Be ready for the leap

Just the right height. (From the collection of the National Media Museum, UK, 1935)

I wrote yesterday about my reluctance to push a student through developmentally inappropriate material on a too-fast timeline. There is a flip side, however. Learning is not linear, and it’s important to recognize when a student is actually ready to take a leap.

Here’s the uncomfortable part: It may be before you’re ready, and they may leap right over you.

A friend of mine tells the story of a college course in which a fellow student asked, in the context of a philosophical discussion, “What is democracy?” Meanwhile, two other fellow students snickered to each other in the back. “He doesn’t know what democracy is?” The students were so busy feeling superior that they didn’t realize that they were completely missing the depth of the conversation around them.

These kinds of moments happen with gifted people all the time.

A student might be socially awkward and have the handwriting of a child five years younger while also being capable of startling insights. His teacher may overlook his ideas because they aren’t showing up in the expected package.

A student’s skills and knowledge could befuddle a teacher because they aren’t following the expected sequence. The student can skip from level one to level ten — and can’t do level three.

A student’s abilities may surpass the teacher’s to the degree that the teacher cannot even recognize them. It’s as though the student is manifesting colors that are not part of the spectrum that the teacher can see.

It can be really intimidating to teach someone who is profoundly gifted. “Teaching” isn’t the right word for what’s happening. I worked with a child who, at age three, could quickly work out any melody on the piano, though his chubby little fingers could barely keep up with his ear. He also had perfect pitch, meaning he could hear a note and know that it was, say, a B-flat. I had to throw out everything I thought I knew about working with very young children. I also had to completely let go of the notions I had of helping him to build a technical foundation, learn to read music, or play smoothly. He couldn’t do these things, but what he could do was incredible. Ultimately, it was better for him to work with a teacher who had also grown up with perfect pitch and who had also taught himself to play by ear as a young child. He functioned more as a guide than a teacher.

Even though the best strategy might be to simply get out of the way, gifted students can still benefit from the tactics we provide. When one of our math students blazed through trigonometry and precalculus in eighth grade, he didn’t really need our help. We provided him with quality materials and cheered him on. However, we had helped him lay the groundwork back in sixth and seventh grade by teaching him how to write out the steps of a problem instead of keeping it all in his head. Upon realizing that “doing it in your head” isn’t the marker of success in middle school math, he started to look at his math career differently. He became driven by his own goals instead of simply trying to be the best in the class.

Students’ gifts show up in surprising ways. It is hard to be ready, because their leaps are, by their very nature, challenging to recognize. You can encourage the leaps deliberately by regularly offering questions and activities that have no “ceiling.” For instance, in a literature discussion, you might ask a question that leaves room for interpretation. In math or science, you might provide sophisticated puzzles or brain teasers that require lateral thinking or connecting ideas in an unusual way. In a one-on-one foreign language or music lesson, you might demonstrate something new and then hesitate before you show the student how to do it, giving them the opportunity to figure it out themselves. You might make high-level resources available for students to peruse, like a college biology textbook or a classic literary work. By making room for students to achieve remarkable things, they just might do it.

As you see these leaps happen, be prepared with the next steps, whether the next step is for them to move to the next chapter, a different class, or a different teacher. It can be hard on the ol’ ego to see just how easily someone can grasp a concept that you struggled with for weeks or to see someone who is a fraction of your age perform a skill with more finesse than you, but if you accept it readily and help such a student move forward on her own path, you will be serving her tremendously well.