

Some examples of what I’m talking about:

• The Tinkering School teaches children how to build and guide their own learning. While it is not a true ‘school’ it is a model that could be replicated on a smaller scale within the school curriculum. (Listen to the founder’s TED talk here.)
• Philadelphia High School Students Design the Car of the Future
• Project Based Learning motivates students to solve real world problems–Edutopia article
• Sylvia Martinez writes extensively about tinkering on her blog, GenYES

There are those who will look at these words as a ‘pipe dream,’ ‘utopia’ or ‘fairytale.’  To them I would argue that we must have a Vision. If Microsoft can construct a vision of what it thinks the world will look like in 2019 then we as educators, parents, community members, lawmakers and general stakeholders in the world need to have a vision, too. Even more importantly, we need to let our children begin to build their own vision for their own future and give them skills to make it real.

It is not my purpose today to engage in this debate. But I keep coming back to a comment that was made to me recently in connection with a project I’m doing at work. My district is in the midst of a comprehensive review and analysis of our gifted program. As part of that review, we have created a new vision and mission statement for the gifted program. (For the curious among you, it is posted here)

I shared the draft of that document with my administration, then unveiled it publicly for the first time at a school board meeting. In among the many positive and encouraging responses, a few people commented that, while the statements were nice, aren’t these things we should be doing with every student?

This echoes similar sentiments I’ve heard for as long as I’ve been teaching. Of course the answer is yes; though the emphasis for the general education curriculum and program will be on different kinds of things, the “stuff” that for so long was the core of gifted education has become part of the mainstream 21st century emphasis.

It got me thinking about what gifted education should look like in today’s schools. Is it still necessary in an age when high level thinking and problem solving, collaboration, technology, differentiation, and inclusion are growing in their importance and reach in our schools? I believe it is, but my thoughts are continuing to evolve about what it should do and how.

So what should gifted education be in the 21st century? I don’t know. Yet. But I’ve invited a collection of people who have had a tremendous influence on my learning and thinking to help me answer that question. Over the next several weeks, eleven people who I consider colleagues and friends will be guests on this blog, wrestling with that very question. I am looking forward to reading what they have to say. I hope you are too.

As his posts tend to do, it got me thinking about what I’ve learned from the show, not about history, but about teaching and learning.

For those readers who haven’t seen Pawn Stars, it’s a reality show about a pawn shop in Las Vegas. In each episode, customers bring in various objects they want to pawn or sell. The shop owners have to appraise the value, negotiate, and sometimes spot the fakes among the real items.

At first blush it seems like an odd fit for the History Channel. But the items that people bring in are such things as antique firearms, historical documents, sports memorabilia, even Jimmy Hoffa’s photo album (in the Backroom Brawl episode). As the series star and store owner Rick Harrison says, “Everything has a story.”

The stars of the show are a collection of not-so-sophisticated guys who are more likely to trade an item for a new tattoo than to appreciate the cultural significance of a native artifact.

But there is no denying that these guys know their stuff. Rick, his dad (the “Old Man”), and his son “Hoss” all have a depth of knowledge about history and antique objects that never ceases to fascinate me. In one episode, a customer walked into the shop with what looked like a rusty hunk of metal, and Rick immediately identified it as a set of 19th century Froggatt Plug 8 handcuffs.

A few semi-random thoughts that came to mind as I considered the show:

1. Learning is not the same as academics. Rick Harrison dropped out of high school in tenth grade, but he probably knows more about history than most college graduates. Rick has obviously learned an incredible amount in the years he has been in business. He works in a particularly unforgiving field, too—if he’s wrong about an object or its origin and pays more than it’s worth, no one is going to buy it from him out of pity. He’s out of luck. The only way to be a success in his business in the long term is to know what you’re doing.
2. You can’t know it all. Despite the extensive knowledge and expertise of the pawn shop staff, they don’t pretend to know everything. When an item comes in that Rick questions, he calls in a specialist. He has a collection of experts who he asks to examine items and verify their authenticity. He’s not afraid to tell a customer, “I have no idea if this is real or what it might be worth.”
3. There is no “proper” expression of an intellectual gift. Some might say that the Harrison family’s talent is “wasted” in such a low class operation as the pawn business. But who are we to judge the value that this shop and its owners contribute to the community or society? Who or what determines if someone is a success, or is achieving at his or her potential? Rick seems to love what he does, and he is good at his chosen profession. If we have a student who is a talented writer, who’s to say that we have to guide that writer to producing “great literature?” What if his or her passion is to write slapstick cartoons? Isn’t South Park just as valid an expression of writing talent as Mansfield Park?

I believe we spend a lot of time in education trying to cram students into the molds we have predetermined are best for them. While we do have an obligation to take raw talent and shape it, perhaps we need to look at it the way Michelangelo looked at sculpture:

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

Our job is to discover the potential that is already inside the student and help them realize it, not to maneuver the student into becoming what we believe they should become.

Keteleeria tree stolen from the Washington Park Arboretum

Last week a tree was cut down in Seattle and is probably now sitting in someone’s living room, wrapped in lights, festooned with glittering ornaments, and draped in tinsel. This would not be much of a story, especially in December, except for the fact that the tree in question was an exceedingly rare specimen of Keteleeria evelyniana, a conifer native to China, that had been transplanted ten years ago to the Washington Park Arboretum. The staff arrived on December 9 to discover that overnight someone, presumably looking for a free holiday decoration, had removed the tree.

Asked about its appearance during an interview on NPR, the plant collections manager for the Arboretum, Randall Hitchin, said, “In general aspect, it looks like a conifer: tall, dark green, symmetrical.” Sort of like your run-of-the-mill Christmas tree? “In the dark,” Hitchin replied.

Gifted children can be like the K. evelyniana. To an untrained eye, or to those who don’t know the difference (or care to know, as in the case of the tree thief), most gifted kids look like your typical, run-of-the-mill kid. In a classroom of students, it is often easy to miss the unique qualities that make them stand out, that make them rare specimens.

Gifted students, like the rare tree in Seattle, have unique needs. They have an often unappreciated value that can seem surprising to some: in their attempt to save sixty or seventy dollars, the arboreal bandits destroyed a $10,000 treasure.

But the real issue isn’t that we so often miss the value of our gifted students. It isn’t that we have a few rare gems to pick out from among the ordinary stones. The issue is that we even consider any child to be a “typical” or “average” one. Every single person in every single classroom is a $10,000 treasure. Every student has unique interests, abilities, needs, and talents. Every child deserves to be nurtured, respected, and cared for.

So why do gifted students deserve special treatment, then? They don’t. What they do deserve is to be treated as the individuals they are. They deserve to be taught at their level, at their pace, respecting and nurturing their unique qualities. Just like every other child in the classroom. If we don’t, we run the risk of allowing someone to come in and destroy our own rare trees.

The staff at the Arboretum are still mourning their loss because the tree is irreplaceable.

So are our children.

As adults, when we are in a learning situation that’s boring, it is often because the content is something we already know and don’t need to practice more.

It’s important for us as parents to remember that children often don’t have the vocabulary or introspective ability to explain what they are feeling, so they may fall back on “boring” as the closest approximation. They also may not understand the root causes of their feelings to be able to describe for you where they are coming from.

Certainly students will be bored when the work they are asked to do is too easy and they have already mastered it, and it is one of the first things we need to consider. But there are many other things that might be contributing to the feeling that a child associates with boredom. When a child says, “I’m bored…,” it could also mean…

• The work is too hard
• The work isn’t interesting to me
• The work is…work
• I’m afraid I can’t do it
• I don’t like the subject
• I don’t like the assignment
• I don’t like the teacher
• I don’t like my classmates
• I don’t understand
• I don’t want to understand
• I’m tired
• I’m distracted
• I’m preoccupied
• I’m uncomfortable
• I’m angry about something that happened this morning
• I’m worried about something that might happen tomorrow
• I’d rather be at recess
• I’d rather be at home
• I’d rather be at the movies/pool/park/etc.

If we are too quick to assume that “bored” always means “too easy,” then it won’t take long for our children to learn that when they don’t like doing something, just saying those magic words will make it go away

It’s up to us, then, to be sure we don’t take this kind of statement at immediate face value. Instead, ask questions and probe deeper into the situation to find out more about what is going on and why. Then we will have the information we need to address the problem and fix it.

(Originally posted June 5, 2008 at Grandé With Room)

A scenario with which you are probably familiar: You are giving directions for an upcoming project, or explaining a complex math concept, or leading a discussion about the story the class just read in the reading book. Dozens of eyes are focused in your direction as the students hang on your every word. You glance to the left, where you see one of your gifted students, eyes down, pencil drifting lazily across the page of her notebook in elaborate, abstract swirls and angles. Interrupting your speech, you call her name. She looks up, you ask her to put the pencil and notebook away and pay attention, she complies, and you go on, confident that she is now engaged in the important stuff.

Most of us have been in that position. I’m certain, though, that you can recall more than once in class (or as likely, graduate school) being where that student was.

Why do we doodle? It is entirely possible that by making your students stop doodling, you are actually harming their ability to focus on what you’re teaching. A report about this on NPR last week has some interesting implications for teachers of gifted students. Jackie Andrade, a psychology professor at the University of Plymouth, has studied doodling and its effects, and found that it is a coping mechanism that people use to give their brains something to process when they are not being sufficiently stimulated:

“If you look at people’s brain function when they’re bored, we find that they are using a lot of energy — their brains are very active,” Andrade says. The reason, she explains, is that the brain is designed to constantly process information. But when the brain finds an environment barren of stimulating information…the brain [typically] turns to daydreams…. The function of doodling…is to provide just enough cognitive stimulation during an otherwise boring task to prevent the mind from taking the more radical step of totally opting out of the situation and running off into a fantasy world.

Your gifted students, whose brains are generally already in a higher gear than the rest of the class, probably find themselves in this low-stimulation state frequently. So before you ask your kids to put away the pencils, consider that they may actually be paying more attention than the ones with nothing else to do.

But even more, consider the possibility of being proactive in your approach:

• Whenever possible, plan high-engagement and high-stimulation activities
• Give your students scratch pads or paper and allow them to keep them out at all times
• Switch modes frequently to keep the brain alert
• When students doodle, don’t take it personally
• Look for cues that you need to take breaks or shift gears

Understanding the brain and recognizing the outward signs of what it is doing will help you stay in tune with your students and meet their needs more easily. And the next time you’re in a faculty meeting, glance around and see how many of your colleagues are keeping their brains occupied.

Now before you start writing your comment chastising me for being a cruel dad, most of the time when we insist he taste what we’ve made, he likes it and will eat it. And he has yet to go to bed hungry. So my wife and I actually balance each other nicely. Don’t tell her I said that, though.

My attitude towards my son’s eating habits would change, though, if it were a matter of health and nutrition rather than preference. If he had a condition that required a specific diet, I would go out of my way to provide it, even going so far as to cook special meals for him. I would give him supplements to replace deficiencies in his body and keep the nutrients at optimum levels.

We tend to treat education like nutrition. The regular curriculum is designed around the recommended daily allowance of reading, math, science and social studies. The content is nutrition, and we provide the amounts that are needed to keep children’s brains growing and learning. Some students have deficiencies, and we spend extra time, effort, and money to customize their diets to bring them back to optimal health.

But what about the gifted students? I fear that many people look at them in the same way as the child who likes to eat a lot. We’re worried that if they eat too much, they’ll get fat, so we carefully regulate their diets, keeping them to the recommended amounts, making sure they don’t go overboard. It’s the same thing my wife and I do when our kids equate being bored with being hungry. Instead of giving them snacks every half hour, we redirect them and give them something else to keep them occupied.

But this model is wrong. Instead of looking at gifted kids as overeaters, we need to realize that they actually have an entirely different kind of metabolism. They consume more not just out of preference but out of necessity. They have a condition that requires much higher amounts of complex and different nutrients just to stay healthy. But when they balk at eating the same diet we’re giving to the rest of the family, we tend to see them as whiny brats and respond just as I do to my youngest son: “It’s good for you. Just eat it. And if you clean your plate, then you can have dessert.”

It’s not a matter of keeping their appetites under control. It’s recognizing that their nutritional needs are completely different than ours. The learning they crave isn’t dessert, and forcing them to eat the meal first doesn’t keep them healthy. Withholding the challenging content, or keeping it carefully controlled, or ignoring the messages they give us about what they want and need isn’t actually preventing obesity, it’s malnutrition.

1. Perfectionism is emotional. It can be a vicious cycle for the perfectionist: making a mistake causes fear, which makes the student want to be even more perfect, leading to anxiety which causes more mistakes.
2. Perfectionism is social. Perfectionists may feel that they won’t be accepted unless they are perfect.
3. Perfectionism doesn’t make people more successful. It is not the same things as striving for excellence.
4. The environment influences perfectionism. Perfectionist behavior may be learned from the behavior of others around them. A chaotic environment also contributes to feelings of needing to be perfect.

Here are a few thoughts, then, on how teachers can deal with perfectionists in their classrooms:

• Create an environment of acceptance. Avoid “zero-tolerance” policies in your classroom. Provide second chances whenever appropriate. Set high, reasonable expectations, but show understanding and acceptance when students inevitably don’t meet them. Focus on positive character qualities in each child rather than on shortfalls.
• Celebrate imperfection. Let students know that not only are mistakes are normal, they are expected and even essential to the learning process. When a student makes a mistake, celebrate the effort, or point out any good thinking that went into it. Tell stories about learning that happened because of a mistake, and point out that school is a place for learning, not for performing. Give each student a “mistake pass” to allow them to make an error any time without penalty. Or maybe give them two. Give students full credit for a mistake if they can tell what they learned from it.
• Allow play time. Gifted children are still children, and letting students play without a specific goal allows them to explore thoughts and ideas without the pressure to perform. As any Kindergarten teacher will tell you, a great deal of learning takes place during unstructured play, and it is just as true for older students. The form of the play will look different: gifted students in upper elementary and beyond will play with ideas, words, and images, and numbers. Let it be what it is; don’t try to force it into an academic box.
• Show your own flaws. We’re not talking about airing dirty laundry, here. Just let students see that you aren’t perfect yourself, and give yourself the same second chances that you give students. Make mistakes in class (deliberately if necessary) and allow students to correct you without penalty.

What else do you do to help your perfectionists loosen up a little?