Unexpected Gifts: Discovering and Nurturing the Strengths in Every Child

Looking for some truly effective teaching strategies for the classroom and at home? I’ve discovered that you don’t have to go far to find a wealth of material. By asking the teacher down the hall, a fellow educator at a conference or one of your carpool parents you will be amazed at what you can learn. Here are two of my own stories that might provide you with some tips on what works in the classroom and at home.

Finding My Instructional (and Parenting) Flexibility
When I decided that all my gifted students should be able to write easily and love writing because they were gifted, I was in for a rude awakening. Every year I was confronted with a few of the gifted students in my class who either had no confidence in their writing abilities or were such perfectionists that they seemed to get stuck during some phase of the writing process. It wasn’t until I allowed my students to give me more direction regarding their writing learning styles and I gave them more writing options that I truly learned the magic of instructional flexibility. Doug Kutner, a noted Portland, Oregon psychologist who specializes in helping gifted children and adolescents, was truly instrumental in providing me with a fundamental basis for the rationale behind the need for flexibility, especially with teaching writing. What he has to say about children and writing will provide useful insights that will be helpful to both teachers and parents: http://dougkutner.com/pub_toc.htm. Thanks to the lessons I learned from listening to the children and the wisdom of the researchers, I found my instructional flexibility and began to better meet the needs of all my students.

Learning How to Cultivate a Playful Environment and Use My Sense of Humor
Life, if you think about it, is sometimes a laughing matter. Our plans, so carefully laid, don’t always turn out the way we hope. Lessons we develop for our classroom don’t always go they way they should. As parents, we don’t always get the cooperation or respect we expect from our children. In all these examples, one thing we can retain and control is our sense of humor. I learned in working with gifted children and their families that having a sense of humor was key to survival as a teacher. Humor reduced my stress level, built relationships with children and parents and developed creativity and problem solving skills in my students. Finding, developing and utilizing my sense of humor came as a result of personal reflection and investigation of some helpful humor resources such as the Humor Project, http://www.humorproject.com/ and Diane Looman’s, http://www.dianaloomans.com/, wonderful book, The Laughing Classroom. Once I tapped into my sense of humor, I was able to transform myself as a teacher and later as a parent and spouse in ways I could never have dreamed possible.

I am confident that each of you reading blog post has a story or two to tell of what works in your classroom or home. Please consider taking the time to share your story so we all can learn from each other. Thank you!:)

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