[Drum roll...] The envelope, please!
And....yes! The test results show that Nathan! is! gifted! I glance up from the missive on Jordan School District letterhead and observe my son blissfully picking his nose and wiping the boogers on the wall.
Gifted? Sure. At swiping cookies. At holding his crotch. At flirting with the dental hygienist.
I sigh and return my attention to the letter. His test results were interesting. They rated his performance in reading and math as compared to kids one year ahead of him in school (so, kids finishing first grade). For reading, he was in the 56th percentile, which doesn't strike me as astounding, even though it is in comparison with older kids. Not if we're talking about [in an ominous tone] "GIFTED". Math is a little more interesting. 99th percentile compared to kids a year older. Ahhh... now that's a suitably freakish statistic. This all means that he qualifies for the district's special program, which involves attending a "magnet school", rather than his neighborhood school. As we were walking up the steps of the testing center he stopped and said, "Mom, I'm NOT leaving my friends and my school!" (His little wheels started turning. I could see them.) "Even if I have to do wrong answers on this test." Hmmmm... clever.... I told him that there was no point in even talking about it until we saw the test results, and that we just wanted to see how smart he is.
I must digress a little here and comment on the othermothers! OMG! There was an informational meeting while the kids were testing, and honestly! "Well, when my little Georgie was found to be gifted, I had to fight so hard to get the resources that he needed. Luckily, with my two other gifted children, it has been easier..." Yeah, Honey. Genius breeds genius. Whatever. Or, "I just don't know what to do about little Jimmy. No program can contain him. He's been figuring out square roots since the age of two. Dear me." These ladies were bleary-eyed from the long hours of making flash-cards and waking their kids up at 4:30 AM to practice the cello. These ladies live to be the mothers of brilliant children.
We aren't going to send him. All the advantages of having a neighborhood school, in which your neighbors are you classmates are your soccer teammates would be lost. Anyway, during the next couple of years, the district has mandated that all schools put an accelerated learning program in place for kids who, although maybe not gifted, could benefit from a faster pace. That sounds more our style.
All this got me thinking, though, about the nature of being "gifted". Nate's smart, but don't gifted people do things like... compose minuets? Nate still pees his pants, for heaven's sake. He's into Star Wars, not quantum physics.
So what is it to be gifted? To me, it means you need to have exceptional, innate abilities. Take my coworker, Emile. At the school picnic the other night, we were playing music and practicing dance steps: Salsa; Cumbia; Marengue. She patiently demonstrated these to me and offered pointers; first while I danced alone, then with my student Carlos. But when Carlos asked her to dance, the truth came out. She's awesome! An amazing dancer! I was slack-jawed. Driving back to school afterwards, I asked her how hard she had to work to achieve that level of skill. She pretty much shrugged it off. "Weeelll... I have always been able to pick up dance steps really quickly..."
I don't have gifts. I have skills. I appreciate them, but they're different. I'm working on not letting that bother me. My friend Diane thinks that maybe some of us have gifts that we haven't discovered, because the right opportunity has not brought them to the forefront. That's a bit "tree falls in the forest", though, isn't it?
How about you? How would you define "gifted"? Did you get a gift? What is it? Or are are you like me: skilled, but giftless? Does it bother you?
8 comments:
people around me always tell me im skilled -if not gifted but thats only because they dont know how dumb i can be sometimes. my wife often says "i cant believe a smart guy like yourself does that." but yeah, i do that.
if your son is really gifted, i think he should better go to a special school. perhaps he wil feel lonely, but dont gifted people always?
I ma gifted in the music area in all others I am skilled i guess.
Like your friend Diane, I agree that everyone has some sort of "gifted" area. I think the reason they may not be obvious, however, isn't that they're undiscovered but that they're not what most people look for. Some people are gifted at things like linear thinking, language processing, visual imaging - the sorts of things that show up on tests. Others are gifted musically, or physically (as dancers, athletes, etc.) And still others have gifts that are more what we think of as personality gifts - social skills, the ability to read other people from almost imperceptible body language, expressions, or tone of voice - the sorts of things that show up in relationships. I'm sure there are many more gifts that are "hidden" and which I can't think of any examples of right now.
At one point I had some long ignored musical gifts, but I think it's too late to do anything with them. I also have some gifts with the manipulation of written language that have been enhanced by skills, but then long-ignored. I can write well, but when I'm practiced and in "the zone" I can edit like a skilled surgeon.
I can't give advice on where to send him to school because I'm one of those radicals who believes that the whole schooling system is a crock. Send him where he will learn what you want him to learn and be with the people you want him to be with. If he doesn't have "success" there - however you choose to define that - try something else later.
I have a photographic memory, that I consider a gift. Everything else is a skill that I worked to hone (or still am).
The schools here have the accelerated/magnet programs in the school so the kids don't have to leave. I like that they have a pretty wide array of programs; math, science, english and media. My aunt and uncle have 5 kids and so far 4 of them (the 5th has yet to start school) have all been in the program. 1 in the math, 2 in the science and 2 in the media (the media magnet is too cool, the have photo shoots and "gallery showings") The one in the math magnet just really "gets" math. He'll be in the 6th grade next year, but is at a 10th grade math level.
I think it's a combination of the parents involvement and the kids motivation. It's also just how well some kids click with a subject. I can do trigonometry all day, but don't ask me to explain atoms and pluots (wait, that's a fruit, huh? See.)
I am not sure... I might be "giftless" and "skill-less" LOL...hmmmm.. I'm not sure what to think about "gifted"... I believe we all have something that we excel at...and sometimes it just takes longer to discover or to bring out than other people who do at an early age...and no amount of tutoring or extracurricular classes whatever will change that!
I am so not gifted, but I can acquire new skills pretty quickly. Well, that, I do say what most just think but won't say, but that involves having my foot in my mouth with amazing frequency.
Well, my personal opinion is that "skill" is what we acquire by effort in this life, and "gift" is the result of the skills we acquired in past lives.
The problem with being gifted in too many areas is if things come easy you don't learn how to learn hard things and sooner or later you run up against stuff that doesn't come easy and you don't know what to do.
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