Monday, October 30, 2006
K Wagner's Lesson 3 Response
Karen Wagner
Assignment 3
October 9, 2006
We can’t make blanket statements about any group of students. Some gifted kids will succeed without extra help. Some are valued primarily for their brain power. Some are more mature and stable than their peers. Some need constant challenging/prodding to achieve/exceed. Some like to help others and be seen as positive role models/helpers.
After reading the chapter in my textbook about counseling gifted kids, I can see that giftedness is but one of many issues that can place children in difficulty. The key in working with this group (and generally all others) is remembering not to make assumptions about why they are behaving in a particular way, and having enough background in understanding the issues related to giftedness to be informative and supportive. Because gifted children often have emotional and intellectual development out of synch with their physical and social development, it is important to help students, parents and teachers develop appropriate expectations, and to provide the students with plenty of scaffolding for understanding and positively developing their uniqueness.
Motivation is directly tied to the student’s self-concept. Gifted kids that feel supported, nurtured, challenged and generally happy about their talents and accepted by their peers are easily self-motivated. Gifted kids that seem unmotivated have a reason for it – which is our job to uncover. Because it could be anything from not wanting to be different to parental pressure to physical or mental illness, building relationships with gifted students is key (and again, this really applies to working with any student!). I appreciated the analogy offered in the book – something to the effect of - intelligence is the vehicle, motivation is the gas and creativity provides the direction. To further that, I can see where sometimes the tank needs refilling, or the car a jump-start!
An obvious way that gifted students can be motivated is to ensure that they are offered opportunities to pursue their passions. Perhaps less obvious is the need to ensure that these students have opportunities to pursue problem solving, risk taking and leadership activities. One assumption most of us make is that smart people naturally know how to get things done (or can figure it out) in groups. Leadership is a talent, but there are definite skills that can be taught to enhance its effectiveness. In my essay I will discuss an experience I had trying to teach leadership and “followership” skills to a group of mostly unmotivated students.
Renzulli talks about the need for gifted students to develop what he calls “social capital.” He reasons that as the next leaders of our world, these capable and creative kids need to be equipped with the ability to solve problems, make decisions, become sensitive to and aware of the needs of others and provide vision and direction. Only recently have we begun to embed such concepts in our school curriculum.
When I taught seniors in the Jobs for Maine’s Graduates program, one of the key
components of the program was helping the students organize and run a chapter of the JMG Career Association. Most of the students in JMG had never been in an organization before, or if they had, few had experienced leadership roles. Helping them in the span of a school year to not only grasp the concepts of leader- and follower- ship, but implement them successfully, was no small task. In my first year I assumed the students would all immediately “get” how to be in and run an organization. I assumed that they would all avidly listen to carefully crafted campaign speeches from those interested in being leaders. I assumed that the candidates had read the job description of the office they aspired to. And then I assumed that once elected, the officers would lead, everyone else would attend meetings, help make decisions, follow through with commitments, etc, etc. All would be hunky-dory. Well, I was wrong about all of it. Fortunately the JMG curriculum is infused with leadership building and decision-making activities. By the end of the year, I had a better understanding of what my students needed to learn before they could effectively run their Career Association.
In the second year, we started with some “unlearning” – challenging what they knew and had experienced about working as a group, team, family, etc. before. Then we began some skill building and team building. Finally we talked about the mission of JMG and how to accomplish our piece of it. This all had to happen before elections. We still ended up electing leaders based more on popularity than ability, and not everyone had internalized the lofty goals of the mission, but at least the exposure to the concepts allowed for productive de-briefing after the fact. The actual experience of running the organization was informative on every level. Students really began to grasp what leadership was and wasn’t. Investment and accountability developed for many – which was a first for a lot of the students. The process informed my teaching. At the core of building the case for leadership development (motivating) is relationship and caring about something outside one’s self-interest. Relationships developed between classmates, between class groups (committees), between the group and the leaders, between me as teacher/advisor and the group, between school administration and the organization, between the group and the greater community (through our community service activities). Students saw that as a group they had a presence, reputation and value, which began to affect many of them individually. Once they had a sense of how others viewed the group and their role in it, their self-concepts began to change, and with it came the opportunity to work toward internalizing the “social capital” part of our mission.
This was a very exciting transition to observe. Of course, not all students got there, but most at least developed a new skill set and broader awareness. Relationship building facilitated other things, from new friendships to internships and paid job opportunities, new college and career aspirations, appearance and personality changes. Hopefully we all learned that failure of a plan is yet another opportunity for learning how to get it right. Parallels with GT abound, but that’s not so surprising, given that one of the goals of JMG is to uncover hidden talents and motivate underachievers.
Assignment 3
October 9, 2006
We can’t make blanket statements about any group of students. Some gifted kids will succeed without extra help. Some are valued primarily for their brain power. Some are more mature and stable than their peers. Some need constant challenging/prodding to achieve/exceed. Some like to help others and be seen as positive role models/helpers.
After reading the chapter in my textbook about counseling gifted kids, I can see that giftedness is but one of many issues that can place children in difficulty. The key in working with this group (and generally all others) is remembering not to make assumptions about why they are behaving in a particular way, and having enough background in understanding the issues related to giftedness to be informative and supportive. Because gifted children often have emotional and intellectual development out of synch with their physical and social development, it is important to help students, parents and teachers develop appropriate expectations, and to provide the students with plenty of scaffolding for understanding and positively developing their uniqueness.
Motivation is directly tied to the student’s self-concept. Gifted kids that feel supported, nurtured, challenged and generally happy about their talents and accepted by their peers are easily self-motivated. Gifted kids that seem unmotivated have a reason for it – which is our job to uncover. Because it could be anything from not wanting to be different to parental pressure to physical or mental illness, building relationships with gifted students is key (and again, this really applies to working with any student!). I appreciated the analogy offered in the book – something to the effect of - intelligence is the vehicle, motivation is the gas and creativity provides the direction. To further that, I can see where sometimes the tank needs refilling, or the car a jump-start!
An obvious way that gifted students can be motivated is to ensure that they are offered opportunities to pursue their passions. Perhaps less obvious is the need to ensure that these students have opportunities to pursue problem solving, risk taking and leadership activities. One assumption most of us make is that smart people naturally know how to get things done (or can figure it out) in groups. Leadership is a talent, but there are definite skills that can be taught to enhance its effectiveness. In my essay I will discuss an experience I had trying to teach leadership and “followership” skills to a group of mostly unmotivated students.
Renzulli talks about the need for gifted students to develop what he calls “social capital.” He reasons that as the next leaders of our world, these capable and creative kids need to be equipped with the ability to solve problems, make decisions, become sensitive to and aware of the needs of others and provide vision and direction. Only recently have we begun to embed such concepts in our school curriculum.
When I taught seniors in the Jobs for Maine’s Graduates program, one of the key
components of the program was helping the students organize and run a chapter of the JMG Career Association. Most of the students in JMG had never been in an organization before, or if they had, few had experienced leadership roles. Helping them in the span of a school year to not only grasp the concepts of leader- and follower- ship, but implement them successfully, was no small task. In my first year I assumed the students would all immediately “get” how to be in and run an organization. I assumed that they would all avidly listen to carefully crafted campaign speeches from those interested in being leaders. I assumed that the candidates had read the job description of the office they aspired to. And then I assumed that once elected, the officers would lead, everyone else would attend meetings, help make decisions, follow through with commitments, etc, etc. All would be hunky-dory. Well, I was wrong about all of it. Fortunately the JMG curriculum is infused with leadership building and decision-making activities. By the end of the year, I had a better understanding of what my students needed to learn before they could effectively run their Career Association.
In the second year, we started with some “unlearning” – challenging what they knew and had experienced about working as a group, team, family, etc. before. Then we began some skill building and team building. Finally we talked about the mission of JMG and how to accomplish our piece of it. This all had to happen before elections. We still ended up electing leaders based more on popularity than ability, and not everyone had internalized the lofty goals of the mission, but at least the exposure to the concepts allowed for productive de-briefing after the fact. The actual experience of running the organization was informative on every level. Students really began to grasp what leadership was and wasn’t. Investment and accountability developed for many – which was a first for a lot of the students. The process informed my teaching. At the core of building the case for leadership development (motivating) is relationship and caring about something outside one’s self-interest. Relationships developed between classmates, between class groups (committees), between the group and the leaders, between me as teacher/advisor and the group, between school administration and the organization, between the group and the greater community (through our community service activities). Students saw that as a group they had a presence, reputation and value, which began to affect many of them individually. Once they had a sense of how others viewed the group and their role in it, their self-concepts began to change, and with it came the opportunity to work toward internalizing the “social capital” part of our mission.
This was a very exciting transition to observe. Of course, not all students got there, but most at least developed a new skill set and broader awareness. Relationship building facilitated other things, from new friendships to internships and paid job opportunities, new college and career aspirations, appearance and personality changes. Hopefully we all learned that failure of a plan is yet another opportunity for learning how to get it right. Parallels with GT abound, but that’s not so surprising, given that one of the goals of JMG is to uncover hidden talents and motivate underachievers.
# posted by MSAD 48 Gifted and Talented Program @ 12:43 PM 
