Living With Live Wires

One of the best articles on the connection between education and work:

The Case for Working With Your Hands

There are many gems, among them:

“It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.”

“A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive.”

“For anyone who feels ill suited by disposition to spend his days sitting in an office, the question of what a good job looks like is now wide open.”

“An economy that is more entrepreneurial, less managerial, would be less subject to the kind of distortions that occur when corporate managers’ compensation is tied to the short-term profit of distant shareholders. ”

“A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this.”

The article is full of them.  Read and enjoy.

Tamara Fisher is a K-12 gifted education specialist for a school district located on an Indian reservation in northwestern Montana and president-elect of the Montana Association of Gifted and Talented Education. With Karen Isaacson, she is also co-author of Intelligent Life in the Classroom: Smart Kids and Their Teachers. Her hobbies include drawing, hiking, fourwheeling, and building houses. (She lives in a house she built herself.) In this blog, Unwrapping the Gifted, Fisher discusses news and developments in the gifted education community and offers advice for teachers on working with gifted students.

She concludes the article with “Take a moment this week to tell a gifted child in your life that you don’t expect him to be perfect. Take a moment this week to tell a gifted child in your life that you know being a gifted kid isn’t the cakewalk others seem to think it is. Take a moment this week to tell a gifted child in your life that her intellectual growth and hard work ethic are far more important than perfect marks, even if it means a B in a challenging class. What we assume that others know about our views of them can be out-of-sync with reality. Tell them you know they’re only human. You very well could be someone’s hero for saying it.”

How do you view your child’s misbehavior?  Why do you think your children lie, cheat, or get sneaky and steal?

What messages do you hear in your head as a parent of a child doing something you don’t want them to?

Do you see it as a character flaw?  A lack of good conscience?  A deliberate attempt to upset you?  An attempt to manipulate those around them?

Or, do you see it as part of a developmental phase, a time of growth in abilities to test boundaries and exercise new mental muscles.  Trying to meet a need, but maybe in an inappropriate or self-defeating way?

How you view your child’s misbehavior will determine how you respond.  The first set of parental reactions can more easily lead to harsh, angry reactions and feeling a need to control your child’s behavior.  It can also be easier to place blame on your child for acting “bad” and create a sense of shame in your child.

Some parents do not see this as a problem.  They sincerely believe that it is ths way to instill a better consciouence, a stronger sense of right and wrong.  They believe that the harsher the punishment, the more their child will remember the lesson and the more they will be detered from repeating the misbehavior.

We all want to raise kids with a good conscience to guide their ability to make good choices.  And, we hope that feelings of guilt will be their indicator that something needs to be corrected. But lets take a close look at shame and how it can play out in the life of a child.

Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D., Author of The Highly Sensitive Child describes the difference between guilt and shame:

Shame – and guilt, its gentler cousin – are powerful built-in “self-conscious” emotions (like pride).  Psychologists distinguish them in this way:  While guilt focuses on particular misdeeds and, often, on what can be done to amend them, shame is a feeling that the entire self is bad.  Thus, when one feels guilty, one assumes an active self that can do something wrong and make it right; being ashamed, one assumes one is passive or helpless.  When feeling guilty, people tend to engage rather than withdraw, trying to make amends or at least defend themselves.  When ashamed, people hang their head or avert their eyes, withdrawing, slumping, and looking small, indicating submission or just wishing they coudl disappear.  It feels terrible.

She also states,

No one feels shame or guilt all the time.  But they can become almost like a personality trait, in that some people become shame or guilt prone, much as people become anxious or shy by nature.  Shame, guilt, shyness, or anxiety ar things anyone can feel sometimes, but some people feel them almost all the time.

In terms of special needs of sensitive children,  she states,

Shaming as a method of correcting an HSC is the sledgehammer method of putting in a thumbtack.  

When the HSC  internalizes the shame, it can be debilitating.

Our society thinks it is wonderful to reward athletes, musicians, actors, and artists.  Entire industiries spend billions of dollars on these fields.  But what about the intellectually gifted?  They get mixed messages.

It’s good to be smart . . . as long as you’re not too smart.  Too smart makes you a nerd, an egghead, and a teacher-pleaser.  It can even make you a target for suspicion, resentment, and open hostility.  

It’s good to get high grades . . as long as you don’t talk about them.  That’s bragging, and besides, you might injure someone else’s self-esteem.  

It’s good to score high on tests . . as long as you keep this fact to yourself, or within your small circle of similarly brainy friends. When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers, Jim Delisle, Ph.D., & Judy Galbraith, M.A. (2002).

It seems the only time it is “cool” to look smart is when you are applying for college.  So many services help students score higher on tests and write superior essays to get admitted to desireable colleges.  Everyone seems to brag when they get into a prestigious school, but what about the rest of the time?  Is being smart only desireable when it can get you what you want?

It’s the mixed messages and skewed perceptions of giftedness that make the label more of a burden than a blessing.  It’s the insensitive, uninformed comments from teachers, peers, and/or parents that make gifted kids want to downplay, deny, or hide their giftedness. When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers, Jim Delisle, Ph.D., & Judy Galbraith, M.A. (2002).

Some educators believe that “bright children don’t need any special help; after all, they already have so many things going for them.  The reality is that gifted children’s educational needs arise directly from their strengths; it is precisely because these children are rapid and advanced learners that they need specialized learning opportunities.  They are exceptional children, and they need exceptional services in the same way that children with learning difficulties are exceptional children and need special services and attention.  A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children, James T. Webb, et.al. (2007).

It is most often up to the parent to educate themselves and advocate for the best educational alternatives for their gifted children.  Each school has different options, from differentiated classrooms, acceleration, grade-skipping, cluster grouping, enrichment in the classroom and in resource rooms, and self-contained full-time gifted programs.  Some states allow children to go to school part-time and to homeschool part-time.  Some families choose to homeschool full-time.

The research that goes into deciding how to educate your gifted child can be overwhelming.  And, you may need to evaluate your choice on an ongoing basis to determine whether your current plan is still working.