The Gift of Gifted?

“All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talent.” ~John F. Kennedy

This was one of the quotes that Dr. Patricia Gatto-Walden, Ph.D. shared with students and teachers on her recent visit.

On Thursday, September 8th, 2011, Dr. Patricia Gatto-Walden, Ph.D., an expert and counselor for gifted and advanced students, came to Citrus County to give a presentation to our gifted, middle and high schools students. She also gave training to a number of our teachers and administrators. This is not Dr. Gatto-Walden’s first presentation in Citrus County. Dr. Gatto-Walden has come to Citrus several times in the past giving presentations.  After each of her visits, several parents and teachers would ask me if I had an opportunity to attend her presentations.  I unfortunately had not. So I was most excited, this time, to be able to attend both her student presentation and teacher training.

Dr. Patti Talks to the Students

“Dr. Patti” as she asked the students to call her, was most invested in empowering the students to better understand why they often learn differently than their peers. Understanding a gifted person is often complex and multifaceted but Dr. Patti used examples that were clear to the students, and me.  One example that Dr. Patti used was “comparing the students to television sets”. She explained that a “Typical Student Television Set” would receive (or process) 3 channels. The “Gifted Student Television Set” would receive (or process) about 80 channels. The “Exceptionally Gifted Student Television Set” would receive (or process) about 500 channels and the “Profoundly Gifted Student Television Set” would receive (or process) about 5,000+ channels. This means that while the average student is able to process in their brain about three or so pieces of information and communication at a time the gifted student is able to process approximately eighty pieces of information. Dr. Patti shared with the students that an average student, or person, needs to hear or see a piece of information typically 6 to 7 times for it to be learned while a Gifted students needs typically only to hear or see the information 2 or 3 times to learn it. This can be frustrating for both the student and teacher as the student has learned it and moved on and if they don’t have something new to learn then their mind begins to wander and they become bored and/or sometimes act out. Knowing and understanding this, and becoming more self-aware, Dr. Patti explains, helps both the student and teacher to self-modify their learning. Another important reflection Dr. Patti shared was the “Imposter Syndrome” which often affects the gifted girl students much more often than the gifted boy students. The examples she shared were of what typically (not always) happens with a girl who has Imposter Syndrome. A gifted girl student takes a Math exam and gets an “A” and when she shares how she did she will often say things like, “Wow I was lucky that test was easy”, or “it is good that the teacher covered that as I wouldn’t have passed otherwise” or maybe “the teacher gave an easy test”. On the other hand the gifted boy student who gets an “A” will say, “I am great in math” or “I knew every answer”. Then she shared what often happens in reverse is If the same gifted girl comes back with a “C” she will often say, “See, I told them I am not smart in Math”, or “I did not try hard enough”, or maybe “I feel bad I let the teacher (or my parents) down”. In the same situation the gifted goy student may say if getting a “C”, “that test was stupid”, “I didn’t want to pass it anyway”, or maybe “the teacher didn’t know the right questions to ask”. This syndrome can be devastating to the success of our young women.  The person who often plays the greatest, and most critical role with these young women, are their fathers, the male teachers and coaches in their life. I implore you if you are a father, male teacher or male coach to empower our young women, lift them up and give them the great confidence they need. We must fill up their “cup of life” with so much confidence, love, support and compliance, so that when they face the negatives in middle and high schools (and they will) their “cup” can handle the negatives that they will face.

Double Labeled Gifted Learners

Double-Labeled gifted children are those that are physically or emotionally handicapped in some way and who also have learning disabilities. Often the handicap or disability is what are primarily treated or addressed first and thus the gifted programs do not always identify these children, nor do they offer differentiated programming that addresses and integrates their gifted special needs. This is another reason I have become a supporter of the Florida Department of Education having gifted students under the Exceptional Student Education department.  Dr. Patti shared the one of her own children is “double labeled” being both “Gifted” and “Severely Dyslexic”.

There was just so much information Dr. Patti covered that it is impossible to adequately share it all with you, but I encourage you, if you have the opportunity, to attend one of her next presentations when she comes to Citrus County.  You will learn so much helpful information.

Gifted Resources

• Hoagies Gifted – www.hoagiesgifted.org
• Davidson Institute for Talented Development – www.davidsongifted.org
• National Association for Gifted Children – www.nagc.org
• Florida Association for Gifted Children – www.flagifted.org
• SENG: Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted – www.sengifted.org
• Institute for Educational Advancement – www.educationaladvancement.org
• NEAG: Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development – www.gifted.uconn.edu
• World Council for Gifted and Talented Children – www.worldconference2011.org
• ERIC: Clearinghouse for Disabilities and Gifted Education – www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric

Comments Off on The Gift of Gifted?
Filed under: News & Updates

“Proceeds benefit the Friends of the Citrus County Library System.  These moneys go directly to the library for  more eBooks, more Wii games more Teen and Tween events.” ~Thomas

Friends of the Citrus County Library System (FOCCLS) Fall Book Sale

Sept 16-20, 2011

Citrus County Auditorium
(By the fairgrounds on US 41 S. Inverness)
Click here for MAP

Friday, Sept 16th (Opening Night Sale)
5:00 pm – 8:00 pm ($5 donation, 12 and under free)

“Super” Saturday, Sept 17th, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
To celebrate the FOCCLS 10 Year Anniversary, stop by the book sale on Saturday and watch as books come alive! With special costumed guests milling around, you might bump into a favorite character or author from a well-loved book. The Citrus Clowns will offer ballons and face painting in the morning.

“Special” Sunday, Sept 18th, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
On Sunday, you can cruise the book sale aisles serenaded by the bluegrass song stylings of the Broken Home Children. Talk about atmosphere!

Monday, Sept 19th, 10:00 am – 7:00 pm (Half-price day)

Tuesday, Sept 20th, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm ($3 per bag day)

FOCCLS spends all year gathering, sorting, and processing the books, movies, CDs and more that you’ll find at their semi-annual book sale. Most books are only $1 – $3, and the selection is HUGE!

For more information: http://foccls.blogspot.com/2011/08/bountiful-harvest-for-book-lovers.html

Comments Off on Friends of the Citrus County Library System (FOCCLS) Fall Book Sale
Filed under: News & Updates

“Fellow Board Member Pat Deutschman shared the article below with me and I enjoyed it so much I wanted to share it with you all.  Not only did I well understand the challenges Schultz shared, but what is often the case is like Schultz parents can identify how they learned about their own learning disability (or challenge) when their own child’s learning disability was identified.” ~Thomas

Words Failed, Then Saved Me

Philip Schultz is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the author of the forthcoming memoir “My Dyslexia.”

By PHILIP SCHULTZ, NY Times Published: September 3, 2011

Repeating third grade at a new school, after having been asked to leave my old one for hitting kids who made fun of my perceived stupidity, I was placed in the “dummy class.” There were three of us, separated from our classmates at a table in the corner of the room. One day, the teacher, who seldom spoke to us since it was understood that most of what she taught was beyond the reach of our intelligence, placed books in our hands and whispered that we should sit there quietly “pretending to read.” The principal was coming.

It was not the most outlandish thing she might’ve said, given how little was known about learning disabilities in the early 1950s, and how little training a teacher in the poorest section of Rochester would have received. And her request seemed reasonable to me. I couldn’t tie my shoes, tell time or left from right, or recreate musical notes or words. I not only couldn’t read but often couldn’t hear or understand what was being said to me — by the time I’d processed the beginning of a sentence, the teacher was well on her way through a second or third. When I did have something to say I couldn’t find the words with which to say it, or if I could, forgot how to pronounce them.

My situation then seemed hopeless; I had no idea what a learning disability was, or that it had nothing to do with intelligence. Being asked to pretend I wasn’t as stupid as I feared made perfect sense. Only in recollection does the pain of such a moment make itself felt.

So this summer’s news that research is increasingly tying dyslexia not just to reading, but also to the way the brain processes spoken language, was no surprise to me. I found many ways around my dyslexia, but I still have trouble transforming words into sounds. I have to memorize and rehearse before reading anything aloud, to avoid embarrassing myself by mispronouncing words. And because learning a foreign language is sheer torture to dyslexics (even though it’s a requirement in many schools), to this day I can’t attend a High Holy Day service at my synagogue without feeling I don’t belong there, because I can’t speak Hebrew and must pretend to read my prayer book.

When I did finally learn to read, my teachers didn’t have much to do with it. I was 11, and even my school-appointed tutors had given up on me. My mother read the one thing I would listen to — Blackhawk comics — over and over again, hoping against hope that by some leap of faith or chance I would start to identify letters and then learn to arrange them into words and sentences, and begin the intuitive, often magical, process of turning written language into spoken language.

One night, lying in bed as she read to me, I realized that if I was ever going to learn to read I would have to teach myself. The moon glowing outside my window, I remember, seemed especially interested in my predicament, perhaps attempting its own kind of encouragement. Was it a dummy, too? I wondered. If only I could be another boy, a boy my age who could sound out words and read and write like every other kid I knew.

I willed myself into being him. I invented a character who could read and write. Starting that night, I’d lie in bed silently imitating the words my mother read, imagining the taste, heft and ring of each sound as if it were coming out of my mouth. I imagined being able to sound out the words by putting the letters together into units of rhythmic sound and the words into sentences that made sense. I imagined the words and their sounds being a kind of key with which I would open an invisible door to a world previously denied me.

And suddenly I was reading. I didn’t know then that I was beginning a lifelong love affair with the first-person voice and that I would spend most of my life inventing characters to say all the things I wanted to say. I didn’t know that I was to become a poet, that in many ways the very thing that caused me so much confusion and frustration, my belabored relationship with words, had created in me a deep appreciation of language and its music, that the same mind that prevented me from reading had invented a new way of reading, a method that I now use to teach others how to overcome their own difficulties in order to write fiction and poetry. (It’s perhaps not surprising that many famous writers are said to have struggled with dyslexia, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and W. B. Yeats.)

We know now that dyslexia is about so much more than just mixing up letters — that many dyslexics have difficulty with rhythm and meter and word retrieval, that they struggle to recognize voices and sounds. It’s my profound hope that our schools can use findings like these to better teach children who struggle to read, to help them overcome their limitations, and to help them understand that it’s not their fault.

We knew so much less when I was a child. Then, all I wanted and needed, when I learned so painstakingly to read and then to write, was to find a way to be less alone. Which is, of course, what spoken and written language is really all about.

But poetry should be a matter of passion, not survival.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/with-dyslexia-words-failed-me-and-then-saved-me.html

Comments Off on NY Times: Words Failed, Then Saved Me (Philip Schultz, My Dyslexia)
Filed under: News & Updates