It's the Teacher, Genius!

Those charged with planning and administering education programs tend to specialize. Not at the superintendent level, mind you, (It's always been unclear to me exactly what it is that they do!)but as soon as a question is taken up by a Central Office administrator, a program specialist, a curriculum coordinator, a principal, etc., specialization is a 'hammer' that makes every student appear to be some variety of nail. Those charged with planning for the education of the Talented and Gifted are no different. And for each specialty area, a lexicon that excludes the uninitiated and lends significant powers of obfuscation to the insiders.

Those charged with planning and administering education programs tend to specialize. Not at the superintendent level, mind you, (It's always been unclear to me exactly what it is that they do!)but as soon as a question is taken up by a Central Office administrator, a program specialist, a curriculum coordinator, a principal, etc., specialization is a 'hammer' that makes every student appear to be some variety of nail. Those charged with planning for the education of the Talented and Gifted are no different. And for each specialty area, a lexicon that excludes the uninitiated and lends significant powers of obfuscation to the insiders.

Words are powerful. Labeling is one of the most powerful applications of the efficacy of words. Labeling students "Talented and Gifted" creates a group that has the same ontological status as "Learning Disabled", "English Language Learner", "At-Risk Student", "Economically Disadvantaged", "Autistic". It is a rare moment in which any of us has the self-discipline to hear these labels and not lapse into the analytical equivalent of a coma. While in a coma, we seldom do our best thinking. We let stereotypes think for us. We fall into assembly-line compliance with muddled public policies, unable to imagine better possibilities. We believe the labels, live with the obfuscation, and take comfort in compliance.

Budgets are tight, which puts the emphasis on bare compliance and causes us to focus on how much of what has never really worked we can no longer afford to do. We depend on our specialists.

And who are our specialists in this case? There are no endorsements in Talented and Gifted Education. There are courses to take, though none are required as part of a regular teacher education program. There are manuals on the identification of Talented and Gifted students, and of course there are dozens (hundreds?) of books on the topic. Education never suffers from a shortage of 'how to' books. So what is it that our Specialists know? Nothing to write home about. Mostly strategies for attempting to mitigate against the worst effects of grade leveling and Standards Based Education...strategies that should be employed for all students and not just the most able. They often express a therapeutic outlook regarding TAG students, focusing on their unique emotional 'needs' (because being really young charges. They like camps and retreats, as though Giftedness was some sort of religious orientation lived out in lengthy stretches of drudgery punctuated by the occasional mountain-top experience.

Better education for our most able students (call them TAG if you want, but watch out for that coma!) isn't complicated, and it isn't expensive. It's only hard. The secret? Really good teachers, well supported, unimpeded by administrators and specialists. In short, they need talented and gifted teachers.

A good teacher can learn everything that can be reliably claimed about educating exceptionally bright children in two or three days. There are no magic methods, no sure-fire techniques. There is only the attribute of judgment, the quality of insight, the passion for achievement...all things that cannot be taught but must rather be found, recruited, supported, retained. Teachers either possess these qualities or they do not. The education of our most able students depends entirely on this. That's the simple, hard fact of the matter.