Fostering Resilience in Gifted Education
- Michelle Robinson
- Jan 4
- 2 min read
Nurturing Resilience in Gifted Learners
Today, we're zeroing in on a crucial skill for our gifted students: resilience. It's all about helping them gracefully tackle the ups and downs they face, beyond just acing tests.
What's Resilience All About?
Let's start by defining what we mean by resilience. In its simplest form, resilience is the ability to bounce back from challenges, set back, and failures. It's about facing a tough situation, learning from it, and coming out stronger on the other side. Resilience is our comeback power!
For our gifted students, it's key because their journey presents its own challenges when it comes to resilience. Often our gifted students place such high expectations on themselves, aligning their identity with lack of struggle. This causes intense pressure and intense frustration when things don't go as planned. Gifted students also lack adequate opportunities to develop and practice resilience due to the general curriculum often creating a low success threshold for our advanced learners.
So how do we as gifted teachers help develop this skill in our gifted students?
Strategies to Weave Resilience into the Fabric of Learning
Thanks to insights from groups like the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) and experts like James T. Webb, we're better equipped to understand and support our students with empathy.
Everyday Strategies for Building Resilience
Embrace the Power of "Yet": Carol Dweck's idea of a growth mindset teaches us that setbacks are part of learning. Let's celebrate effort and progress, showing our students that every challenge is a step forward.
Learn from Failure: Mistakes are part of the road to greatness. By fostering a classroom where trying and failing is okay, we teach our students to value every attempt and learn from it. Think of it like the Google Fail Button—a way to acknowledge and learn from what went wrong. For more information about Fail Fast strategies, please read Brandi Maynard's March 2023 article titled Fail Fast Gifted Children: Parenting for Resiliencehttps://www.sengifted.org/post/fail-fast-gifted-children-parenting-for-resilience
Boost Emotional Smarts: Our gifted students feel deeply, so let's give them spaces to express and manage those big emotions. Activities like mindfulness or journaling, along with mentorship from understanding role models, can make a world of difference.
Tools to Bring Strategies to Life
To weave these strategies into our teaching, here are some handy resources:
Mindset Works: https://www.mindsetworks.com/ - A treasure trove for nurturing growth mindsets.
Kahoot!: https://kahoot.com/ - Makes learning and taking risks fun with interactive quizzes.
Calm: https://www.calm.com/ - Offers mindfulness practices perfect for the classroom.
We're in This Together
Building resilience in gifted students is a team effort. By embracing these strategies, we not only empower our students but also reignite our passion for teaching. Each classroom moment becomes a step towards mutual growth and fulfillment.
Got stories or strategies of resilience to share? Drop them in the comments or reach out. Let's keep the conversation going and continue making a difference in our students' lives.
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