In this article, the author talks about celebrating the differences of all gifted students. Rather than isolate or ridicule creative individuals, people need to recognize that the very characteristics that enable creative people to think originally may cause them to be seen as different and even bizarre. She suggests that people need to accept and…

Peter, 7 years old, spends most of his time playing with his stick alone. After several unsuccessful attempts to get Peter to join his cousins, his aunt asks the boy's parents if they have considered having him evaluated by a psychologist. Peter's parents are not as concerned about the stick behavior as is his aunt. Although the attachment to his…

Most educators who work with gifted students acknowledge the importance of creativity and have found various ways to include it as part of the gifted education curriculum. In many cases, however, developing creativity is still viewed as something separate from academic learning. Students with undemonstrated creative potential often are excluded…

Even though creativity is often included as one criterion for identification of gifted students, its development is not standard practice in many schools. What can teachers do to address creativity in the classroom? How can a teacher add one more thing to an already overcrowded curriculum? Rather than adding, creativity should be embedded into the…

In the 1970s, Jose Antonio Abreu started the Venezuelan program that puts instruments into the hands of poor children and transforms their lives with free music education. Abreu, a musician and economist, sees in the arts not just a discipline and skill but a path to true selfhood. This is not the sort of talk one often finds in education.…

Parents and teachers occasionally express concern that their children are too focused on the discovery of mathematics. The author remembers clearly one upset father who told him, "Just teach my daughter what she needs to know. Don't worry if she understands why it works. She just needs to know how to get the right answer." The author agrees with…

A long term, ever broadening search for ideas from multiple disciplines strengthens creative thinking for many gifted young people, especially if the search is guided by the evolving interests of the individual. Instead of asking students to delve deeply into a particular topic, encourage them to allow one point of study to suggest others, and…

How do educators create and nurture environments that respect and meet the developmental needs of gifted children? They know that many young bright youngsters exhibit intense sensitivities from birth, ask many probing questions, and are often verbally sophisticated beyond their years. They may have exceptionally long attention spans within their…

Art enriches, beautifies, and entertains, but more importantly it builds understanding, innovation, and mutual responsibility. Yet, so often with tight school budgets, the first programs to be down-sized or deleted are the art and music programs. But there is good news. Recently, the Boston public schools received a grant of $750,000 from the…

This article questions whether current practices in gifted education are excluding groups of natural learners who don't fit our vision of giftedness or standards of high ability. It urges gifted education programs to reach out to different learners who live on the outskirts of the circle of academically gifted learners. (CR)

This article compares the characteristics of high achievers, gifted learners, and creative thinkers. It discusses the complexity of gifted student's thinking and the wild ideas of the creative thinker. A chart that lists the different characteristics and cartoons depicting the three different mindsets of the students are provided. (Contains 1…