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Assisting and Supporting Gifted Individuals in Developing their Talents, Strengths, and Abilities
Winter Newsletter - January 2009
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Happy New Year!
This newsletter contains information about several exciting upcoming BVGT programs as well as information about a few other local opportunities (not affiliated with BVGT) which may be of interest to you. Additionally, you will find a summary of our fall presentations at the bottom of this newsletter. Remember to visit our website (www.bvgt.org) for the latest information about all of our upcoming events! We look forward to seeing you at a future event. Please spread the word about BVGT and invite a friend! Sincerely, Tricia Carpenter
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BVGT presents Susan Scheibel on "Creating the Future for Gifted Learners"
WHO: Guest Speaker Susan Scheibel, President of the Colorado Association of Gifted and Talented (CAGT) 2009 & 2010 WHEN: Thursday, January 15, 7:00 p.m. WHERE: Rocky Mountain School for the Gifted and Creative, 5490 Spine Road, Boulder RSVP: RSVP to programming@bvgt.org BVGT welcomes you to attend this interactive exchange and discussion which will address ways to provide and promote a positive environment for gifted students in our community and state. Together we'll explore equity and excellence, consider the rights and responsibilities of gifted learners, hear current recommendations for continued growth and success at home and at school, share contemporary myths and realities about giftedness and delve into current research about best practices for gifted learners. We’ll touch on recent legislation affecting gifted and talented students, explore advocacy efforts that are currently taking place in Colorado, and give you an opportunity to influence programs and initiatives that CAGT is undertaking in 2009 and 2010. A brief BVGT business meeting will follow this program. Please stay and help plan future BVGT events and programs. Your ideas and volunteer efforts will be greatly appreciated. No charge (donations accepted). Click here for driving directions to RMS (Note: mapquest directions are not accurate!) |
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BVGT presents Annette Sheely on "Friendships"
WHO: Guest Speaker Annette Sheely, M.A. Clinical Psychology WHEN: Thursday, February 5, 7:00-8:30 p.m. WHERE: Douglass Elementary, 840 75th St., Boulder RSVP: RSVP to programming@bvgt.org You spoke and we listened! Our BVGT board read your surveys and saw your requests for a presentation on the topic of friendships and gifted children. Mark your calendar now! More details to come.
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BVGT hosts "Family Game Night!"
WHAT: Game night for parents and kids! WHEN: Monday, February 23, 6:00-7:30 p.m. WHERE: Meadows Branch of the Boulder Public Library (4800 Baseline Rd, near the intersection of Baseline Rd and Foothills Pkwy, located behind Safeway) RSVP REQUIRED: RSVP to programming@bvgt.org (space is limited!) Parents and kids of all ages are invited to join us for an evening of fun and games! We will provide some of our favorites, and you are encouraged to bring along your favorite board games or other games, too! Feel free to bring a potluck dish/snack to share as well (nothing too messy, please). We'll provide drinks and paper products. Please remember to RSVP!
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BVGT presents Steve Haas on "Perfectionism"
WHO: Guest Speaker Steve Haas
Mark your calendar for this BVGT presentation on another topic very relevant to many gifted children and adults! More details to come. |
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Legislative Day 2009
This popular annual event, sponsored by the Colorado Association of Gifted and Talented (CAGT), provides a unique opportunity for students in grades 8-12 to shadow a legislator and gain first-hand insight into how the Colorado legislative process works. Students must apply, register, and be accepted in order to participate. Registration deadline is February 1, 2009. Early registration is appreciated. Legislative Day 2009 will take place on Thursday, February 19 from 7:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the Colorado History Museum and the Colorado State Capitol. Click here for more information, including links to the application and registration forms |
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Beyond Giftedness XVI Conference
16th Annual Beyond Giftedness Conference for Educators, Parents, Counselors Arvada Center for the Arts, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd., Arvada Friday, February 20, 2009
Featuring Keynote Speaker Jim Delisle
Breakout Session: 10 Top Lessons for Teaching & Reaching Gifted Students It's not too late to sign up for this conference which will feature a variety of presenters and topics, including all levels from preschool through high school, as well as exhibits of creative materials to browse and buy and a panel of gifted students. The Beyond Giftedness conference is sponsored by Open Space Communications LLC, a Colorado-based company serving those who live and work with gifted children. |
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RMS Community Education Series
The Rocky Mountain School for the Gifted and Creative invites you to attend their upcoming program in the RMS Community Education Series, entitled "Sex, Drugs, and Gifted Teens," on Monday, January 26 from 7:00-9:00 p.m. held at RMS, 5490 Spine Rd, Boulder. There is a $10/person charge for this event. Register with erin@rms.org. Please note that this event is provided by the RMS Community Education Series and is not a BVGT affiliated event. Click here for more information about the RMS Community Education Series programs |
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SENG
SENG stands for Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted. SENG was formed in 1981 as a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering environments in which gifted adults and children, in all their diversity, understand and accept themselves and are understood, valued, nurtured, and supported by their families, schools, workplaces and communities. SENG "seeks to inform gifted individuals, their families, and the professionals who work with them about the unique social and emotional needs of gifted persons. SENG supports programs that foster in gifted individuals the mental health and social competence necessary for them to be free to choose ways to develop and express their abilities and talents fully." One of the programs SENG provides is a framework for parent discussion groups. The Boulder Valley School District (BVSD), Adams-12 District, Rocky Mountain School and possibly others in the region, provide these groups for parents of gifted children. These groups usually meet once a week for 1 1/2 hours to talk about a specific topic. Participants are provided a book that guides the topics and discussions. SENG groups are not designed as a top-down delivery system where facilitators provide instruction. Instead, the participants learn from one another and share their experiences in living with and raising gifted children while discussion is guided by trained facilitators. BVSD is conducting a facilitator training on January 16 and has a parent group beginning on January 27 in Broomfield. Rocky Mountain School and BVSD plan additional groups later in the spring. For more information about groups or being trained as a SENG facilitator, go to www.bvsd.org/tag or www.rms.org. |
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"How Parents Can Help at Home: Great Practical Time Management and Organizational Skills for your Child" presented by Gloria Frender, October 2008
BVGT’s first event of the 2008-09 school year was a great success! Gloria Frender, educational consultant and author of the book Learning to Learn: Strengthening Study Skills and Brain Power, provided ideas to help students and parents start off on the right foot this fall. Pointing out that "it's possible to look busy, even be busy, while accomplishing nothing," Gloria emphasized the importance of establishing short-term and long-term goals before starting to work and of developing the habit of being organized.
The three areas that Gloria explained that students need to organize are (1) their materials, (2) their time, and (3) their brain. Gloria outlined the process of sorting through the materials in a student's binder, backpack, and desk, and she strongly advocated the use of a color-coded classification system. "A place for everything, and everything in its place" was her mantra; "Once organized, stay organized" was her admonition. To organize students' time, Gloria provided blank reproducible copies of daily schedules and assignment sheets. She identified the top 10 time wasters as (1) lack of goals; (2) lack of priorities; (3) lack of planning; (4) disorganization; (5) lack of self-discipline; (6) procrastination; (7) interruptions; (8) lack of long-range focus; (9) doing too much, shifting priorities; and (10) inability to say "no." She also touched upon perfectionism as sometimes leading to paralysis and procrastination. To overcome this, students need to ask themselves, "What needs perfection and what doesn’t?" and "How perfect does this need to be?" Gloria also stressed that when offering to help your child, parents should ask, "What do you need to do, and how can I help you?" (instead of "What do you need me to do for you?") in order to maintain the child's accountability and responsibility for the tasks at hand. One final, concrete strategy that Gloria explained was the importance of establishing a daily habit of "Study Time" (regardless of whether your child has any homework!). She suggested that the student's grade level multiplied by 10 should equal the average number of minutes of study time per night as a general rule of thumb. Her recommendation was that for maximum attention, students should alternate between 20-30 minutes of focused study time followed by a 10 minute break. Students may of course spend their study time working on homework, but if the child does not have any homework, then the study time might be spent reviewing concepts, studying vocabulary, making flash cards, creating study sheets, rereading class notes, correcting errors on past assignments and tests, reading ahead in the textbook, cleaning out and reorganizing notebooks, updating to-do lists, etc. BVGT would like to thank Gloria for sharing her strategies with us, and we hope that many of you have been successful in utilizing these techniques at home! For more information, please visit www.gloriafrender.com. |
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"Unique Emotional Lives of the Gifted" presented by Dr. Linda Silverman, November 2008
BVGT was proud to feature Dr. Linda Silverman, director of the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development and its subsidiary, the Gifted Development Center, at our well-attended and well-received second presentation of the school year. Dr. Silverman provided explanations of giftedness, asynchronous development, and overexcitibilities which were encouraging and reassuring to parents who sometimes feel isolated and confused by their child's differences and to educators who are seeking to better understand the unique needs of gifted students.
Dr. Silverman first and foremost acknowledged that giftedness creates a different organization of the self. Having a mind that doesn’t ever shut down, with ideas that keep flowing constantly, generating an endless to-do list, can leave children feeling different and out-of-sync with others. Other children, and even adults, might not understand a gifted child's self-imposed high standards. Perfectionism often comes with the territory, but it shouldn’t be considered a "disease"; rather, it can be viewed as an opportunity for gifted students to strive for their personal best. Gifted children often find themselves swinging between peak experiences and devastating lows. They may end up feeling like aliens among their peers, perhaps even hiding their abilities because of their feeling that their differences make them defective. "What is normal?" asked Dr. Silverman, and she began listing the "terrible 'toos' " of the gifted: too sensitive, too intense, too driven, too honest, too idealistic, too moral… too much for other people to handle! It is emotionally damaging for children to feel out of place all day long. This places the gifted at risk in a society that prizes conformity. Dr. Silverman went on to compare the traditional, culturally-bound view of giftedness, which is predominately achievement oriented (based on demonstrated abilities as well as predicted future contributions to society), with a non-achievement oriented viewpoint which is not culturally dependent but which instead focuses on developmental advancement. By this definition, giftedness is "asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm" (Columbus Group, 1991). Developmental advancement may be characterized by development at a faster pace; inquisitiveness; generalization of concepts; advanced verbal or spatial capacities; superb memory; ability to grasp abstract concepts; love of learning; sophisticated sense of humor; preference for complexity; extraordinary insight; passion for justice; profound awareness; and experiencing life with great intensity. Internal asynchrony (uneven rates of internal development) may exist across numerous realms, including physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and skills development. Such uneven internal development can lead to external adjustment difficulties, as these children who might be described as "old heads on young shoulders" often have trouble fitting in with their age peers. Because the calculation of one’s IQ involves the ratio of a person's "mental age" to "chronological age," it reveals the extent of the divergence between these measures. An IQ of 135 might be considered "moderately gifted," while an IQ of 170 would be considered "exceptionally gifted." Gifted children may also have hidden learning disabilities. Detection can be difficult, because giftedness can mask learning disabilities, and learning disabilities may depress IQ scores. Learning disabilities include central auditory processing disorder, visual processing difficulties, sensory processing disorder, spatial disorientation, dyslexia, and attention deficits. Gifted students can compensate to some extent for these weaknesses, but compensation requires more energy and can break down when the child is stressed or fatigued. One positive aspect of the "asynchronous development" definition of giftedness is that asynchrony is not competitive! More asynchrony is not better; rather, the issue is reframed around meeting different needs. We are being challenged to see beyond competitiveness. Asynchrony is both a blessing and a curse in a society where differences are not valued. It can be difficult for those who do not fit in to succeed by society’s standards when they cannot or will not "play the game" at school or at work. Perhaps helping such children to develop their entrepreneurial skills might be a way to direct them constructively. Dr. Silverman has made the incisive observation that "Gifted children not only think differently from their peers, they also feel differently." These differences may appear in the form of heightened emotions, or "overexcitabilities." These can be thought of as an "overabundance" of energies in one or more of the following realms: psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual, and emotional. In supporting emotionally sensitive children, it is crucial that parents and educators provide a safe place for them to feel all of their "up and down" feelings. Dr. Silverman cited a book by author Michael Piechowski on emotional intelligence entitled, "Mellow Out," They Say. If I Only Could: Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright as including studies of teenagers and their overexcitabilities. In conclusion, Dr. Silverman acknowledged that gifted individuals have a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses. "When we look at the gifted from a global perspective, it is clear that the development of each person's gifts benefits all of society. Every human being has a unique contribution to make to the whole. Kierkegaard has been quoted as saying that we all come into this world with 'sealed orders' and we each must discover what those orders are and follow them (Tolan, 1995). Everyone's orders are different. What is the point of competing if we all have a different role to play? Gifted individuals come equipped with the exact combination of unusual strengths and weaknesses--the perfect asynchrony--to fulfill their own sealed orders." BVGT would like to thank Dr. Silverman for sharing her perspectives with us, and we hope that our members found her talk informative and elucidating, regardless of your prior knowledge of the topic. For more information, please visit www.gifteddevelopment.com. |