Tips for Challenging Gifted Students
Gifted students getting a mainstream public education have some challenges to overcome. Perhaps one of the toughest challenges is choosing to use the educational system to enhance their own exceptional abilities or choosing to ignore and hide those same exceptional abilities and go with the flow of the main stream, dummying down to blend in.
Gifted students are complicated people. Trying to understand why one would choose to enhance the educational tools available and one would choose to minimize them is impossible. It's very important, however, for their fellow students and siblings and parents, teachers, and other adults in their lives to understand that, although the intellectually gifted student is capable of advanced thought processes, he or she is probably much less mature emotionally and physically.
Relating to gifted students shouldn't be mistaken for talking to mature minds housed in children's bodies. The mind of a gifted child is one full of data and activity. It doesn't mean the child has the emotional depth or the wisdom of experience with which to make well-formulated decisions about most of the non-academic areas of life. It's also possible for these children to dwell on numbers, calculations, patterns, and the like without having a clear concept of how to use them most effectively or why use them at all.
A rough but rather standard measure of the number of gifted students in relation to entire student body is a pretty steady 2%. That means 2 out of every 100 students might be classified as gifted or talented.
Being one of just two gifted students surrounded by 98 of them who share more common bonds can be emotionally trying for the two gifted kids. Feelings of isolation and ostracism are common. Many gifted students report feelings of rejection from their peers both inside and outside the classroom.
In many school districts, gifted students are accelerated through the grade system, sometimes skipping ahead two or three grade levels. Of course, the skipping ahead puts the gifted child at an academic level that stimulates learning skills but it also puts a child in a world surrounded by students at a different level of physical and sexual maturity. The age difference often exacerbates any thoughts of rejection and isolation that is commonly felt by gifted students in general.
Many gifted students choose to hide their intellectual gifts in order to be more readily accepted by friends and classmates. Sometimes the gifted student who hides in the classroom will use special interests and hobbies as an expression of their gifts and talents. Others simply hide, withdrawing intellectually as well as socially, at a time when peer pressure is tremendous and the desire to belong is immense.