Unexpected Gifts: Discovering and Nurturing the Strengths in Every Child

As a classroom teacher, one of the greatest lessons I learned was the importance of utilizing instructional flexibility to ensure that my students had access to or acceleration of the curriculum. This flexibility developed when I realized that I had some fixed assumptions and generalizations in my mind about how students learn and that these assumptions could not be fairly applied to every child and every learning situation.

When I humbly came to the conclusion that it was important that I truly listen very closely to my students and to their parents, a whole new world began to open to me. I began to see that there were so many different ways to approach teaching and learning.

Fortunately, this all came at a time when the instructional strategy of differentiation was being promoted at the private school where I was teaching. By delving deeper into the rationale supporting differentiation, I learned so much that would be beneficial for parents to know and would allow them to play a more active part in their child’s education.

Here are a few tips that will help remove classroom barriers to student learning and will promote educational equity.

1. Understand the uniqueness and potential of your child.
2. Accept the necessity of optimistic and persistent thinking.
3. Employ the power of humor to make a positive difference and connect you to others.
4. Read and absorb the Twice-Exceptional Dilemma if you suspect that your child is both gifted and has learning differences or difficulties.
5. Start talking with your child to find out more about his/her learning styles and interests and communicate this information to his/her teacher and administrators.
6. Read anything by Mel Levine and Thomas Armstrong and learn more about differentiation in the classroom. Be sure to check out All Kinds of Minds on the Blogroll for more on Mel Levine.

I’d love to hear any other ideas that you might have regarding this, so please let me know what additional tips you would offer to parents that would help remove the barriers to learning and promote a true environment of educational equity.

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