The kids in Mrs. Oslick’s fifth- and sixth-grade Discovery class
look like ordinary kids. Jeans, T-shirts, tennis shoes, full,
little-kid heads of hair, the occasional backwards baseball
cap.
But the kids in this classroom are far from average. They are
the extraordinary kids in the Discovery program for gifted and
talented students at the Renaissance Magnet School in Castle
Rock.
Renaissance has three Discovery teachers for 66 kids from second
through sixth grades. The children identified by the school
district as gifted and talented go through a screening process that
begins with a recommendation from former teachers, Oslick said. The
application process includes review of the student’s writing and
work samples as well as an abilities test, rather than a standard
IQ test.
The school district has identified between 1,500 and 1,800 kids
from kindergarten through eighth grade as gifted and talented, said
Jennifer Gottschuck, Douglas County School District coordinator for
the gifted and talented program.
While the Discovery program is offered at four elementary
schools and every middle school in the district, Renaissance has
something extra for its gifted and talented students.
Renaissance is the only school to offer expeditionary learning —
an experiential, project-based curriculum — with something called
Adventure Education in its Discovery program. Every student at
Renaissance, in and out of the Discovery program, gets instruction
in Adventure Education, Oslick said.
Adventure Education incorporates challenges, both physical and
mental, to encourage students to step outside of their comfort
zone. Built around the practices used by Outward Bound, Adventure
Education helps develop social skills with team building exercises
and personal challenges that test their boundaries.
For the exceptional kids in the Discovery classes, Adventure
Education has even greater value, Oslick said.
“They’re not big risk takers because they’re not often
challenged,” she said. “Things come very easy to them. This program
gives them a way to connect and build peer relationships.”
Oslick and her fellow Discovery teacher Mary Sue Gulick, who
teaches the second and third grade Discovery class, in October 2008
unveiled the first official Adventure Education curriculum at the
National Association of Gifted and Talented Teachers conference in
Tampa, Fla.
They regard Adventure Education as an invaluable tool to meet
the special needs of gifted and talented students. And “special
needs” is not a term they throw around loosely at Renaissance.
Gottschuck and Oslick are very clear that gifted and talented
kids demand extra attention in a way not unlike any other special
needs student.
The demands unique to a gifted and talented classroom are
evident to any visitor who listens to the way the kids question
their teacher. When told a handful of students could not be
photographed for publication, the questions began.
“Who can’t be photographed?”
“Why?”
“How many people said no to photographs?”
Later, when they got to the music room and were introduced to
the selection of guitar picks, the questions about their choices —
light, medium or heavy — had little to do with the physical
characteristics of the pick itself.
“What’s the difference between the picks?” said one girl.
“Well, one is ridged, another is heavier,” began music teacher
Karissa Swanson-Moore.
“No,” the student countered. “I mean what’s the difference in
the sound they make?”
The constant barrage of questions is something gifted and
talented teachers welcome as an opportunity to teach their students
how best to express their curiosity. While gifted and talented
students will never take an answer at face value, the lessons they
learn at the elementary level are priceless by the time they reach
high school.
For some, it could make the difference between success or
failure.
“They’re not going to just accept something you say,” Oslick
said. “They need to be bought in, to understand why they’re doing
it and convinced it’s worth their while. If they don’t agree with
you they’re going to argue you to death.
“Part of our job is teaching them how to do it so it’s not an
argument,” she said.
Using a technique called “shared inquiry,” Discovery teachers
try to help gifted and talented students harness their curiosity to
help them function in a world that sometimes makes little logical
sense to them.
Because Douglas County has a program that tracks these kids only
through eighth grade, the gifted and talented students often have
trouble finding their way in high school, Gottschuck said.
Gottschuck, who was previously a resource teacher for gifted and
talented students, recounts the story of a former student who
eventually dropped out of high school.
“He said he was invited not to return,” Gottschuck said.
The student dropped out at 16, attended a community college and
got his GED at 17. Within months he moved out of state and is now
working as a hair stylist.
“He didn’t fit the mold,” Gottschuck said. “He was not
interested in performing just because somebody asked him to.”
Gottschuck is in her first year as the district coordinator for
the program and has the task of bringing the gifted and talented
resources to the high school level. The district faces a
self-imposed deadline to have, by the year 2011, a gifted and
talented program in the high school.
The 2006 Exceptional Children’s Education Act requires an
advanced learning program for gifted learners through the high
school level, she said. Studies have shown that gifted learners
should advance two years for every year of instruction they
receive.
Some students in Oslick’s fifth- and sixth-grade class, for
example, are studying math at the eighth-grade level and reading
and writing at the high school level.
In her effort to bring the program to the upper-level
classrooms, Gottschuck has begun dialogues with Douglas County’s
high school administrators. Her biggest challenge lies ahead as she
seeks those able to take ownership of the program. There are no
teachers at the high school level with the gifted title, she
said.
Her commitment to raise the educational bar high for these
students — through graduation — cannot be minimized.
She recalls a first-grade student, not yet in the Discovery
program, assignment in hand with a question for his teacher. “How
will this worksheet help me be a better pilot?”
“This program gives them the challenges early,” she said. “It
prepares them for later in life.”