As I continue to read more and more about giftedness I feel myself thinking more and more about how the kind of things we should be doing for gifted students really is what we should be doing for everyone. It seems to me that we have created a culture in our education system where being "gifted" is a contest and a label that many use in order to increase their social status as it were. Of course, I still believe that there is a difference between a gifted child and an average child, but I also believe that what is needed in gifted education is essentially what is needed in all of education - a paradigm shift (as I've mentioned before). Essentially, if we teach students rather than curriculum, we will in turn be providing the extra stimulation that each gifted child needs. And if we do it the right way, we can actually form our gifted curriculum around the child, rather than just putting all the gifted kids in the same room for 45 minutes a day and teach them a subject at an advanced pace even if they are not gifted in the same area as the class.
This semester promises to be one of an awful lot of growth. I feel like I am finally starting to figure out how to put words to what I have been thinking about and doing over the past 2-3 years. I've also noticed this semester that I am getting much better at guiding the pre-interns in my room as they are in their infant teaching stage. I hope that they are able to really digest the overall world view that I have in for my classroom.
Of course the big question is how does my thinking about "teaching the child" actually come to fruition? I feel like the way I approach my classroom and my students is very different that I hear described by many other teachers I have talked with. Not that they don't care or don't know what they are doing. Simply that they are approaching their task from a different angle and they have different priorities. But deep down, I believe that, even if there are small differences in approach, what is best for kids is to truly change how we view about what we do. For example, we can't reasonably hope to graduate independent, critical thinkers who can navigate uncharted territory if we use the entire 13 years that they are in our care controlling their environment, their choices, their movement - even their bathroom usage! No adult would live that way, so why do we force kids to? I'm not saying I want a free school, but I have learned that when you give the students more choice and more control you actually have more influence in the room. I have also learned that by shear force of rule and law, you can have absolute control in a classroom, but when you choose that, then control is all you will have. I don't want control. I want to be part of a community. I want to know my students. I want them to learn how to take control of their own learning. Why do we control everything in their lives and make all the hard choices and then complain that they can't make good decisions or think critically?
The answer, I believe is that change needs to happen. But I don't want change for its own sake. And I don't simply want to go back to the 70s. But after reading about what many educational reforms in the 1970s and 80s and listening to the teachers that lived through them, it seems that the problem wasn't in the theory of change, it was that the teachers were forced into change that they didn't want and didn't understand. There was no shift in paradigm, so there was no change in the way education was done. It just led to people complaining about "the new math", "open classrooms", etc. So I guess the question is, how do we truly accomplish the paradigm shift, because without that shift, nothing else will happen.
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