Gifted Resource Council
Gifted Resource Council
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Gifted Children Need Class Time Together
by Dennis O'Brien

Not everyone understands how crucial it is for gifted children to spend time each week studying and socializing with their intellectual peers.

Masquerading as "enrichment for all," there is an unfortunate national trend to decrease the opportunities gifted children have to work with their intellectual peers.

Keynote speaker Professor James Delisle argued vigorously against this trend of substituting "schoolwide enrichment" for dedicated class time for gifted students at a recent conference for teachers cosponsored by the University of Missouri St. Louis and the Gifted Resource Council.

My observations of gifted students at Parkway West Middle School working under the direction of specialist Debbie Van Ryn corroborates the importance of Delisle's insistence that "gifted children have some time each week to be together as the intellectual peers they are."

Unless parents are savvy and very determined, gifted children narrow their focus to areas in which they excel. Fearful of not being the best at something, they avoid many healthy activities. As their world constricts, their sense of self becomes brittle, and they concentrate on pleasing teachers while becoming estranged from their less talented classmates.

"They limit themselves to doing just what they must in order to get the top grade," said Mary Ann Williams, another specialist at the school.

Intellectually, this is stifling, and developmentally it is deadly.

Often this narrow focus comes from misguided parental emphasis on a child's special talent.

Under the guidance of teachers like Van Ryn and Williams, children in pullout classes discover that other peers are also very talented and that each of them has unique strengths, weaknesses and interests.

To bring this home to her students, Van Ryn challenges them to discover: "What does it mean to be gifted in middle school?" They read the experts, learn about such concepts as multiple intelligences and left and right brain dominance, and eventually identify their own personal learning styles.

In this supportive environment, students acquire the self-confidence to take risks and develop additional skills outside of the narrow range within which they had previously defined themselves. They begin to try things they may do adequately but not superbly, like using art to demonstrate geometric spatial relations, presenting orally or working in teams.

Williams and Van Ryn evaluate their students but refuse to grade them. They require students to assess one another positively (3 pluses and a wish), and encourage them to be less critical in their own self-assessments.

Along with structured tasks and periodic competitions, they include a generous amount of open-ended projects designed to challenge them to be creative, think and respond in new ways.

"We understand things quickly and are often bored in unified classes. Here we have to think more about how to solve problems, not about what's right and what's wrong," said soft-spoken Annie Allhoff.

Classroom teachers have also identified a positive aspect of the pullout program. "When the gifted kids are pulled out of class, other students have an opportunity to shine," said Van Ryn, quoting what teachers have told her.

The Gifted Resource Council (GRC), the area's premier resource for gifted children, offers a complementary approach for talented students: enrichment day camps during the summer and special Saturday classes during the school year.

In addition to the intellectual stimulation of these challenging courses, GRC offers students the opportunity to form friendships with peers from throughout the metropolitan area.

GRC classes focus on the same values Van Ryn and Williams stress: cooperation with peers, affective development, and creative approaches in non-graded enrichment classes.

"In order to develop healthy emotional strengths, social skills and well-rounded intellectual abilities, gifted children need regular opportunities to work with their intellectual peers," said Sue Flesch, GRC's executive director.

"Because these opportunities are not offered in many schools, it may take time and effort for parents to make them available to their child," she said.
For more information regarding Gifted Resource Council, please call the GRC office at 314-962-5920.