Gifts My Teachers Gave Me

My schools were small. There were no special programs for gifted students. There were, however, teachers who cared enough to go beyond their regular duties and nurture the gifted. Here are some of the simple gifts they gave to us--gifts you can also give as a parent, coach, or teacher.

The Gift of Unstructured Time
Within the rigid school schedule, some teachers found ways to give us time for independent reflection. One way they did this was through benign neglect; allowing us to read interesting books while they worked with the rest of the kids to cover the standard curriculum. As long as we put down our books long enough to ace the periodic tests given to the class, we were left alone. We just needed to speed read the textbook and ace the test; then we got to spend the rest of class time reading Dickens, Tolkien, or Austen. The deal was unspoken, but it gave us the freedom to learn instead of waste time.

A variation on unstructured time was the unstructured assignment. For example, the quarterly history projects might be offered as a menu of options. While many students chose project options with detailed rubrics and step-by-step instructions for completion, the gifted students often opted for the project called "independent reading." Within the historical period we were studying, we could choose our own books. The assignment was to read about a thousand pages and meet with the teacher to discuss our readings.

The Gift of Confidence
The teachers who taught me the most were those who were willing to allow me to try things, to struggle, and sometimes even to fail. I remember telling my physics teacher once that I had chosen a bubble chamber as my science project. I knew only that a bubble chamber allowed one to observe the tracks left by radiation. I did not yet know that I would need liquid hydrogen and a means for maintaining pressure and temperature to keep the hydrogen liquid; nor did I know where I would find radiation to study. While Mr. C could have immediately told me it was impossible within a high school setting, he instead told me to research the project and get back to him. I learned a lot in the following week. When I reported back to Mr. C, he smiled and showed me a science catalog which contained a cloud chamber kit--a project that interested me and that was appropriate in scale. He had been confident I could discover my own limitations and was ready to help once I did.

The Gift of Respect
The best teachers knew how to maintain their authority as teachers while treating us as intellectual peers. An economics teacher who respects you enough to challenge you and argue with you is giving you a gift. A teacher who takes time to find some room for improvement in your project or paper is showing respect. A teacher who calls you out when she knows you could have done better (even if you still did better than the rest of the class) is showing respect.
Teachers need not be certified in "gifted education" in order to give students these simple gifts.