One of the signs that a child is truly gifted and talented is the inability to be a team player. Gifted kids learn early that others are likely to reject their ideas… or beat them at the game… or be better or more popular than them. When in a group, it often only takes one rejection to cause the gifted child to disengage. Being a “team player” is a desirable comment on a recommendation for camp or college or a job, though. So, how do we get our gifted youth to risk rejection and realize that being a part of a team is not “selling out”?
When families tour our school, one of the first things they notice is the absence of individual student desks. All of our classrooms utilize tables. We do this on purpose. We are teaching our kids to be team players. Some of our instruction falls under the label “cooperative learning,” but we rarely make the grade a group grade. Individuals can disagree. It’s the process that utilizes the grouping. In my vocabulary groupings, I encourage the kids to express their disagreements, to argue their points, I might say. Doing this repeatedly, the students learn how to make their points without angering everyone or getting angry themselves.
Within the student bodies of both the elementary and the secondary, we also have multi-aged houses similar to what you see in the Harry Potter series. These groupings allow for mentoring and modeling opportunities and create camaraderie and team pride.
All of this will make our gifted students more likely to be team players in their work. Why be a team player? Because, hopefully, the gifted adult will find a job that aids others in some way, and a team working to meet these needs is always better than just one person.
There is a growing trend in many colleges that does not build team players. This trend is “group projects.” It would seem that a group project would be just like a department working together on the job to complete a task. The only problem is that the stakes are much higher on the job than in college, and because of this, many employees can work together to succeed because their jobs or bonuses or such are on the line. In college, it’s just a grade, and unfortunately, some college students don’t care about theirs. Many college students have figured out that this is just a way for teachers to keep from having F students. I tell my gifted students that professors will put them into groups of three with one mediocre partner and one that the professor fears will fail. The idea is that the gifted student will want so badly to succeed that he will carry the dead weight of the slacker member. Then the teacher gives the gifted student an A and the slacker a C. The slacker is happy, the professor is happy, and the college president can brag that he has successful students. Only the gifted student is upset.
If you don’t believe that gifted kids value workers, you need to come visit my school. My kids will be nice to slackers, but they will avoid working with them like the plague. For their sake, I’ve made a rule that students in 8th grade and beyond cannot stay if their GPA is below 2.5. Am I preparing them well for the outside world? You bet.
I have warned them that, in the early years of their careers, they will have some slacker fellow workers. They will have to make decisions regarding making up for the slack, visiting HR and risking being hated, or quitting. I’ve encouraged them to get the experience they need, and then go be their own boss. After all, leaders are what we are making at our school. The best leaders have been under some of the worst bosses. It takes seeing the worst to know what not to do. So, I ready my kids for the inevitable and tell them how to use the experience for their growth. The idea is to have a group of all “team players,” not a Little Red Hen situation.
Many people marvel at the fact that two generations of our family work together at our school. Believe me, it was hard at first, and there are still rough days. But not so many nowadays. The trick is to be team players. We each have different duties and different strengths, but we all have one goal: the education of gifted children. I feel very confident that the addition of my daughter and her fiancé will only strengthen our team!
- Michelle