Maybe you’re new to teaching gifted students. Maybe you’ve been teaching gifted students for a long time but are still unclear about how they are identified as gifted. Well, today’s post is for you! I’m kicking off a blog series about gifted identification to provide background knowledge to teachers of the gifted. I hope you will have better insights into what it means to be gifted by the end of it.
Is She Born with It? Nature versus Nurture in Giftedness
We’ve heard it before: “Jose´ is an amazing reader. He has natural ability,” or, “Fiona is so good at science! She was just born with a science brain.” Conversely, we’ve all heard someone say something like this: “I’m just not a math person,” (true fact- I used to say that ALL THE TIME!). All of these statements stir-up an age-old question in the field of gifted education- is giftedness caused by nature or nurture? A long, long time ago, scholars believed that intelligence was innate- you were born with it. But, around the 1960’s, researchers started to notice that nurture strongly impacted a student’s intelligence, too. So, which is it- nature, or nurture? I happen to firmly believe that BOTH nature and nurture play important roles in giftedness. This is really important for teachers to realize. Over the next several months, I’ll share everything I know about how these two factors interact to impact our intelligence, and how understanding this interaction shaped my teaching. And I’ll start with a story from my 11th grade year that revolves around the number 128. Until then, stretch your teaching, stretch your students. And, please leave a comment with your thoughts and questions!
~Ann
Teaching for Talent 
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