Unwrapping the Gifted

It’s that time of year again! The annual NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children) convention is soon approaching, this year to be held in Tampa, Florida, from October 29th through November 2nd. Given that the temperature at my house was all of 4 degrees when I left for last year’s NAGC convention, I’m particularly excited for my first trip to Florida and a wee little escape from clouds, snow, and cold :o)

I’m posting about the convention today because the early registration deadline is quickly approaching – this Friday, September 19th, as a matter of fact. You can certainly still register after that date, but it will cost you a little more. (I myself still need to get in gear and register!)

Wednesday will feature “Academies,” which are full-day, in-depth sessions on a given topic. Options include “Choosing and Using Appropriate Literature for Young Gifted Readers,” “Understanding and Assessing Gifted Students in the Middle Grades,” “Practical and Effective Strategies and Systems for Identifying and Developing Talent and Potential in Gifted English Language Learners,” and “Current Issues in Secondary Gifted Education: Practical Strategies for in Classroom.” One reason I haven’t registered yet is I still can’t decide which option should be my first choice!

Thursday features “Board Institutes” and “Action Labs.” Board Institutes are half-day sessions (you would pick one for the morning and another for the afternoon) presented by NAGC Board members. A sampling of the Board Institutes includes “Honoring the Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Youth,” “Appropriate Use of Alternative Assessment Measures for Identification and Documentation of Gifted Student Growth,” “The Having of Wonderful Ideas: Engaging Students in Long-Term Investigations,” and “Making Sense of Underachievement.” Once again – I can’t decide! The good news, given so many fascinating topics, is I know I’ll be pleased with whichever options I do choose.

The “Action Labs” on Thursday are essentially “field trips” to local educational or historical sites. A couple of this year’s intriguing offerings are “World of Physics: Energy and Waves/Disney’s Wild by Nature,” “Pine View School – Public School for the Gifted,” and “Macfarlane Park International Baccalaureate Elementary Magnet School for International Studies.” The Action Labs are a great opportunity to see excellence and excellent ideas in action.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday feature a more typical conference format and schedule, including keynotes, breakout sessions, and networking events. To pique your interest, a few of the keynote titles include “Surviving Neglect: High Expectations for Low-Income, High-Ability Students,” “The Top Five Fundamentals in Gifted Education—What are They?,” and “Assessment—A Big Idea with Multiple Perspectives.” In particular, don’t miss Sunday’s Closing General Session keynote with Rafe Esquith, author of “Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire.” Many of you, like me, have probably seen the PBS documentary that was done on him a few years back.

If you're looking for something inspiring to do on the Saturday night of the convention, come watch the next in NAGC's series of "Legacy" tapings, "Portraits in Gifted Education: A Conversation with Joe Renzulli." It will take place Saturday, November 1st from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. in Ballroom B. The "Legacy" series is the Conceptual Foundations Network's efforts to capture and document insights of and interviews with many of the great contributors in the field of gifted education. Joe is a fascinating man, one of my mentors, and certainly a great contributor in the field.

And let’s not forget the convention’s Exhibit Hall, once again featuring hundreds of stellar vendors and their thousands of inspiring, practical, thought-provoking, engaging, and enlightening wares. Many of my favorites will be there, including MindWare, Zanca, ThinkFun, SENG, Prufrock Press, Free Spirit Publishing, Creative Learning Press, and of course Great Potential Press (who published my book).

To help organize your week in Tampa, look for the “Plan Your Itinerary Now!” box and click the link. It will take you to an online system that allows for searching through the whole conference program (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) for specific topics, presenters, or categories. You can even create, save, and then print your own personal itinerary, giving you an easier reference point when figuring out “where do I go next” than the ½-inch thick book listing every last session… all thousand+ of them. (I love the book, though… I always take it back to show my students because it helps give them some idea of where I was and why I was gone, plus they like looking through the session descriptions to see what teachers are learning about when it comes to students like them.)

So for all of you who have been looking for an opportunity to learn more about these different learners, this is one excellent option! If you are close to Florida (or, like me, would love a dose of sunshine in winter), I encourage you to check it out! I’ve been to a few NAGC conventions in recent years and I have never been disappointed. There is much to learn, and it’s so refreshing to meet and interact with other people in the field. Feel free to share your NAGC convention experiences here.

I’m off to my second of four Open House events for the year…! And then I need to carve out time to register for TAMPA!

Posted by Tamara Fisher at 7:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Good-bye, M.B… School has started once again, yet you are not here with us. We’ve re-convened after a summer of travel and relaxation, learning and camps, celebrations, … and mourning your death. The other kids come in with their backpacks over their shoulders and I think of you, the one who didn’t make it back…

Your easy grin, your brilliant curiosity, your penchant for deep questions and conversation, your friends who have carried on so admirably without you… I have found thoughts of each of these wandering in from the back of my mind at odd moments during this first week of school. Back when you were a little 3rd grader, talking as fast as you could think but faster than I could listen, I never imagined this moment.

I look at my little 3rd graders today and can’t bear to imagine it with any of them.

This is the painful part of teaching, when the ‘real world’ yanks our classroom doors open and sweeps in without warning to snatch away the future, when all our positive efforts seem to have been for naught, when learning comes from Life’s hard lessons.

Back in my undergraduate days, I remember my EdPsych professor posing a terrible question in class one day: “What will you do when one of your students dies?” She said if we taught for enough years, it would probably happen at some point. Of course, in our youthful eager idealism, it never seemed possible back then. We were going to be teachers to change the world, to make a difference, not to struggle with these agonizing questions.

But here are her questions again, battling in my mind. How do we support our students when something like this happens? How do we balance giving ourselves time and space to mourn yet still be strong and supportive for our students? What is a teacher’s role in the aftermath of tragedy?

Nowadays, particularly after 9-11, schools have plans in place for dealing with the variety of tragic (or even just challenging) situations that can befall us. And those plans do help – a lot.

But the pain is still there, and teachers are human, too.

And perhaps that’s part of what we can give our students at a time like this – letting them see a glimpse of our humanity, a peek into our “real-person-ness.” Maybe it’s like those moments when we see a student at the grocery store and he is blown away by the fact that we have lives outside of the school building. “You buy groceries, too?” Of course! And we also cry, too…

Life goes on, and learning goes on, and we must go on, too.

***** ***** *****

I actually wrote the above portion of today’s post a year ago – and have struggled ever since with whether or not to post it, whether or not to broach the broader not-yet-mentioned topic, and how to deftly, accurately, and sensitively talk about it…

September is Suicide Prevention month, and today, September 10th, is Suicide Prevention Day.

Some people tend to assume that suicide occurs less frequently among this group of bright kids who seem to have everything going for them. Other people tend to assume that it occurs more often among the gifted because the existential nature of a gifted person (including existential depression) can lend itself to some dark thinking.

But what does the research say about suicide and the gifted? It’s a mixed bag – and at this point in time the bag isn’t very full yet, so that’s a complicated and difficult question to answer (1, 2). There is some research (1, 2, 3) with – among other things – a conclusion that gifted students may be at more risk for suicide (the third link cites other studies that appear to have reached that conclusion). Yet one study (1) deduces there just isn’t enough accurate data available on this topic yet to draw precise conclusions. Some studies show that it occurs at about the same rate (not a significantly more or less frequent rate) as it does in average, same-aged peers (1, 2, 3). Finally, chapter 7 of "The Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Kids" by Tracy Cross does a great job of covering the overall topic and its inconclusive research base.

Perhaps the most oft-cited authority on suicide and the gifted, though, is a research summary in "The Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children: What Do We Know?" by Maureen Neihart, Sally M. Reis, Nancy M. Robinson, Sidney M. Moon. These two quotations come from that text:

"Although it is a popular notion that gifted children are at risk for higher rates of depression and suicide than their average, no empirical data supports this belief, except for students who are creatively gifted in the visual arts and writing (see Neihart & Olenchak, this volume). Nor, however, is there good evidence that rates of depression and suicide are significantly lower among populations of gifted children."

“It is not at all clear whether suicide is more or less common in gifted adolescents than other adolescents – the statistics simply are not available – although it is easy to develop rationales why the rates should be higher or lower.”

But even if the statistics don’t indicate it being any more or less of a problem for the gifted, it’s still a tragedy in each individual case - and in all cases of all ages and types of people. I wish that I remembered my students M.B. and R.V. for bigger reasons than how they died.

In part because of M.B.’s death last summer, a service-oriented student organization at our high school conducted a week-long series of suicide awareness events this past spring. One of my students, a friend of M.B.’s, was among the handful of kids who put in countless hours over many weeks to organize and run the awareness week. His dedication to the task as well as his assistance for his fellow students was impressively thorough. But having so much on his plate during that time, something had to give, and that something was his until-that-point 4.0 GPA. At first disappointed in himself for “failing” to maintain his perfect grades, he soon reached the most important conclusion: “Yeah, I got a B in Math… But I saved two lives.” I couldn’t have been more proud :o)

So… today’s post is in part my way of finally having the guts to put those above thoughts out there – and also about linking you up with what the somewhat-limited research says about suicide among the gifted. Most importantly, though, I want to leave you with some valuable resources to access should you want or need to learn the signs of someone considering suicide, should you be concerned that someone in your life is contemplating suicide, or should you – heaven forbid – need some tips for how to handle the aftermath.

Suicide Among Gifted Adolescents: How to Prevent It

An Overview: Understanding and Assessing Suicide in the Gifted

National Suicide Hotline 1-800-SUICIDE

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK
or NSPL at MySpace

Suicide Prevention Resource Center

National Association for Mental Illness

Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Feel free to add your own resource ideas as well :o)

Posted by Tamara Fisher at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)