Unwrapping the Gifted

For those of you who live within reach of Minneapolis, Minnesota, whether by car or by airplane, the deadline will soon be upon us to register for this year’s annual National Association for Gifted Children convention. Although many of you are aware of this great organization, I want to take this opportunity to fill the rest of you in on its many missions and benefits, as well as to encourage you to become a member yourself and to register for their always-enlightening convention. (I am not a spokesperson for NAGC, but I am a member. No one has put me up to this! I’m just taking advantage of great timing.)

I find myself faced with an interesting dilemma this week due to a request posed to me by one of my GT students last spring. His request is indicative of a situation that many gifted kids find themselves struggling with when they are placed in heterogeneous groupings. [We’ll cover various grouping options in an upcoming blog; today’s topic is a tangent.]

Wow… Thank you to everyone for such a great response to my first post on this blog ("My Yard is Gifted"). I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to get everyone talking about the issue of gifted education and – most importantly – the gifted kids in our classrooms and how to best meet their needs. While I already had many ideas for future posts before you all responded, I now have doubled my list just based on your comments/requests thus far. I shouldn’t have any trouble filling a year’s worth of blogging ;o)

Rather than begin my blog here at Teacher with the necessaries of who I am and what I'm all about (there's plenty of time for that later), I'd like instead to kick it off with a hopefully-thought-provoking analogy. Given that the anticipation of a new school year is energizing the coming weeks, my aim with this post is simply to generate some timely thought, reflection, discussion, and questions.