Barbara Gilman - Challenging Highly Gifted Learners

Savannah smiled graciously, her mature height and articulate speech disguising her relative youth. Im full time at the high school this year, she beamed, having begun the previous fall at age 12, after completing 40 credits of high school work while in middle school. Modifications to Savannahs education began in earnest in the fall of her fourth-grade year, when she revealed to her parents that she knew most of what was being taught and wished she could move ahead. In a subsequent meeting, her teachers tactfully admitted the quiet student showed no signs of needing advanced work, but individual assessment results told a different story. Savannahs highly gifted Wechsler IQ scores, near the ceiling of the test, and advanced achievement levels convinced a fifth-grade teacher at the meeting to let her visit his classroom. Savannah never left, immediately finding a more comfortable fit with older classmates and more advanced work. The teacher particularly supported her love of science with projects she shared with other gifted students.

The following year, working at home, Savannah completed Stanford Universitys Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) math coursework through prealgebra, earning high grades. As her sixth-grade year was about to begin at school, she hoped for more advanced math and science, but wished to remain with the class she had joined in fifth grade. More confident now of her potential success, school personnel allowed her to take Algebra I with the eighth graders, skip sixth-grade science, and take seventh- and eighth-grade science concurrently. Savannah performed beautifully, even rejecting the thoughtful counselors offer to create a circle of friends to ease her transition into the eighth-grade math class. She was fine, she assured him, and her algebra teacher had to agree.

In fact, Savannah was more than fine. She began to flourish and this introverted student gained confidence in her abilities. Soon, she was taking high school classes, happily challenging herself and blossoming in the process. Although not specifically designed for a highly gifted student, this patchwork of higher level classes met Savannahs needs well enough that she turned down the opportunity to attend a charter school for advanced students, preferring to stay with the friends she had made.

Unfortunately, in the midst of a decision about weighted grades, class rank, and the extreme competition to become valedictorian in some of the districts high schools, Savannahs local school board decided to eliminate the opportunity for any middle schooler to earn high school credit prior to entering high school full time. One official opined that the only reason he could imagine for a middle schooler to take high school classes would be to gain an early lock on becoming valedictorian. The student could thereby increase the number of weighted-grade classes beyond what a typical 4-year high school student could take and ensure the highest grade point average (GPA).

Of course, Savannah was unaware of such concerns. She simply wanted work that was satisfying and already had been embarrassed to accept even small honors in awards assemblies, stating that was not the reason she worked diligently. The school district compromised to allow Savannah to keep her course credits, but her top grades in those courses would not be used to compute her GPA. Now, she would have a less-than-typical chance of becoming valedictorian, with fewer weighted-grade classes and only the hardest ones left to take. At least she would be able to terminate her high school career earlier and move on.

Although Savannahs specific needs are unique, her general situation is not. In-class accommodations for the gifted rarely are adequate for the highly gifted child. Enrichment pull-outs also fail to address achievement levels several grades higher than a childs placement. Most highly gifted students require acceleration, either subject level or full grade, at various points in their education. When advanced, they typically do well and enjoy a better fit socially. Identifying their needs can be difficult without in-depth, individual assessment, especially because introversion is their dominant personality style (Silverman, 1998) and most hesitate to self-advocate. Finally, because the academic progression of highly gifted students is so unusual, a variety of rules and red tape developed for average students can frustrate their progress.

Savannah maintained her optimism, but many highly gifted children succumb to school difficulties. As a group, our most gifted students are not our highest achievers. Clinicians who work with the gifted know that the moderately gifted child (IQ 130), at two standard deviations above the mean, stands a better chance of experiencing satisfaction and performing optimally in typical schools than more highly gifted students. At three standard deviations above the mean (IQ 145), the