On its own, this short survey provides compelling evidence that the students of MPS know themselves. They know their strengths and weaknesses, and they know good teaching and effective programs when they experience them. They recognize that some aspects of the gifted program are meeting their needs, but their responses give researchers and evaluators solid evidence of where there is room for improvement. The focus on enrichment in elementary school gifted classrooms is lacking or absent in the junior high gifted environment. Acceleration that is the primary emphasis in gifted secondary education is virtually nonexistent in primary grades. Students’ social need for friends is being partially met in the classrooms, but addressing their giftedness and how to live in a non-gifted world is lacking. Although many feel challenged, many others feel that the combination of easy regular classrooms with challenging gifted classrooms teaches them to be lazy and avoid working hard, because no real weight (grades) is attached to their elementary gifted education. Adding student responses to the conversation lends support for the program’s reevaluation and reform.
I couldn’t realistically conduct a strictly scientific survey, and I am far from a certified researcher, but I did receive responses that ranged from “I wish everyone could have the experience I had in Mesa” to “I tolerated the teachers but wasn’t particularly challenged or mentally stimulated.” This survey was not intended to be scientific or definitive or all encompassing—it was more of a trial balloon to see if my conclusions were headed in the right direction.
Of the 43 respondents, 31 began gifted services between seven and eight years of age, 6 started at nine years of age, 2 began at ten years of age, and one student responded for each age between 11-14. From the students’ responses, conclusions about program philosophies on all three levels (elementary, junior high, and high school) were reached. Answers were divided into four categories: social/emotional needs, workload/curriculum assessment, how challenge plays into gifted education, and quality of teaching. While the limitations of the sample are significant, the data is intriguing and shouldn’t be dismissed as irrelevant even while acknowledging the study’s shortcomings.
Social/Emotional Needs
Many respondents had never thought about the possibility of gifted education addressing their social/emotional needs. Most stated that being in gifted classes/classrooms helped them make connections with “kids who talked about things I cared about” and “being around like-minded individuals was a real treat.” “Most of the others in the class were awkward and nerdy like me, so we could all be awkward and nerdy together. It was pretty great.” “I was still weird, but this was a good weird.” One student wrote: “While I wasn’t suddenly super popular, I felt respect for and from my peers. I didn’t feel like I had to simplify my thoughts before sharing them.” Another stated that pullout classes in elementary school made her feel “a bit too . . . normal, if that makes sense. Normal is a good thing, sometimes. In regular class, I always felt slightly out of place.” Gifted education also “pushed kids out of our shells—you can’t go through AP classes without having that weakness challenged.”
Not every response was positive, however. While some kids forged lifelong bonds with their gifted classmates, others hated leaving their friends in the regular classrooms. One respondent stated that gifted classes didn’t serve his social/emotional needs “at all. It was just assumed that because I was smarter than the regular student, I was on a higher social and emotional level. By junior high, I was introducing myself as the annoying kid who also was a know-it-all. I still struggle with low self-esteem, but do not let on.” Another respondent wrote, “This may be one area that could have been improved in the program. I was on the shy side of the spectrum, and my relationship skills were weak, which made later life more challenging.” Another stated that his social/emotional needs were never addressed. “My experiences in gifted programs made me feel smarter, which was probably not a good thing. I wish I didn’t know I was as smart and had learned to work harder.” Social skills training in gifted classes/clusters could teach kids that it isn’t appropriate to “act rude or exclude kids in normal classes,” or brag “about how they didn’t have to work very hard and they still got good grades,” and how off-putting that behavior is to others.
Workload/Curriculum Assessment
Gifted kids as a group are highly observant, and their analyses of curriculum provided good insight into MPS’s current programs. At the elementary level, most respondents enjoyed the pullout program, since it provided freedom from the drudgery and boredom most students faced in the regular classroom—“It was frustrating to hear the teacher explain the same thing 10 times to the same 3 students.” Students participated in creative and critical thinking, problem solving, and completed “less busy work” on those days. The creative approaches to projects lingered with students—“I will always remember the portable classroom we turned into an aquarium” or “I still have the binder of information [from 6th grade] I compiled from the 2000 presidential campaign. That election helped lead me to major in political science.” Kids received hands-on exposure to technology, biology, and algebra much earlier than their classmates.
In junior high and high school, students “enjoyed the different ways of learning, instead of sitting in a classroom being lectured at all day every day” and “enjoyed being a part of an intelligent conversation.” They appreciated the flexibility available to tailor their class schedules to include advanced classes that developed their strengths, while not being required to take advanced classes in their weak areas. One student commented, “I didn’t take five minutes on a worksheet that everyone else took twenty to complete. I never had free time to read. Normally, that would annoy me. Here? I liked what I was doing enough to be okay with that.” One student concluded, “I don’t have any complaints. I felt like it was a strong program and that . . . I received good advice and took the classes that were right for me.”
More than half of the respondents were not as satisfied with their experiences. In elementary school, gifted class attendance “made life difficult when I developed a hatred to being in my regular class,” because “I am gifted every day . . . not just one day a week,” and “the experiences and curriculum were fun, however they did not significantly impact my learning of concepts and advanced thinking skills.” One student commented about the lack of differentiation: “The gifted program was not personalized in any way and did not address my strengths or my weaknesses.” One respondent thought that a dedicated daily gifted class would be preferable, “where we learn all our basic curriculum and also research projects and critical thinking stations mixed in.”
By the time students reached junior high, many said, “it seemed as if the accelerated classes simply gave the teachers permission to assign lots and lots of additional and unnecessary work.” Some students felt that “none of the accelerated classes ever really seemed very challenging,” filled with “more work rather than different work—work that could be more in depth and challenging. I didn’t like feeling like I was giving up my free time for nothing in return.” Some voiced concerns over the district lowering the qualifications to allow other students in the gifted classes, while one student thought that anyone should be allowed to take gifted classes if they wanted to work hard.
An underlying concern of the gifted kids was the lack of creativity and enrichment as school progressed. “Schools are really good at streamlining things—including students, which sometimes turns an innovative mind into a results-producing machine. Gifted programs could do less with acceleration and more with expansion of mental ability. I think if we could find a way to give students more individual attention, that would help the program fit individual needs better (both pace of learning and type of learning).”
How Challenge Plays into Gifted Education
Challenge was the word used most when respondents discussed the level of work in their gifted experiences. Most were unhappy with the level of challenge provided in regular classrooms: “My regular classes made me not want to go to school, . . . even though I understood that we needed to go at a slower pace, we would still go over the subject for days and I didn’t learn anything new and I lived for the days that I went to [gifted class].” Another common term was bored—“regular class made me feel bored, never appreciated or validated.” “In third grade, I got to the point where I would just race with a friend to see who could finish their classwork the fastest.” Some of the frustration began before kids were even formally identified as gifted: “As early as 5-6 years old, I understood that many of the activities I was required to participate in had no benefit to me, but I was expected to follow along. Early in my first grade year, I threw a crying fit and when my mother asked why, I told her and my teacher that I was bored.”
Other common responses included the words frustrated, monotonous, busy work, and slow. This inherent lack of challenge in the classroom had some seriously negative side effects: “It was easier to do less and feel more successful in regular classrooms.” “I didn’t have much tolerance for it, and over time, it taught me I could get away with the minimum and still be smarter. I’ve become lazy because of it. It also taught me how great I can be at manipulating teachers (terrible?) and bending rules and deadlines to my own convenience.” “Truth is, I rarely had to work hard and could usually skate by with a minimum amount of effort. I think my gifted/regular education primarily taught me to fly under the radar and do the minimum requirement to not draw attention.”
When referring to their participation/level of challenge in gifted classes, the responses were much more positive. Experiences in a classroom full of gifted kids were often the first ones students had where they were not always the very best. “The math that we did in [gifted class] was way more challenging and was actually hard for me for a change.” “It showed me that I had weaknesses and that that was ok. It taught me that it’s ok to struggle with something and that mastering a difficult concept after struggling with it for days is exhilarating. I don’t think I really knew how to work hard or deal with failure until I began gifted education.” “Advanced classes pushed me to do better and challenged me” was a common response, especially when referring to AP classes in high school. “College was a cake walk compared to the AP classes I took.”
Other high school responses included this: “In 10th grade, we had a large class of about 60. Most of us, myself included, failed the first exams. I had never been challenged like that before. It was a wake-up call and the beginning of a push to kick myself into high gear academically. That experience cemented my desire to always rise to the top in everything I do.” One young woman wrote: ”I had big dreams to become a doctor and I loved that I felt like I was on the path to accomplish that. I am still working towards the same dream of becoming a doctor. In two years, I will accomplish that goal. I think my education prepared me for the rigors of medical school because it taught me how to work.”
Quality of Teaching
At the high school level, students responded with “I think the administration should focus more on the opinion of the students in the AP classes and learn their opinions of the teacher and not focus so much on the test scores because many of the students could get good scores from almost any teacher. A teacher teaches the basics and we teach ourselves the rest, because I feel like I did that in a couple classes.” “There were a few good teachers, outliers, who pushed us harder and made us responsible for quality projects, but they were rare.” “Some teachers taught me how to talk my way out of trouble, and others taught me how to avoid it in the first place.” Some of these teachers were so unsuccessful that “I didn’t do exceptional projects and still got good evaluations. Most of the junior high and high school teachers were not up to my expectations.”
In addition, although most students had positive experiences in elementary gifted classes, the teacher was usually the deciding factor. A gifted teacher didn’t support one of her students missing gifted class to attend a field trip with special needs kids and made the student feel guilty about it. “Did it really matter that I would miss one day of [gifted class]? No. It didn’t.” One student felt better in regular class because, “in gifted class, the teachers just assumed that I knew because I was gifted, but in general classes they would help me.” One student said, “People who were not gifted taught gifted classes. This made it difficult for them to relate.” Instruction varied from school to school, and “I remember not feeling like I was learning anything once I switched schools.” One of the worst incriminations of the teaching in MPS came from four students from the same elementary school, none of whom like the teacher’s approach. When asked if there were anything about the program that could be improved, one girl wrote, “The teacher, no don’t put that, it’s mean.”
For the most part, however, gifted students found friends, advocates, and allies in their gifted teachers. These teachers brought passion, enthusiasm, creativity, and exceptional teaching to their classrooms—caring about learning for its own sake. “Ms. K was very talented in making each of her students feel as if they were getting one-on-one tutoring.” and “As much as I wasn’t a science person, I loved my AP chemistry and physics teachers and they taught me to work hard at something that doesn’t come easily.” “I loved Mrs. D.” “I already enjoyed math but that last year with Mr. V. solidified my desire to pursue math at college.” Some became friends with their teachers: “I loved discussing things with them outside of class, whether or not they had to do with the subject material. I felt like they respected me, and I respected them.” Some of those teachers could “actually catch my lazy tendencies and wouldn’t take any crap from me. I learned to respect them all the more for it.” “For the most part, my experiences were phenomenal. My first [gifted] teacher, Mrs. M., was my hero back then. Actually, she still is.” After describing a creative thinking exercise, this student concluded, “Looking back, I realize how incredible that moment was for me. Mrs. M. was truly teaching critical thinking. She encouraged us to use all the tools we had to problem solve however we could, even if it wasn’t the way she had planned. I think that’s a really rare quality in teachers and is lacking from most curriculums.” These kinds of teachers “effortlessly made it obvious to their students that they were passionate about what they taught.”
Conclusions
Evidence suggests that a more complete survey, done by MPS and using its database of gifted MPS students to generate more responses, would be justifiable, more comprehensive, and more generalizable to the school district at large. Possible questions for future surveys include: What was your final GPA when you graduated, and do you feel like those grades fairly reflect your abilities? Where are MPS gifted graduates now? Are they on the path they envisioned when they were young? How and why did that vision change? Other suggestions could include sorting responses by school and by teacher, allowing MPS to evaluate student opinions on individual teachers and their teaching skills and styles.
Mesa Public Schools Gifted Students’ Survey
I know many MPS gifted kids (previous and current), and with limited (read: no) resources and an even more restricted timeframe, I quickly compiled two short-answer questionnaires—one geared toward younger students and one for high school students and graduates. I posted an open invitation on Facebook to all current and former gifted students of MPS, referring them to the questionnaires and encouraging them to share the survey with their friends. Within a week, I had 43 responses to my survey, with respondents ranging from elementary school kids to not-so-recent graduates. All student responses are quoted directly from their survey responses.I couldn’t realistically conduct a strictly scientific survey, and I am far from a certified researcher, but I did receive responses that ranged from “I wish everyone could have the experience I had in Mesa” to “I tolerated the teachers but wasn’t particularly challenged or mentally stimulated.” This survey was not intended to be scientific or definitive or all encompassing—it was more of a trial balloon to see if my conclusions were headed in the right direction.
Of the 43 respondents, 31 began gifted services between seven and eight years of age, 6 started at nine years of age, 2 began at ten years of age, and one student responded for each age between 11-14. From the students’ responses, conclusions about program philosophies on all three levels (elementary, junior high, and high school) were reached. Answers were divided into four categories: social/emotional needs, workload/curriculum assessment, how challenge plays into gifted education, and quality of teaching. While the limitations of the sample are significant, the data is intriguing and shouldn’t be dismissed as irrelevant even while acknowledging the study’s shortcomings.
Social/Emotional Needs
Many respondents had never thought about the possibility of gifted education addressing their social/emotional needs. Most stated that being in gifted classes/classrooms helped them make connections with “kids who talked about things I cared about” and “being around like-minded individuals was a real treat.” “Most of the others in the class were awkward and nerdy like me, so we could all be awkward and nerdy together. It was pretty great.” “I was still weird, but this was a good weird.” One student wrote: “While I wasn’t suddenly super popular, I felt respect for and from my peers. I didn’t feel like I had to simplify my thoughts before sharing them.” Another stated that pullout classes in elementary school made her feel “a bit too . . . normal, if that makes sense. Normal is a good thing, sometimes. In regular class, I always felt slightly out of place.” Gifted education also “pushed kids out of our shells—you can’t go through AP classes without having that weakness challenged.”
Not every response was positive, however. While some kids forged lifelong bonds with their gifted classmates, others hated leaving their friends in the regular classrooms. One respondent stated that gifted classes didn’t serve his social/emotional needs “at all. It was just assumed that because I was smarter than the regular student, I was on a higher social and emotional level. By junior high, I was introducing myself as the annoying kid who also was a know-it-all. I still struggle with low self-esteem, but do not let on.” Another respondent wrote, “This may be one area that could have been improved in the program. I was on the shy side of the spectrum, and my relationship skills were weak, which made later life more challenging.” Another stated that his social/emotional needs were never addressed. “My experiences in gifted programs made me feel smarter, which was probably not a good thing. I wish I didn’t know I was as smart and had learned to work harder.” Social skills training in gifted classes/clusters could teach kids that it isn’t appropriate to “act rude or exclude kids in normal classes,” or brag “about how they didn’t have to work very hard and they still got good grades,” and how off-putting that behavior is to others.
Workload/Curriculum Assessment
Gifted kids as a group are highly observant, and their analyses of curriculum provided good insight into MPS’s current programs. At the elementary level, most respondents enjoyed the pullout program, since it provided freedom from the drudgery and boredom most students faced in the regular classroom—“It was frustrating to hear the teacher explain the same thing 10 times to the same 3 students.” Students participated in creative and critical thinking, problem solving, and completed “less busy work” on those days. The creative approaches to projects lingered with students—“I will always remember the portable classroom we turned into an aquarium” or “I still have the binder of information [from 6th grade] I compiled from the 2000 presidential campaign. That election helped lead me to major in political science.” Kids received hands-on exposure to technology, biology, and algebra much earlier than their classmates.
In junior high and high school, students “enjoyed the different ways of learning, instead of sitting in a classroom being lectured at all day every day” and “enjoyed being a part of an intelligent conversation.” They appreciated the flexibility available to tailor their class schedules to include advanced classes that developed their strengths, while not being required to take advanced classes in their weak areas. One student commented, “I didn’t take five minutes on a worksheet that everyone else took twenty to complete. I never had free time to read. Normally, that would annoy me. Here? I liked what I was doing enough to be okay with that.” One student concluded, “I don’t have any complaints. I felt like it was a strong program and that . . . I received good advice and took the classes that were right for me.”
More than half of the respondents were not as satisfied with their experiences. In elementary school, gifted class attendance “made life difficult when I developed a hatred to being in my regular class,” because “I am gifted every day . . . not just one day a week,” and “the experiences and curriculum were fun, however they did not significantly impact my learning of concepts and advanced thinking skills.” One student commented about the lack of differentiation: “The gifted program was not personalized in any way and did not address my strengths or my weaknesses.” One respondent thought that a dedicated daily gifted class would be preferable, “where we learn all our basic curriculum and also research projects and critical thinking stations mixed in.”
By the time students reached junior high, many said, “it seemed as if the accelerated classes simply gave the teachers permission to assign lots and lots of additional and unnecessary work.” Some students felt that “none of the accelerated classes ever really seemed very challenging,” filled with “more work rather than different work—work that could be more in depth and challenging. I didn’t like feeling like I was giving up my free time for nothing in return.” Some voiced concerns over the district lowering the qualifications to allow other students in the gifted classes, while one student thought that anyone should be allowed to take gifted classes if they wanted to work hard.
An underlying concern of the gifted kids was the lack of creativity and enrichment as school progressed. “Schools are really good at streamlining things—including students, which sometimes turns an innovative mind into a results-producing machine. Gifted programs could do less with acceleration and more with expansion of mental ability. I think if we could find a way to give students more individual attention, that would help the program fit individual needs better (both pace of learning and type of learning).”
How Challenge Plays into Gifted Education
Challenge was the word used most when respondents discussed the level of work in their gifted experiences. Most were unhappy with the level of challenge provided in regular classrooms: “My regular classes made me not want to go to school, . . . even though I understood that we needed to go at a slower pace, we would still go over the subject for days and I didn’t learn anything new and I lived for the days that I went to [gifted class].” Another common term was bored—“regular class made me feel bored, never appreciated or validated.” “In third grade, I got to the point where I would just race with a friend to see who could finish their classwork the fastest.” Some of the frustration began before kids were even formally identified as gifted: “As early as 5-6 years old, I understood that many of the activities I was required to participate in had no benefit to me, but I was expected to follow along. Early in my first grade year, I threw a crying fit and when my mother asked why, I told her and my teacher that I was bored.”
Other common responses included the words frustrated, monotonous, busy work, and slow. This inherent lack of challenge in the classroom had some seriously negative side effects: “It was easier to do less and feel more successful in regular classrooms.” “I didn’t have much tolerance for it, and over time, it taught me I could get away with the minimum and still be smarter. I’ve become lazy because of it. It also taught me how great I can be at manipulating teachers (terrible?) and bending rules and deadlines to my own convenience.” “Truth is, I rarely had to work hard and could usually skate by with a minimum amount of effort. I think my gifted/regular education primarily taught me to fly under the radar and do the minimum requirement to not draw attention.”
When referring to their participation/level of challenge in gifted classes, the responses were much more positive. Experiences in a classroom full of gifted kids were often the first ones students had where they were not always the very best. “The math that we did in [gifted class] was way more challenging and was actually hard for me for a change.” “It showed me that I had weaknesses and that that was ok. It taught me that it’s ok to struggle with something and that mastering a difficult concept after struggling with it for days is exhilarating. I don’t think I really knew how to work hard or deal with failure until I began gifted education.” “Advanced classes pushed me to do better and challenged me” was a common response, especially when referring to AP classes in high school. “College was a cake walk compared to the AP classes I took.”
Other high school responses included this: “In 10th grade, we had a large class of about 60. Most of us, myself included, failed the first exams. I had never been challenged like that before. It was a wake-up call and the beginning of a push to kick myself into high gear academically. That experience cemented my desire to always rise to the top in everything I do.” One young woman wrote: ”I had big dreams to become a doctor and I loved that I felt like I was on the path to accomplish that. I am still working towards the same dream of becoming a doctor. In two years, I will accomplish that goal. I think my education prepared me for the rigors of medical school because it taught me how to work.”
Quality of Teaching
At the high school level, students responded with “I think the administration should focus more on the opinion of the students in the AP classes and learn their opinions of the teacher and not focus so much on the test scores because many of the students could get good scores from almost any teacher. A teacher teaches the basics and we teach ourselves the rest, because I feel like I did that in a couple classes.” “There were a few good teachers, outliers, who pushed us harder and made us responsible for quality projects, but they were rare.” “Some teachers taught me how to talk my way out of trouble, and others taught me how to avoid it in the first place.” Some of these teachers were so unsuccessful that “I didn’t do exceptional projects and still got good evaluations. Most of the junior high and high school teachers were not up to my expectations.”
In addition, although most students had positive experiences in elementary gifted classes, the teacher was usually the deciding factor. A gifted teacher didn’t support one of her students missing gifted class to attend a field trip with special needs kids and made the student feel guilty about it. “Did it really matter that I would miss one day of [gifted class]? No. It didn’t.” One student felt better in regular class because, “in gifted class, the teachers just assumed that I knew because I was gifted, but in general classes they would help me.” One student said, “People who were not gifted taught gifted classes. This made it difficult for them to relate.” Instruction varied from school to school, and “I remember not feeling like I was learning anything once I switched schools.” One of the worst incriminations of the teaching in MPS came from four students from the same elementary school, none of whom like the teacher’s approach. When asked if there were anything about the program that could be improved, one girl wrote, “The teacher, no don’t put that, it’s mean.”
For the most part, however, gifted students found friends, advocates, and allies in their gifted teachers. These teachers brought passion, enthusiasm, creativity, and exceptional teaching to their classrooms—caring about learning for its own sake. “Ms. K was very talented in making each of her students feel as if they were getting one-on-one tutoring.” and “As much as I wasn’t a science person, I loved my AP chemistry and physics teachers and they taught me to work hard at something that doesn’t come easily.” “I loved Mrs. D.” “I already enjoyed math but that last year with Mr. V. solidified my desire to pursue math at college.” Some became friends with their teachers: “I loved discussing things with them outside of class, whether or not they had to do with the subject material. I felt like they respected me, and I respected them.” Some of those teachers could “actually catch my lazy tendencies and wouldn’t take any crap from me. I learned to respect them all the more for it.” “For the most part, my experiences were phenomenal. My first [gifted] teacher, Mrs. M., was my hero back then. Actually, she still is.” After describing a creative thinking exercise, this student concluded, “Looking back, I realize how incredible that moment was for me. Mrs. M. was truly teaching critical thinking. She encouraged us to use all the tools we had to problem solve however we could, even if it wasn’t the way she had planned. I think that’s a really rare quality in teachers and is lacking from most curriculums.” These kinds of teachers “effortlessly made it obvious to their students that they were passionate about what they taught.”
Conclusions
Evidence suggests that a more complete survey, done by MPS and using its database of gifted MPS students to generate more responses, would be justifiable, more comprehensive, and more generalizable to the school district at large. Possible questions for future surveys include: What was your final GPA when you graduated, and do you feel like those grades fairly reflect your abilities? Where are MPS gifted graduates now? Are they on the path they envisioned when they were young? How and why did that vision change? Other suggestions could include sorting responses by school and by teacher, allowing MPS to evaluate student opinions on individual teachers and their teaching skills and styles.
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