Characteristics of an Effective Teacher of the Gifted

• Comfortable providing a wide range of learning materials, including those that are appropriate for older students. Don’t lock your students into grade level only materials. Arrange with your media specialist to allow your students to check out higher level books, utilize resource materials for higher grades, network with teachers in upper grades to borrow appropriate materials. Just make sure they have the basic foundation before they go soaring.
  
• Able and willing to locate and organize resources or to steer gifted kids to other people who know how to do this. Build up a “library” of community resources – business leaders, local government officials, public service workers, Toastmasters organizations, etc. Encourage your students to participate in local charity events and/or develop their own as a service to the community.
  
• Aware that gifted students need less time with practice and more time with complex and abstract learning tasks. Use alternative assessment tools – pretest to determine which parts of the curriculum are already mastered, use learning contracts for those who are able to work ahead, establish work stations with multi-level and diverse activities to demonstrate mastery, encourage students to develop their own activities.
  
• Comfortable communicating with students about their individual progress. Speak honestly regarding progress, where students need improvement and how they can “fix” something. Don’t lecture, ask the students how they feel they can improve – key words are discuss, conference – come to consensus – serve as the guide.
  
• Able and willing to advocate for what gifted students need. Believe wholeheartedly in what you are doing, be the spokesperson for your students, you know what they need, you appreciate their diversity, you know where they can go – help them get there!.

• Able and willing to encourage parents of gifted students to find and take advantage of experiences available for their children through college and community resources. Learning does not start and end in the classroom – as you go back to the first quality on this list – focus on the lifelong learner phrase – provide parents with information and contacts to help their child continue to learn in exciting, motivating programs

Don’t be afraid to not have all of the answers. Your students will see right through you if you try and explain away something you don’t really know. You will maintain their respect if you are honest with them. Tell them “I don’t know the answer to your question, but I will be happy to do some research and give you an answer later.” Then follow-through with your promise. Show them you are interested in furthering your learning as well as theirs.

As you have discovered in the previous weeks, the gifted learner is not necessarily going to walk into your classroom, sit down at her desk, and patiently remain on task while you stand in front of the classroom and lecture from the textbook. The learning styles and speed at which concepts are grasped vary as widely as the number of students in your classroom – not only that – they vary from subject to subject. The qualities listed above become your tools for survival!

Jim DeLisle and Judy Galbraith suggest you also participate in a gifted support group with other teachers of the gifted, keep parents informed of your program’s goals, and, most of all – enjoy your students! (From When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers.)