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Thursday, December 31, 2009

Looking Forward, Looking Back

The end of the year is a time when we seem more inclined to reflection, closely followed by looking to the future. As part of my reflective process I have been thinking back not only over this year but also over the last 8 years or so (years in which I have been working with gifted children and their families) and then also over the last 14 years since my oldest daughter began her formal schooling (and we first encountered the complexities of educating gifted children).

In some respects much has changed. In others, sadly it seems, very little.

Over the last 4 or 5 years I have worked with more than 250 gifted children and their families. Almost without exception these children are not only gifted but highly gifted or more. Their lives and needs are quite different in many ways. Some ‘cases’ have been straight forward, some have been challenging cases with a number of complicating factors. Every one of them is unique and every story is individual. The family setting, the age, the child’s IQ profile (where IQ test results are available), the position in the family with regard to birth order, their personality, degree of perfectionism, whether English is their first (or only) language……. The list goes on.

Many parents begin the journey as a result of ‘problems’ of some sort. Perhaps they felt there was a discrepancy between their perceptions of the child’s potential and their school achievement, perhaps there were behavioural issues or high levels of anxiety (or depression), perhaps it was the fact that their child seemed to have fewer friends at school over time or quite simply they refused to go to school. Sometimes it was suspected learning difficulties, something seemingly unrelated (to giftedness). Some parents have been genuinely shocked to find their child was gifted. Some have been relieved to learn there is something that explains things and are glad to be able to begin to piece things together and make a plan. More than a few have commented that at times they would swap the richness of life with a gifted child for the ease of life with a ‘normal’ child.

The challenges do not end with a ‘diagnosis’ of giftedness, as many of you who will read this will know! For all that it might explain, there are times when it feels like this is just the beginning of the challenges. The biggest hurdles are often with the education system.

Too often I have heard about a teacher’s defensive attitude, of parents being told the quantitative results they have (an IQ test administered under strict guidelines by a qualified psychologist) must be wrong because they don’t match what the teachers see. Many are told that their child is just immature, that they had an early start, that the others will catch up before long. Many parents still encounter resistance to the idea of acceleration despite decades of research showing it to be the most effective (but also most under utilised) option available. Many are still warned of the ‘damage’ they will do emotionally if they try it.

I have 2 daughters, one is fairly obviously gifted, with exceptional language skills, although she puts in just enough effort to get the result she wants and to this day puts her energy into self educating outside of the educational setting (even at uni). The other has had some challenges along the way and has found written output the most challenging. She is finally doing really well now that the content has finally become more complex but still finds writing enough detail is a challenge. She fills the gap with community service. In advocating for them over the years (and in trying to work out what was really going on with #2) I have heard just about all the arguments above. It turns out that none of them were true.

While all schools have had access to some professional development in the area of educating their gifted students in the form of the DEST packages of 2004 and 2006, many of the ‘arguments’ (as in a point of view that is being justified rather than being argumentative) put forward to which parents who approach a school about accessing the sorts of educational provisions that are a better match for their child’s needs makes me wonder if it made any (positive) difference at all.

In 2008 I gave a presentation at the national gifted conference in Hobart expressing my concern that as a result of a little exposure, we had perhaps created more problems – everyone now felt they ‘knew’ this gifted stuff, but still gifted kids were generally lumped together as a homogenous group. What worked for one, would work for all. Or more dangerously, what hadn’t worked for one child on one occasion, would clearly not work for anyone. I would have to say that this ‘case study of one’ approach is perhaps not quite as prevalent as it was a few years ago, but it is still worrying that those who are making decisions about a child’s life (not just their education!) only notice research that suits their thinking.

What progress then have we made then?

Recently more and more parents have been able to advocate successfully for acceleration for their child. Sometimes this has still been a difficult process, sometimes it has been against the wishes of a school (one Principal related that had she not been on long service leave at the time a particular acceleration would never have happened), but sometimes parents have encountered either an enlightened Principal or one who was prepared to listen and then check the research. One fairly small school took no less than 8 new accelerants in their new student population at the start of 2009.

During one call from a distraught parent after she had returned from a school tour (with a less than enlightened school registrar) asking if there was anyone who had been successfully accelerated, I was able to count at least 25 children I had worked with in the previous year who had been accelerated. (A recent search through my case files located no fewer than 79 students who had actually been accelerated). In all cases it has been successful, in some cases parents have said it has made the world of difference to their child, re-engaging them in learning, one parent related that she felt it has ‘saved his life’.

While I can’t yet say that every parent will find someone sympathetic in their child’s school, the likelihood does seem to be increasing. Each year a number of teachers have completed the Post Grad Certificate course at Murdoch Uni, another group have completed the CoGE course through GERRIC, a few others have continued their studies. Still others have been motivated to learn more as a result of having a highly gifted child in their classroom (and a positive relationship with the parents). Some others have been delegated by their schools. More schools have appointed a Gifted Co-ordinator, a few independent schools now have a Gifted Policy, some schools have a gifted committee, one is even looking to include parents on this committee. (We do still though have a shortage of teachers with formal qualifications in gifted education and a more thorough knowledge of the research base)

In the last couple of years, some parents have been incredibly proactive in educating themselves (and their child’s teachers), in forming networks of support and in sharing their knowledge with others. This has given new-to-gifted parents confidence and a safe place to talk about the challenges of life with gifted kids. As the number of families I see increases I am more often able to connect families with each other.

Some parents, particularly those with young children have been proactive and have sought information and assistance before there were problems. This is something that I have only really begun to see in the last 2 years and is encouraging!

Some of my best moments over the past year of working with gifted kids and their families have been the emails and calls I have had telling me how well things are going. About the kids who have truly blossomed. About the child who had never really found a friend who has ‘clicked’ with someone in a holiday program and desperately wants to maintain the contact (even though 500km separates them). About the sparkle that parents are seeing again in their child.

Perhaps the one that takes the cake this year was an email from a parents of a young boy who had to counter much resistance to accelerate her highly gifted son. The email told how the Principal had commented that observing how he had flourished, the acceleration had been a good idea after all, despite the fact she would not have allowed it if it had been up to her.

Let’s hope some of these positive changes are not to be as short lived as our New Year Resolutions tend to be.

If I could make a wish for the coming year it would be for more parents to have positive experiences like the ones above (and for the positive emails to keep flowing).

Or perhaps even better, that there was no longer any need for parents to be persistent to convince a school that their child’s needs would be better met by something other than the regular curriculum. That the child would be at the centre of decisions about their education (rather than pressure to maintain the status quo), that there would be no more mention of timetabling problems when subject acceleration is discussed, and that the emotional needs of the gifted were perhaps considered even before academic accommodations were discussed. (and no school would tell me they are already doing virtually all of what I recommended – if they had been, can someone explain to me why things were not going smoothly all along?)

Many thanks for the opportunities to share the journey with so many families this past year. It has been a privilege.

Happy New Year everyone and all the best for successfully advocating for your children.

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