Gifted and Talented Students

This week our class focused our discussion on students with disabilities, ULD, and talented and gifted students. While our readings were full of information on the ways to teach students with disabilities and how successful ULDs are, I was left a bit curious about how gifted and talented students are accommodated. How is a student identified as being gifted or talented? What kinds of activities and programs can they participate in ? How many gifted or talented students are there currently in the U.S.?

While researching this topic, I came across the website NSGT.org (National Society for Gifted and Talented Students).  Not only does this website define gifted students, but it also provides educational resources, such as programs and organizations that gifted students can join and additional information on how to identify gifted children.  NSGT explains that gifted children are defined as children who use talent to achieve at remarkably high levels in areas of their lives (academic, artistic, athletic, and social). These students achieve or have the potential to achieve at levels way above their peers.
The website states that there are "approximately three million gifted and talented children in grades K-12 nationwide, of whom only perhaps a quarter have been identified and receive support." The first step in helping these students achieve their highest level of success is by first identifying them.

How do you identify a gifted child?
While there are no nation-wide or sate-wide standards for identification, school districts decide which students are considered gifted with the use of philosophy, resources, and their own definition of giftedness.

What are signs/characteristics of gifted children?

1. Gifted students are often perfectionist and idealistic.
2. Gifted students may experience heightened sensitivity to their own expectations and those of others.
3. Gifted students are asynchronous.
4. Some gifted students are “mappers” (sequential learners), while others are “leapers” (spatial learners).
5. Gifted students may be so far ahead of their chronological age mates that they know half the curriculum before the school year begins!
6. Gifted children are problem solvers.
7. Gifted students often think abstractly and with such complexity that they may need help with concrete study and test-taking skills.
8. Gifted students who do well in school may define success as getting an “A” and failure as any grade less than an “A”.

Gifted students generally have unusual talent in one or occasionally two of these areas: Creative Thinking, General Intellectual Ability, Specific  Academic Ability, Leadership, Psychomotor, and Visual/Performing Arts.

What kinds of programs can gifted students participate in outside of their normal schooling?Programs known as SIG programs are offered to gifted students. These programs combine academics with social, cultural and recreational opportunities. Both summer and online programs are available. The online courses "offer students curriculum beyond what is offered during the school day, are wide ranging in potential interest areas for individualized learning, and engage students in hands-on learning while applying school content through speaking, writing, researching, analyzing, reasoning and questioning."

This website was extremely helpful in my search to find more answers about gifted students.  Our education system has worked hard to accommodate the needs of student with disabilities, and I would love to see that gifted and talented students also get the same kind of attention and accommodation that they, too, deserve.

Sexual Orientation in Education

While reading this week's topic of "The Richness of Classroom Cultures," I had found an interest in learning more about the perspective of sexual orientation in schools.  The National Education Association writes, "sexual orientation is an identity based on whether someone is attracted to people of a sex different than their own, the same sex, or both sexes (i.e., heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual). Gender identity is a person's internal sense of being male, female, or somewhere else along the gender spectrum.  Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity is different from their biological or the sex they were assigned at birth."  How are homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, and transgender students treated differently in school? What struggles do they face? In Education: The Practice and Profession of Teaching, McNergney writes, "feelings of isolation and "otherness" are increased for gay and lesbian students by the prejudices and harassment they face from other students and sometimes from teachers as well" (51).  On www.violencepreventionworks.com, Jane Reise discusses bullying towards homosexual students.  She writes, "verbal bullying is the most frequent form of bullying experienced by both boys and girls.  Often, even among young students, this form of bullying can involve negative language that is sexual in nature." She lists several negative impacts of this kind of bullying:

• Bullying and harassment can have negative effects on the development and mental health of GLBTQ students, such as extreme anxiety and depression, relationship problems, low self-esteem, substance abuse, and thoughts of suicide. These students are also at much greater risk of physical assault than other children and youth.

• Students who had experienced anti-gay harassment are four times more likely than non-harassed youth to be threatened with or injured by a weapon.

• Twenty-two percent of GLBTQ students had skipped school in the last month for safety concerns and are three times more likely to drop out of school.

• GLBTQ students are also at risk for not getting the support they need when they are being bullied due to their perceptions that adults at school may have intolerant attitudes or may not provide confidential help in which to deal with their situation. Four out of five GLBTQ students say they know of no supportive adult at school.

• GLBTQ students are two to three times as likely to commit suicide as heterosexual students and may account for a startling 30 percent of all completed youth suicides. These students are also more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts than other students.

As a community, how can we prevent harassment of GLBT students?  The National Education Association lists several ways:

• Educate yourself about facts vs. myths surrounding GLBT people, especially the facts related to health and safety of GLBT students Find ways to support your GLBT students and colleagues
• Prevent bullying and harassment of GLBT students and colleagues through programs, training, and events  
• Advocate for staff development on GLBT issues, diversity, safe schools and social justice in your school
• Establish policies, rights, benefits and protections that support GLBT students and employees
• Partner with parents, guardians and community organizations to address GLBT issues in schools or in the community
• Stay in close communication with your administration, your building representative, your Uniserv director, and your local and state affiliate offices

As a potential future educator, I would have no tolerance for bullying or harassment toward GLBT students. I have several friends and colleagues that are gay, and I have seen first hand how harassment has affected them.  My classroom would be a safe and welcoming environment where students could be themselves judgement free.

Columbus Day: A Celebration of Ignorance

Growing up, we've repeated the famous line "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."  This is probably because there's no way to form a rhyme from "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus slaughtered Native Americans."  Why, for years, have we been celebrating Columbus' arrival to America without really knowing how he did ot or who suffered in the midst of all his glory?  One of the most importance things I have learned from a college class here at Salem State is to consider all sides of a story. Before getting into all the facts about Christopher Columbus and the Native Americans, I want to present Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story. In 2009, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie spoke for TED on “The Danger of The Single Story.”  In her speech, she reveals that only hearing one story about a people or a nation leads to ignorance, and she explains the importance of hearing multiple stories.  She says, "Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story, and to start with, "secondly."  Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have and entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story."

The only way for students to fully understand the history behind Columbus Day is to teach them all sides of the story.  This means that teachers need to re-educate themselves on this topic, as said by Bob Peterson is his article, "Columbus and Native Issue in the Elementary Classroom".  Peterson includes several exercises to get students thinking about Native American and the stereotypes associated with them and the Columbus Day holiday.  He begins his teaching of this holiday by asking the students to write down what they know about Native Americans. This is so the class can get all the stereotypes out in the open and then discuss the problems with assuming that Native Americans live and dress a certain way.  He also suggests using analogies that relate to the student's lives.  For example, he writes, "Give examples such as a coach having a stereotype about girls: that they can't play baseball well" (36).  These seem like very successful activities, and I would use them to teach my own students.

In another article, titled "We Have No Reason to Celebrate An Invasion," Suzan Shown Harjo, a director of Morning Star, an indigenous peoples' rights organization, is interviewed on the the topic of Columbus Day.  In this article, her feelings are similar to Bob Peterson.  She writes, "As Native American peoples in this red quarter of Mother Earth, we have no reason to celebrate an invasion that caused the demise of so many of our people and is still causing destruction today" (12). However, she understands that there are two sides to the story of Christopher Columbus.  When she is asked "What should be the goal and perspective of teachers when telling their elementary and high schools students about Columbus?", she replies, "Explaining the unpleasant truths about Columbus does not take away from the fact he was able to lurch over to these shores in three little boats.  In fact, it gives the story of Columbus more dimension. It also makes it easier for kids in school to accept not only Columbus but other things" (13).  Her views on this topic are ones that I fully agree with. She accepts  Christopher Columbus' were in no way heroic when it came to invading and murdering the Native American people, but she also accepts that Columbus' journey was impressive and worth noting.  As a teacher, I would teach the story of Columbus just as Harjo explains it.  Children need to know the truth behind every story, and that means taking the good with the bad.  

In my eyes, being a librarian is like being a teacher.  I'm not someone who simply checks books in and out; I do a lot more.  I recommend my favorite books and series to kids, teens, and adults and I show people where and how to find books.  I teach skills that I have required through school to patrons in my programs or during the hours I’m at my desk. I help kids with homework, projects, and (my favorite) English papers.  Sometimes I consider myself a free tutor.   I always want to do more and be more as a librarian. I want people of all ages to be able to walk through the door and find the help that they need for whatever is they are looking for.  I want them to walk out of here knowing that they are welcomed back anytime.  Just under a year ago, a woman in her 50s came to the library to fill out an online application and resume for a nursing position she was applying for.  The resume and the application were pages and pages long, and with little background knowledge on computers, she was completely lost as to how to even bring up the application from her email.  For an hour and a half I sat with her to help her fill it out.  She was so thankful and appreciative that she told our Assistant Director what wonderful librarians we are and how they couldn’t have done it without us.  This is the type of thing that makes me feel like I’m making a difference as a librarian.