Customer Service

Do we really serve our customers or do we serve ourselves?....hmmmm  See if you can figure out how that question connects to my thoughts below.

Should we even have gifted classes?

This is the question that we handled tonight in class.  Really when it comes down to it, what is the right answer when it comes to gifted services?  Like so many things in life, I don’t think there is one right answer.  But it seems to be that what we have done in this county is to pretty much put all of our eggs in the “acceleration” model.  Even though we like to call it enrichment, most of what is happening is acceleration.  My big question with that is whether or not the students actually understand what they are being accelerated through.  For example, in my ten years in fifth grade, I know that most students I encounter at the beginning of the year have no clue what area is.  They know that A = l X w, but they have no idea what it actually means.  My concern with a lot of the acceleration is that we are pushing our students through a curriculum without actually making sure that the students know what they are learning.

Whenever I hear about someone saying “we are finishing such and such a book” I have a deep down feeling that I am talking to someone who isn’t really teaching students – rather, they are someone who is more worried about covering curriculum.  I feel like I keep circling this same idea again and again and again.  It comes down to teaching kids not curriculum.  I think SO many people agree with this, but when it comes to changing what they are actually doing, they back off of their assertions and claim that THEY really are looking at the kids – it is all those OTHER teachers who are too focused on curriculum (I don’t pretend that this isn’t me sometimes, too).  I think if we change the way we serve all kids, then how we serve gifted students will also change.  I think that a HUGE part of this comes down to choice.  Yes it takes some courage and creativity to make sure that the standards are met, but we don’t have to march through some pre-packaged curriculum to do it.

Why is there so much bad teaching going on?  Is it that we are too tired, too overworked, don’t know any better, think that our way is the best way, need control, a combination of all of this?  Why do teachers feel like they have to have control of everything?  Why do we treat our students in ways that we would NEVER accept being treated – or at least the same way that we complain about being treated?  I think a lot of these questions come back to the central question at the top of this entry – what is the best way to serve gifted students?  Until we start really holding each other accountable about how we serve ALL students, how we serve gifted students can’t really be changed.  But for the record, I don’t believe that a pull out program that creates social stress is a good way to serve kids.  But we can’t leave them in regular education classrooms with no support either.  We need better teaching – everywhere.  I also believe that there are some profoundly gifted students that do need more services that ANY regular education setting can truly serve.  But for most gifted students, the right kind of team-teaching model with true differentiation all across the board can (I believe) meet their needs.

Sorry  - this entry was a little bit of a rant.  I don’t believe that the situation is as dire as one might surmise from above.  But there are times when I just feel the need to rant a little about what I see going on around me (and admittedly sometimes in my own room).  I’m really excited about working in a place where we will soon have an organizational paradigm that will help continue our ability to ACTUALLY differentiate rather than just talking about it.

What are we DOING?!?!?!?!?

I am curious about gifted students’ abilities to “take risks” and also their “impatience” as identified in an article I read for my Nature and Needs class.  I definitely see the phenomenon that many of the gifted students I have taught over the years don’t want to take risks because the grade they earn is more important than the learning they are doing.  I think this is the biggest black mark on what we have done in the education profession.  If we are in any way responsible for students forgoing learning in order to get a better grade, than we have not only failed the students, we have failed our mission.  I can’t really even express how mad that makes me.  Here we are taking our “best and brightest” (although I dislike that phrasing) and reducing them into competition machines.  They don’t care at all about the learning; all they care about is seeing an ‘A’ at the end – WHAT A DISGRACE!!!!  How do we combat this?  The quickest thing that I can think of is to get rid of grades.  Just like with aging school buildings full of “cells and bells” our grading system is something we are comfortable with that doesn’t actually accomplish the purpose for which it was designed.  Most parents and students that I know have no idea what a ‘C’ really means, they just don’t want one.  A grade of ‘C’ was designed to be average – which by definition should be where most people fall.  But we hardly ever give one – and if we do it is equating with failure.  In the end, wouldn’t it be much more effective to actually communicate with parents about what their child can do and where they are struggling instead of just giving them a letter?  I think this would greatly improve the ability of gifted students to stop looking at what they have to do “to get an ‘A’” and start looking what they want to learn.

I’m also curious about impatience.  I notice that a lot in my gifted students.  They expect to always see the answer right away.  I wonder if this is natural to a gifted learner or if this is a learned response because they have only ever been exposed to material that is below their ability and therefore they have never had to puzzle out anything.  I’ve not done any research on this, but I infer that it is more a learned behavior.  And I think that we as teachers perpetuate this by saying things like “the gifted kids will figure it out on their own”.  If they can do that, then you haven’t given them the right material.  Again, this comes from lack of time to plan and lack of resources.  I think this is recognized (at least at PK), but the state doesn’t give adequate resources for teachers to deal with this.  For example, I am kind of bummed that I have such a great group to “experiment with,” if you will, and I haven’t really had the time to design a project to truly push them.  I feel like I want to design something that would include them coming up with part of the rubric.  But I’m so busy trying to do everything else that is on my plate, I don’t have the adequate time to really do it.  On top of that, I think it should be done with other teachers.  But this can’t just be three teachers sitting down and talking about what they want to do separately in their own classrooms.  It needs to be a truly collaborative affair.  I don’t know how you make that happen in our current environment.  One more reason to be excited about our new building.

So to sum up, I think a lot of the issues that gifted kids have are, if not a product of, then at least exacerbated by the school system we have them in.  Pulling them out into another room and making them feel like the upper class isn’t really a way to stretch them and push them to go beyond themselves.  Of course, I think a better system is what will also benefit all learners, not just the gifted ones.  But again, it isn’t that I think giftedness doesn’t exist, it is more that I think we are coming at this whole equation from the wrong direction.  We are thinking about school as 1 teacher with 22 students.  In that paradigm the teacher doesn’t have a whole lot of choice but to teach to the middle because no matter what the state says, one person cannot truly individualize or even “small groupize” to the extent necessary given a 6.5 hour school day, 45 minutes of planning, and on average $40,000 a year (even with an advanced degree).  So we are framing our opinions about giftedness and whether or not we should pull out or differentiate in some other way on this paradigm.  I argue that we should complete re-work our school setting around having more than one teacher in the room.  Despite what you would think, 2 * 22 is not the same as (1 * 22) * 2 [or (1 * 22) * 6 for that matter].  Basically if we give teachers the time, resources, and collaboration needed, I think they can work together to truly differentiate the curriculum and meet all students needs without having to “pull out” anyone.  Not that students won’t know who is “smart” and who struggles.  Of course they will.  Put a group of adults in a room together for 6 hours a day for 5 days and ask them at the end of it who are the “smart” ones and who struggles and they could tell you too.  That isn’t going to change.  But by meeting everyone’s needs within a community, we can start to educate all the students at their level, begin to really concentrate on pushing them beyondtheir current level, and  also educate them about other talents and intelligences that don’t involve math and reading (thank you Dr. Gardner).  If I continue writing at this point, it is going to become more and more fractured than it already is. This started out as a reflection, but I think somewhere it went beyond that! J