If you're a gifted teacher, you probably know the feeling: there are always more ideas than there is time.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to start these Mentor Notes. After many years of working with gifted learners and gifted educators, I've collected a lot of ideas, resources, lessons learned, and things I wish someone had told me along the way.
Each month, I'll share a short note about something I've been thinking about in gifted education—along with an occasional free resource you can take right into your classroom.
For August, let's start where I think our work should always start:
Start With the Student
August has a way of making us think about everything we need to teach.
Units to plan. Materials to organize. Schedules to figure out. Goals to write. Assessments to give. And, of course, all of those great ideas we promised ourselves we would try this year. But before we get too far into planning what our gifted students will do, I want to encourage you to spend a little time discovering who they are.
Gifted learners come to us with so much more than an identification or a test score. They bring interests, questions, worries, strengths, passions, quirky areas of expertise, big ideas, and sometimes very strong opinions about what they do—and absolutely do not—want to learn!
Some will tell you everything within the first five minutes.
Others may take weeks before you begin to see what really makes them light up.
That's why one of my favorite ways to begin the year is simply by getting curious about my students.
What are you interested in?
What do you wonder about?
What are you really good at?
What would you love to learn if you could choose anything?
What makes school interesting to you?
Their answers can tell us so much.
More importantly, asking the questions sends an important message:
I want to know you as a learner.
And that relationship becomes the starting point for so much of what comes next—differentiation, independent projects, meaningful challenge, student choice, goal setting, and even those conversations we sometimes need to have when learning gets hard.
Your August Mentor Challenge
Before you start filling every minute of your gifted programming, leave a little room to discover your students first.
I've created a Student Interest Survey you can use to help begin those conversations.
Don't worry about turning every interest into a project or immediately redesigning your curriculum around their answers. Just listen. Notice patterns. Ask follow-up questions.
You might be surprised by what you learn.
And sometime later this year, when you're searching for the perfect way to challenge a student who seems disengaged, you may find yourself coming right back to something they told you in August.
That's the beauty of starting with the student.
You've got this!
Felicia Murillo
Gifted & Talented Specialist
Murillo Consulting LLC
This Month's Freebie
A simple beginning-of-the-year resource to help you discover more about your students' interests, strengths, curiosities, and ideas for their learning.