Case Study: National Association For Gifted Children

Education was built, along with many other things, to the average standard. It was designed with the average student in mind, never really adapted towards those who grasps concepts quickly, accelerate at rapid rates beyond their peers. As gifted, or exceptionally intelligence children make up around 6 to 10 percent of the students within America, roughly 3 to 5 million students (“Gifted Education in the U.S”). But as America is behind in the general education, it is bounds behind in gifted education. Teachers aren’t equipped to challenge the gifted students, or simply have no time to spend developing and nurturing the child’s talents. Schools don’t have programs to help the children develop at their quicken pace, and programs in place aren’t

Gifted education is very stressful for students in middle school, but if you start in elementary school with a gifted program it could be less stressful on your child. Gifted programs are good programs but there are things that could make your child feel pressured and they may want to leave the program. To get into the programs depending on the district you are in there could be discrimination to be accepted or recommended to test for it. This discrimination could be based on race, income, gender, or ethnicity, if you’re in a school district that lets you apply without being recommended then you won’t have to worry about this. Studies show that in Broward County they started with teachers recommended students and then changed their system to where any students could apply to the gifted programs and there was a major increase in low income, latino, and black students that were accepted.

Arlington county Public Schools test everyone for giftedness and they can be identified any year. The normal process is done at the beginning of the school year, but

Falls Church City’s Local Plan for the Education of the Gifted can be found at the following address: https://docs.google.com/a/fccps.org/file/d/0B7vaFg7PcgKyTGs3T3NZcGtaRjQ/edit

Adolescents face many developmental tasks: physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally. For example, puberty happens, intellectual interests expand, moral thinking happens, sense of identity is initiated, independence is worked towards, there is conflict with adults, and peer influence becomes an issue—to say the least. This particular read focuses on twelve west coast inner city students and the developmental and environmental tasks that impact their education. Professionals often use the word resilience, or suggest that students become resilient, without putting much thought into the difficulties that students must recover from.

The era of the 1950s and 1960s ushered in new priorities for the education of America’s students as well as the social, judicial, political and organizational structure of our nation’s schools. Some of the challenges that the educational system faced were facilitated by federal and state interventions. Interventions such as The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) No Child Left Behind, (NCLB) and Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) are just a few federal and state interventions that had a tremendous impact on the way we educate and motivate children to learn.

Adams County public school system’s current program doesn’t seem to recognize any minority or poor students who could be considered gifted. Educators in this district and committee members seem to lack any motivation to include diverse learners in their program. The fact that Adams County only recognized three out of four hundred thirty-eight over a five-year span is appalling. I feel Adams County need some major changes to extend their idea of giftedness. It needs to start with intensive and in-depth teacher training along with community outreach and awareness programs to help educate parents about giftedness. For instance, parent could learn ways to better support their children and help identify their child’s areas of giftedness.

Gifted students are mistakenly perceived as individuals with the intellectual capacity to excel in their endeavors whether it is academically, artistically, athletically, or musically; however, this is one of the most common myths educators believe. According to the National Association for Gifted Children (n.d.), gifted students are those who have outstanding abilities to reason and learn or who demonstrate exceptional proficiency in one or more areas such as mathematics, language, painting, dance, sports, and more. With this definition, the gifted youth likely are capable of achieving their goals on their own, but these kids have demands that must be met in order for them to succeed. Some teachers argue that gifted students do not require

The stress of raising a gifted child can be more unique then raising other children. It has been compared to raising a special needs child (Renati, Robert, et al., 2016, p.6). One study found gifted students long term happiness is directly related to whether they thought their parents were warm and supportive (Renati, Robert, et al., 2016, p.6). The main sources of stress for parents raising gifted children have been identified as: lack of parenting alliance, stress that stems from finding helpful educational strategies, lack of persistence, and lack of management of family routines (Renati, Robert, et al, 2016, 13-14). So if you can come up with a plan between the two of you to try to combat these issues ahead of time they may save you stress in the long run. The relationship between the parents or care takers of the gifted child must be strong in order to aid in the success of raising the

Since the beginning of the semester in ECED 230, we have talked about the exceptional child. This article, Meeting Needs of Young Children at Risk for or Having a Disability by Carla A. Peterson, Lynn Milgram Mayer, Jean Ann Summers, and Gayle J. Luze, will tell what kinds of factors affect disabilities. It will also tell more about what educators need to do to help young children that are an exceptional child or children that might be at risk. Did you know that factors like poverty can put children at a higher risk for disabilities? This paper will be a summary of the article, Meeting Needs of Young Children at Risk for or Having a Disability by Carla A. Peterson, Lynn Milgram Mayer, Jean Ann Summers, and Gayle J. Luze, while also stating what I learned and how I can apply this information to future teaching.

Based from the information provided by VanTassel-Baska, et. Al. (2009), gifted and talented students face the same issues as their regular peers but they have different way of viewing these issues and it affects them differently as well. The book discussed different issues that gifted learners face and recommendations on how to address these issues were also available for teachers, administrators and other school personnel. Also, Carol Strip Whitney (2011) in her book entitle Helping Gifted Learners Soar discussed stress as a factor that can distract

It’s not every child gifted. There are many students with intellectual disabilities. In 2013, for example, 35 percent of all students ages 3-21 with disabilities were identified as having specific learning disabilities (U.S.Department of Education ,2015). For example: Students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; Students with speech or language impairments; Students with emotional and behavioral disorders; Students with autism spectrum disorder; Students with sensory, physical, and health impairments.

I found it interesting 50% of public schools are rural. We are a city school district, yet we are considered a rural district in the Mooresville Graded School District. According to our reading in Colangelo’s Handbook of Gifted Education rural schools have many benefits for students including smaller class size, lower dropout rates and more community support. I believe when you have smaller school districts and schools you have more contact with your students and you are able to individualize and accommodate more when dealing with your students.

What support systems are there for students to succeed in the gifted program once admitted?

According to Assouline, S., and Lupkowski-Shoplik, A., (2018) “Acceleration is an educational intervention based on the progress through an educational program at ages younger or at rates faster than typical” (p.238). Acceleration is an educational application that can be completed in many ways such as students skipping an entire grade, compacting out of a unit, or simply moving to a higher grade for a particular subject. Other forms of acceleration include “early admission to kindergarten, self-paced instruction, telescoping curriculum, mentoring, extracurricular programs, distance learning courses, concurrent/dual enrollment, Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate program, credit by examination,