Monday, November 9, 2020

The COVID crisis and the gifted child


We know for a fact that the COVID-19 crisis is impacting the lives of the world’s children and their education in ways we can’t yet begin to quantify. And, the “unparalleled educational disruption is far from over,” the United Nations warned in an August 2020 policy brief.

At Seabury School, our favorite definition of intellectual giftedness comes from Annemarie Roeper, founder of the internationally renowned school that bears her name. 

Giftedness is “a greater awareness, a greater sensitivity, and a greater ability to understand and to transform perceptions into intellectual and emotional experiences." 

So, it should be no surprise that gifted kids experience the COVID pandemic differently in many ways than typically developing kids their age. 

Gifted children experience the world with an added intensity. They develop asynchronously, meaning their intellectual, social, emotional and physical development happen at different rates. As a result, they often intellectually understand things they are not emotionally ready to process. During COVID-19, along with everything else that has happened in 2020, that adds to their potential worry and uncertainty. 

In the best of times, gifted children are often in school programs that are not designed to meet their needs. Because teachers typically do not have training or expertise in the unique needs of gifted students, they often don’t recognize the challenges or know how to best support their gifted students. During COVID, this may be compounded by the shift to distance learning where the focus in many schools has been on minimizing learning deficits for all students rather than providing new challenges for the most capable and where gifted students may find themselves more isolated than ever from intellectual peers who provide support and connection.

We contacted Linda Silverman, founder of the Gifted Development Center in Colorado and expert in the field of gifted education, to get her perspective on what highly capable students need during this crisis. 

“Gifted children need each other. They need to interact with others who share their sensitivity, asynchrony, questioning of the way things are,” she said. “They thrive in special schools and programs with teachers who are trained and experienced in working with the unique needs of the gifted population.”

Since its founding in 1989, Seabury has taken a child-centered approach to meeting the needs of our gifted students, from pre-k through eighth grade. We understand them and have built our program to support them. From the earliest days of the pandemic, it was clear that we would need to apply what we know about our students to our COVID response plans and to be prepared for our students to experience this crisis with the same intensity they bring to most everything else. From the development of our distance learning program to our safety protocols on campus, our plans had to take into account the unique needs and perspectives of our students.  

As we enter our eighth month living with the pandemic, we have learned a great deal. We continue to adjust as we see the impacts on our students. Here are some things to consider:

  • Gifted children often have physical sensitivities. At our school, it is common for kids to need the tags cut out of their clothes, be picky eaters, and be sensitive to certain textures. As we began to think about mask protocols, we realized it would be important for students to bring their own masks. There was no way one kind of mask would work for everyone. By allowing families to work with children to find the style, fabric and fit that works best, we are having success with students wearing masks at school. 
  • Being a gifted child can be lonely. It can be hard to relate peers with different interests, different worries and different kinds of thoughts. As we planned for distance learning, we knew it would be important to provide opportunities for our students to be able to interact with peers who ask the same kinds of questions and experience the same kinds of concerns. It was important for teachers and aides to check in to help kids feel safe, understood and appreciated. We found that check-in routines, small group sharing, advisory groups and time to socialize during virtual meetings help students feel connected, better understood, and less isolated. 
  • Gifted children love to learn. Our program is built on hands-on, inquiry-based explorations where questions from students drive the direction of study and inspire deep dives. As we quickly shifted to distance learning last spring, we knew that our distance-learning program needed to maintain this focus. Students needed opportunities to explore ideas but also to build models and do hands-on science experiments. Building a distance-learning program that relied on one-size-fits-all packets wouldn’t be a good fit for our kids. As a result, distance learning has evolved to include monthly distance-learning boxes with supplies for art projects, science experiments, novel studies and more. Distance-learning projects have been developed with the same kinds of open-ended opportunities for creative exploration and expression that are at the core of in-person school at Seabury.
  • Gifted children need the support of people who understand them, from kids who share their endless questions and sophisticated humor, to adults who recognize that they are smart worriers who need support, encouragement and places where they feel safe. Our school is one of those places for our students. For many, it is the first school environment they’ve been able to truly be themselves. Check-in time with adults and peers, whether on campus or in distance learning, has been vital during this time. We published a Distance Learning Support Tree specific to each class, with contact information for staff members.
  • Gifted children can be prone to worry and existential depression. Teachers need to balance their students’ drive to know and understand with their readiness to emotionally cope with reality. We are not only in a pandemic, but also in a time of unrest in many parts of the world. Our students, even the youngest, feel the tension. We work to balance time for questions with opportunities to process big feelings. Mindfulness practices, community service projects, and time to decompress and have fun help kids manage the oversized emotions that can come with being gifted.
  • Executive function skills include organization, time management, breaking down tasks into smaller parts and managing materials. Those can come later for highly capable students than for typical kids their age. We spend a lot of time in our classrooms, and especially in our virtual classrooms, helping students develop executive function skills so they can turn their incredible insights and unique ideas into finished work. During distance learning, teachers have needed to be innovative to provide the support required for students to navigate virtual meetings, manage their time, learn new platforms and make school at home doable.
  • Passion projects are opportunities for students to learn about things that inspire them. This has been one positive about the pandemic for many gifted students. There’s been time at home to go down rabbit holes, whether it be to learn the origins of black holes, attempt to memorize all the countries on the globe, explore the chemistry of yeast in bread baking, or discover the fertilizer that makes the garden grow best. Time for exploration that sparks imaginations and inspires independent learning is critical for bright kids. Passion projects have long been part of our regular curriculum, but as we developed our distance-learning program, we built in even more time for passion projects. Teachers have shared that it’s been fun during distance learning to see where kids’ interests have taken them.

Growing up gifted can be hard. Growing up gifted during COVID is harder. Thankfully, our kids are resilient, and they are finding ways to thrive in spite of the challenges. Understanding giftedness, providing support and connection, and encouraging self-advocacy and independence can make a huge difference for our students as they navigate these strange and uncertain times. 

Seabury School can provide resources whether your child is an enrolled #seaburykid or one in another situation, who we still fondly think of as a #seaburykid. Please check out www.seabury.org for more information.

– Head of School Sandi Wollum

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