The Unique Needs of Gifted Students

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Originally published in TEACH Magazine, July/August 2018 Issue

By Meagan Gillmore

Dale Mar has always known her English students can explore topics with great insight. They “blow her mind” regularly, she says. However, she was surprised when two students’ spoken-word poems landed them a personal visit with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during their Grade 8 graduation trip to Ottawa.

Mar teaches gifted students in the Durham District School Board in Ontario. This year some of her students participated in a spoken-word poetry contest. Two poems caught the attention of a parent in the audience—the local Member of Parliament. She told the students that the Prime Minister needed to hear their work, especially a poem that reworked the lyrics of “O Canada” to address the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, and arranged a meeting.

“When you give them a topic, they will take it in a direction you never expected,” Mar says of her students. “That is so exciting as an educator because they’re able to look at it from their own perspective, and their own slant.”

Teaching gifted learners doesn’t excite everyone. Resources for these students can be sparse. Assessments may take years to schedule, and even then, not all educators agree on their effectiveness. Debates about whether these students are best served in mainstream or separate classrooms—or schools—can be intense.

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Meagan Gillmore is a freelance writer in Toronto, ON.

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Meagan Gillmore
Meagan Gillmore
Meagan Gillmore is a freelance writer in Toronto, ON.

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