Giftedness - A Gift Indeed?

This week's class focused around giftedness, an exceptionality that I've been curious about since the beginning of this course.

Please no not regard this next paragraph as not being self-admiring, but rather as an example to illustrate some lingering questions I have on the topic. Since I started learning about giftedness in this class, I've actually started to reflect back on my high school years and do some self-examining. Quite often I would catch onto concepts taught in class more easily than other students and I'd be asked to help others understand.  I had such a wide spectrum of interests and took such a wide variety of classes that I could have chosen literally any program to go into in university.  I loved school (I even took summer school one summer to get extra credits) and was curious about almost everything. I participated in tons of extracurricular activities and school sports, was Senior Girl on students' council, and got frustrated when I wasn't good at something right off the bat.  I graduated with hundreds more volunteer hours than needed, earned the highest average in my graduating class 3 out of 4 years in high school, and also won awards for music and community work. 

I never thought I was gifted at the time, nor am I trying to suggest now that I was or am gifted - In fact, it's very possible (probable, even) that I was just a very motivated student with wide interests. I wonder, though, if I had been identified as "gifted", would my high school experience have been any different?

I was talking  to one of my professors this week who was identified during her high school years as 'gifted', and she told me that the gifted children were put into separate classes and were able to work on more abstract thinking skills together. My question is, how can one accurately determine which children are gifted, and which ones are just hard workers? (Or, can giftedness be a result of either nature or nurture?) In addition, there must be many different kinds of giftedness, right? Surely one can be gifted in music yet not spatial reasoning, for example? So then, is it not discriminating to choose only those students who are gifted in the area of abstract thinking and put them in a special Gifted Class?

All of these ideas bring up an interesting thought: Even if I would have been identified as gifted, had I taken some sort of test, I don't feel as though I was limited in any way by not having this identified. I didn't struggle in my courses, I didn't struggle socially, and I wasn't bored in class. -- which leads to my next question -- So often, it seems, being gifted is associated with being bored, getting distracted and even failing classes. People tend to jump back to "Didn't you know? Einstein failed out of high school!" But personally, I think this is only one side of the story. Yes, I believe it's true that if a student isn't being challenged in class, they may become bored and apathetic about learning and fail to complete course work because of this. However, I think that if a gifted student is also very motivated, he or she would be able to channel the giftedness as a very beautiful and beneficial skill instead of an inhibitor to advancing learning. 

The very word "giftedness" implies that the student has something special; a gift.  But, like many other exceptionalities, I believe that giftedness often goes unidentified, which very well may be detrimental to student learning. However, in the case of giftedness, this lack of identification may not always necessarily be as big of a hindrance to student learning as many other exceptionalities.  For example, if a student with dyslexia, went unidentified as having an exceptionality, his or her education would be much more difficult than an unidentified gifted student, given that they are one of the gifted students who channels their giftedness positively.  I'm not sure how to say this without generalizing or jumping to conclusions, but it almost seems as though the gifted students who fail classes, sometimes fail because they choose not to do the work, even when they very well have the ability to do it; whereas a student with dyslexia might fail classes because they simply cannot do the work, even if they wanted to.  I don't know enough about the subject to say for sure, but I'd assume that there must be some gifted students who do their assigned work quickly and use their spare time in other productive ways.

For this reason, I suggest that gifted students should, of course, be provided with the tools to help them progress in their learning in the best way possible -- but perhaps that the identification of these students is not always as pressing as is the identification with exceptionalities on the other end of the spectrum. In my experience, there seems to be such a small population being recognized as gifted - and I suggest two reasons for this:
1)  Since the identification is not always as necessary as it is for students of other exceptionalities, the gifted students may take a back seat to those students who require more attention to cope with their exceptionalities.
2) Recognition may be hindered because a) It seems as though every parent thinks their child is the brightest, smartest, most creative kid in school, and b) It may be difficult to decipher between hard-working students and truly gifted students.

I am a strong believer in equal educational opportunities for all, and in providing all students with the tools they need to succeed.  However I'm just throwing the idea out there that giftedness could be one of the most under-identified exceptionalities out there simply  because there's not always obvious signs.

In addition, I also have some questions regarding how teachers often deal with gifted students.  The first solution many teachers jump to, is to provide the gifted student with supplemental work or ask them to help other students. I'd be very interested in finding out other ways of challenging gifted students that doesn't alienate them from the rest of the class (ie pulling them out of classes to have "gifted" classes with other students) and yet doesn't simply provide them with more quantity of the same work or require them to help other students, which might not be the best option for them.

Finally, to finish off this entry with another question, I'm curious as to who drew the line in terms of what makes a child gifted? How do these identification tests separate the hard-working, motivated students, from a truly gifted student?  Or, as mentioned above, do these terms overlap?

I found the two quizzes we did in class very interesting, as they both looked for types of giftedness. The IQ test was mainly testing logic and abstract thinking, while the circle test apparently gauged creativity.  The main question I have, especially regarding the second test, is, again, who created this criteria to be met in order to be qualified as 'gifted'? Who developed the "if more than 10% of your circles are faces, you may be gifted" rule? At this point, it seems a bit arbitrary to me. Luckily, I've found myself becoming more and more interested in cognitive psychology, so hopefully in pursuit of those studies, I'll come across this topic again and be able to apply them to my future teaching!