A week ago, during lecture, Professor
Drake spoke about how concept development works in the scope of the
curriculum. There was also a point where she said that the
policy-makers are “moving down from the gifted to what everyone
else is supposed to do now.” That is to say, what was once part of
the gifted curriculum is being transferred to the regular curriculum.
This idea stuck with me, and I think it's important to unpack what it
means.
I'm not writing to criticize or
emphasize the program, either. I just think it's really interesting
to think about. When I was younger, I always wondered what it would
look like if you took “non-gifted” kids and put them in a
“gifted” classroom. Would they struggle? Would they learn more
quickly? I also thought back to the
video we were shown earlier of the difference between praising effort
vs. intelligence, how the students who heard “you must have tried
very hard” did better than those who heard, “you're really
smart.” How would being identified as a “gifted” student affect
these students in the future? Should there be a separate program for
the really hard workers? In a Globe and Mail article
investigating the Gifted program, one Stanford University professor
suggests that we, as teachers, revisit whether or not we should tell
our students they're gifted. “It implies that something was
bestowed on them, the 'gift.' Rather than that they've worked for
it.”
My experience in a gifted classroom
was not what I expected. I remember being very nervous. The program
had just moved from one building into a series of rooms inside St.
Catharines Collegiate. I just remember myself as a 5th and
6th grade student holding tightly onto my backpack and
walking up the stairs, past all the highschool students, and into
those first classrooms on the right-hand side of the second floor
hallway. The first room was hardwood and very cluttered. A big U of
desks were arranged, sort of like how we have seminar rooms set up at
Brock. On the left were cubbies painted by former students (I'd
always look for the one my brother did), and to the right of that
there was an old telephone operating switch board. There was a wall
at the back that acted as a dividing wall between the first room and
the computer lab behind it, but there was a big window and a
doorspace without a door, so it felt very open. Along this back wall
were couches and shelving which housed Trivial Pursuit games,
riddles, those little metal puzzles, among other things. There was
also a Far Side cartoon book
I was very fond of.
Another
room was right next to the computer lab, and this room was my
absolute favourite. There was a circular table in the middle of the
room, but you were sandwiched by cages and aquariums. Snakes,
lizards, frogs, a rabbit, and a really adorable hedgehog lived in
this room. I wasn't sure about handling the animals and I was too shy
to ask for help, so whenever I came across the room I was really
happy about it. The only other room was one I didn't spend a lot of
time in, so I don't remember too much about it – it was an art
room, with a few tables scattered along the floor, and a big table
near the front. It had high ceilings, but that's about all I can
remember.
You
wouldn't sign up for classes, you'd sign up for programs. They lasted
a few weeks, not very long, but you'd do them the whole time you were
there. There were a few choices, and I cannot explain why I chose the
boating course. I never had a boat. But it was something I guess I
wanted to learn. So there wasn't really a lot of stuff that felt like
work. I don't remember doing any, if at all, written work or homework
assignments. But somehow, at the end of it all, I knew enough to get
my boating license.
Looking
back through old papers and IEPs, I found something that said
“English – 20%” for my grade. As it turns out, my 'grade'
during the gifted program would constitute 20% of my English grade in
my regular school.
I
found this confusing. It felt like I never did any productive work,
never received any actual graded feedback. How could my efforts at
the GEC be translated into tangible marks? How do we reconcile
non-grading in a system that is literally founded and operates on a
graded system? It was confusing them, and still is now.
I've
uploaded a few screenshots of my IEP with key names/signatures whited
out. But the content remains untouched. This is the first one, along with a pamphlet for the gifted centre. Here is what they look like a while later. I want to focus in on the
“Strategies/Resources” listed to deal with me. They include:
- Minimize repetitious drills
- Open-ended activities
- Personal choice of topics/areas of interest for research
A lot
of these seem silly in how common-sense they are. Minimizing
repetitious drills, for example, would be more engaging for anybody,
not just me. Personal choice of topics/areas of interest for research
sounds an awful lot like the Genius Hour, which has been reportedly
successful through the anecdotal evidence we've heard about.
A
really interesting piece of information I came across was the Region
of Peel's Gifted Education Review Executive Summary which, on page 6, has a chart of students who responded positively.
There's a really distinct difference between the responses of
elementary and high school students.
Additionally,
few teachers (both elementary and secondary) said that they were
satisfied with the gifted identification criteria or placement
process. The only thing that they overwhelmingly agreed with was
their confidence in teaching the students.
There
really is a lot to say about how effective, or ineffective the Gifted
program is. To be honest, the debate gets a little tired, because at
the end of the day using catch-all, unmeasurable labels like
“effective” or “ineffective,” doesn't do much. Semantics is
not a good way to win or lose a debate. I'm just really interested to
see what happens with current education trends when they apply
“gifted” techniques to the regular classroom.
