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Ohio's public schools serve 1.6 million children - 90 percent of students in the state! What happens in the classroom has impacts far beyond the walls of the K-12 school building or higher ed lecture hall. So, on behalf of the 120,000 members of the Ohio Education Association, we're taking a deeper dive into some of the many education issues facing our students, educators, and communities. Originally launched in 2021 as Education Matters, Public Education Matters is your source for insightful conversations with the people who shape the education landscape in Ohio. Have a topic you'd like to hear about on Public Education Matters? Email us at educationmatters@ohea.org
Various student voices 0:08
Public education matters. Public education matters. Public education matters.
Jeff Wensing 0:15
This is Public Education Matters brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.
Katie Olmsted 0:26
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association and the public school educators OEA represents in communities all across the state. Every educator is dedicated to meeting their students' individual needs and making sure they have the supports they need to reach their full potential. But the needs of gifted identified students can be very different from the needs of students of other ability levels, and even a lot of students gifted in one area or in many ways, can have deficits in other ways at the same time. That's why it's so important to have strong gifted education programs and educators who have strong training to work with the gifted population. Unfortunately, those things have really become less of a priority in many districts over the last few decades, state law requires schools to identify gifted students, but it doesn't require them to serve them. Our guest on this podcast episode is a mid career educator who wants to put the emphasis back on gifted education. She's on a mission to help other educators see the value you.
Briana McDonald 1:48
Hi, I'm Briana McDonald, and I teach fourth grade reading and social studies at Warrensville Heights Elementary School.
Katie Olmsted 1:53
And you are an inclusion teacher. Is that correct?
Briana McDonald 1:57
I am.
Katie Olmsted 1:58
What does that mean?
Briana McDonald 1:59
An inclusion teacher teaches students of varying ability levels. So I teach on grade level students, advanced students who are not gifted identified yet, and also students with learning disabilities.
Katie Olmsted 2:10
And especially that middle group that you mentioned there, the gifted students. That's really one of your passions, that you like talking to people about what that's how you ended up with me. Why is that something that something that is so important to you?
Briana McDonald 2:24
I initially found a love for teaching gifted students when I was working in another school district, we had a small group of kids who were above average, but they weren't quite accelerated or advanced yet. So we started looking at their scores, and we implemented some supports in the classroom to enhance their learning, challenge them a little more with thinking outside the box, and then they ended up qualifying on one of the state's assessments that's approved for gifted identification. And I just fell in love with the whole process. So I really enjoy teaching the gifted students, both in an inclusion classroom and when they are taught in a pull out program.
Katie Olmsted 3:05
When we're talking about gifted students, what exactly does that mean?
Briana McDonald 3:09
A gifted student is a student who performs above grade level. There are various areas of giftedness, so there's subject area giftedness, reading, social studies, science and math. But there's also creative thinkers, and they're students with that are gifted, identified in cognitive ability. So those would be your students that just, traditionally, just think about things completely outside the box. They have a very unique way of approaching problems. And then your creative thinkers are your your gifted students who are just creative, and a lot of times that's expressed through like the fine arts programs. So when you say gifted, it's a very broad title, because it can I mean that umbrella applies to a lot of different areas of giftedness.
Katie Olmsted 3:54
And from my own experience as a gifted child of the 90s, you can be, as you mentioned, gifted in one area and definitely not in the other. I I excelled in language, writing, all of that I as a grown adult, can't do basic math, whoops. Um, how do you as an educator handle that spectrum of abilities in one student?
Briana McDonald 4:19
The first step is identifying a student's strengths. I do think it's very important to understand the student as a whole child, but you also have to build upon their strengths and help them identify their own strengths. I think that sometimes education has shifted to focusing on deficits in student instead of building on their strengths to encourage them and enhance those deficits. So the first thing that I always do is I have my children self assess themselves. I have them sit down and tell me, what do you think you do well at, and what do you struggle at? And then, how can I support you in those areas? You'd be amazed at how many students don't get the chance to really think about what they do well. Whether it be a subject area or something specific within that subject. For example, when I taught math, you know, I asked the child what they do well in math, they tell me, I'm just good at math and I'm like, Be more specific. What part of math do you enjoy? Do you enjoy word problems? Do you enjoy equations? So having students tap into their own strengths and identify those and set goals for themselves is huge when you're dealing with gifted children.
Katie Olmsted 5:23
What happens if we don't support gifted children, if we don't give them the opportunities to really stretch themselves and grow and thrive?
Briana McDonald 5:32
That's a great question. So gifted education and gifted students have become like the forgotten populations. Sadly, there is such a hyper focus on students with disabilities, which there should be a focus on that, because the goal is to get all students at or above grade level, but you still have to identify those higher achieving students to make sure that they don't start slacking and under achieve. You want them to continue to grow and, you know, reach their fullest potential, and they can't do that if they're held at like a ceiling, if you set a ceiling for them, and you say, okay, you're at grade level, and then you put your focus back on the students who are not. So I think it's huge that we remember that there are some students, you know, who really just need an extra push. And a lot of times, because things come so easy to gifted students, they kind of operate under the radar. So you wouldn't even really know unless you really pay attention to how quickly they're getting things, or how they explain things, or if you look at their writing and look at what perspective they take. So sadly, you know, gifted gifted education is starting to dwindle just a bit, and I'm hoping that there's a shift. I know you mentioned your 90s baby, I know in the 90s it was huge of you if you were identified as gifted. And even though there might not be as many students gifted identified, I do think we have a lot of students who could be if they were pushed beyond the limits that they've set for themselves.
Katie Olmsted 6:53
And if we had appropriate programs and supports for them, you can identify a gifted child. But if it's just a label, what does that actually do?
Briana McDonald 7:02
Correct. And I want to shout out my district. I work in Warrensville, and we have an amazing gifted program and enrichment program at our elementary school. So we identify the students using one of the state approved assessments, and then once those students are identified, they get pull out services where they're around other like minded children, and they learn how to accelerated pace. Their pacing looks a little bit different than the typical pacing. We still cover grade level standards, but we add in a lot more enrichment to just push them to think outside the box. And it's amazing to see a lot of like minded, gifted children sit around with each other and discuss how they solve problems, or, you know, how they wrote their short story, how they came up with the characters. So I do want to shout out Warrensville Heights City School District. We're doing a phenomenal job at the elementary school with that.
Katie Olmsted 7:52
Is there, in your opinion, a much bigger benefit to having those pull out classes, rather than having inclusion, which is what you're doing, where you have children of all abilities altogether?
Briana McDonald 8:03
There's definitely a great benefit to that. When you have a class, I'll give you an example. When you have a class of 10 students, and you have two that are gifted, you have three that are at grade level, and then you have the other five that are below. The focus is going to go on the five that are below, because the goal, sadly, in our state, has become passing the test, passing the test, passing the test, which is very important. We want to make sure our students are performing at grade level, but within that, you know, we're losing sight of our students who are already at grade level and still need that enrichment and still need to be pushed. And you want to challenge them so that they feel like they're contributing to the classroom. Instead of using those students as like helpers or students or teacher assistants, we want to feed into them and create opportunities for them to grow as well.
Katie Olmsted 8:52
What are some of the challenges of serving gifted students?
Briana McDonald 8:58
With gifted children often comes challenges with social emotional learning. So a lot of gifted children, because they're so smart, their interactions with their peers and self regulation and emotional regulation are challenged because they want to do well, and they put a lot of pressure on themselves, and when they don't meet those small goals that they set for themselves, they're their biggest critic. They're hard on themselves. So teaching them that part of growth sometimes is failure is the biggest challenge with gifted children. But once they achieve that goal and they get over that hump, they start to become a little bit more well rounded and accepting of the growth phase, but that's definitely the biggest challenge, is failure. A lot of children who are gifted identified, have never experienced that. They've always gotten A's. They've always had things come very quickly to them. They understand it right away. So when they don't, there's an initial meltdown. For sure, usually happens between like, third and fifth grade. Once they get over that and they start to understand how to process that and how to use those as learning moments, it's definitely that pivotal point in their gifted education route.
Katie Olmsted 10:14
I'm feeling very like, called out right now because, like, this is entirely my like, oh, you can't do basic math. That's, oh, that's me as a child of the gifted programs in the 90s. I'll just quit. I'm just gonna cry about it, and then I'm gonna quit, and thank goodness there were people who continued to push me. But you know, there's also that, that swinging pendulum of all the gifted child of the 90s, and I promise I'll stop harping on this, but it's relevant. You see all the memes on Facebook now about like, all they shouldn't have just told me, try harder. They just didn't get it. Is that a problem for gifted children being told, just try harder, buckle down?
Briana McDonald 10:53
Yes, there. That's definitely a problem with educators who aren't trained on teaching gifted children or who don't understand how the gifted mind works. It's not just a simple try harder, because there has to be some intrinsic and extrinsic motivators put in place. So you have to build that up in a gifted child. They have to start to identify their areas of weakness and create an action plan within themselves of how they're going to overcome that, and then as their outside motivator, you know you have to continually coach them, cheer them, support them, while really tailoring to that social, emotional piece so that they don't feel defeated and they don't just quit.
Katie Olmsted 11:33
And you've also mentioned twice exceptional kids. First, what does that mean? And secondly, how do you support that kind of need?
Briana McDonald 11:42
Yes. So a twice exceptional child is a child who's gifted but also has learning disabilities or struggles with certain parts of learning so that is very hard to identify, because oftentimes, as I previously stated, the focus is on the deficits and not the area of giftedness. So the area of giftedness is oftentimes overlooked because the child may have some learning struggles. So one thing that I always do is understand that it's not it's part of the whole child. It's not like there are two different individuals. You can still be very smart and intelligent and creative, but still struggle in math like that's a part of their identity. So learning to treat them together, and again, using their strengths to support their weaknesses, I think, is huge and encouraging the child to just keep going. Set an action step for create action steps for yourself, and just motivate yourself. Motivate them. Give them encouragement. Give them continual positive behavior support, you know, highlight the things that they do well, and constant communication with them helps tremendously, tremendously with the students who are twice exceptional.
Katie Olmsted 12:59
This feels like a lot of work. This is one student has many needs. Multiply that across all of the gifted students in your class. Multiply that times the gifted students and the ones who are not gifted identified. How can you one person, tailor the the experience, tailor the education, to make sure that every child is getting what they need?
Briana McDonald 13:27
The first step is identifying what the students need based on the data. So that's always my first step with any group of students that I have. I look at the data, okay, what does the student do well? What do they struggle in? I use small groups. I do stations. I pull my students to the side for one on one instruction, you almost have to be a little creative with it, because it is a lot to tackle. Like I said, I'm very fortunate, because in our district, we do have a very strong enrichment and gifted program in our elementary school. So my students who are gifted identified in reading, do go to a gifted intervention specialist for reading. But for those higher achievers who aren't quite gifted, identified yet. They're on their way to being gifted, identified, but they're not identified yet. I give them some above grade level work. I try to group them together and I give them more challenging work. I do think it's also critical, though, that they be part of conversations with the students who are not gifted or at grade level, so that they can still understand different perspectives on how to solve problems, because that's another trait of gifted children. Oftentimes, in their minds, it's their way or no way. Their way is the only right way to do things, so exposing them to other ways of thinking is critical.
Katie Olmsted 14:38
I think I know the answer to this. But do you think more schools should have really good gifted services like this?
Briana McDonald 14:45
Yes, absolutely, even if the population is small, like even if you only have 10 gifted identified children in your school, I think it's huge that you that the school offer them an opportunity to grow and collaborate and work together. Other and that there are supports in place to help them grow and to identify, you know, what's the next step for them? Because once you get to high school, you do have those honors and AP classes. Even in our middle school, we have advanced or accelerated classes, but it's critical to identify those children in elementary school so that you feed into their love of learning and their love of wanting to know more instead of letting it dwindle and they become underachievers.
Katie Olmsted 15:27
And going back to something you mentioned, you need to have educators who are trained to work with gifted students. What does that look like? What does that training entail?
Briana McDonald 15:37
So my initial training was through our district, so we had a gifted coordinator in my previous district, and she provided professional development for CEUs after school. We were required to have this training to service the children. So in the state of Ohio, you legally have to identify gifted children, but you don't have to service them, but when you service them, that's when you get those extra points on your state report card. So many districts are now implementing their own professional development opportunities for their teachers so that they can meet those indicators on their state report card to show that not only are they identifying the gifted students, but they're actually servicing them and giving them enrichment opportunities. So my training initially started with that an in house in district professional development, and I loved it so much, I went on to get my Master's in Gifted and Talented Learners from Cleveland State University. So there are many avenues that educators can take if your school does not offer gifted professional development, you can go get the degree, or you can look up different programs. I know the ESC offers professional development, and I can't think of any district that would not want to encourage their teachers to go and get more more skill get a higher skill set on dealing with gifted learners like it's a benefit to the entire district. And then anytime we learn something, we always brought it back and shared it with our peers so that we had common instructional practices, so we can compare the effectiveness of what we're doing in our classroom and build on our own in school professional development.
Katie Olmsted 17:14
I'm glad you mentioned professional development. That's a as a mid-career educator, that's what we're hearing from the pilot program of the mid-career educators cadre. Is the need for professional development that really helps you at this professional stage in your career. You're a mid-career educator. How many years have you been teaching?
Briana McDonald 17:37
This is your 12 for me.
Katie Olmsted 17:38
This is 12. What? What kind of supports do you need as a mid-career educator, and really, how has your your outlook on what you're doing changed since you entered the classroom to now?
Briana McDonald 17:52
Professional Development is huge for me right now, the laws are constantly changing, the requirements are constantly changing, the curriculum is constantly changing. So right now, I think the biggest hurdle is curriculum. You know, districts change their curriculum every four to five years, and it takes about three to four years to get fully comfortable with the curriculum and feel like you're an expert at it. And as soon as you're an expert, it changes. So I think continual professional development within the district for the curriculum that you're teaching, collaboration opportunities with your peers, both lateral, like your grade level peers, but also vertical planning, where you can sit down with educators who teach the middle grades of your elementary and in the primary grade, so you can know what skills they're coming up with, and then what skills you have to equip the students with to be successful in the next phase of life, the next grade level band. Those two are really huge for me right now. Is just that collaboration piece and really getting what I need specifically with my curriculum.
Katie Olmsted 18:57
Do you think a lot of mid-career educators are in the same boat? Have the same needs?
Briana McDonald 19:03
I would guess. So yes, I am. So last year I taught math, and this year I'm teaching reading and social studies. So just being in two completely different content areas. And then I went from middle school to elementary so two different grade bands, two different buildings. That seems to be consistent across both you know that professional development opportunity to get very comfortable with the curriculum and have a chance to share best practices with other educators is huge, so that you can build on your instructional strategy bank and be as effective as possible with your instruction, with your students.
Katie Olmsted 19:36
Well, I thank you for sharing your perspective and your expertise with us. Really helpful conversation about making sure that we're meeting gifted identified students needs. Briana McDonald, thank you so much.
Briana McDonald 19:49
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed talking to you, and hopefully this increases some professional development opportunities for our professionals that serve as gifted children.
Katie Olmsted 20:03
That does it for this episode of the podcast. If you have a topic you're passionate about, I want to help you share your perspective on this podcast too. Please send me an email at educationmatters@ohea.org, and please make sure you subscribe to public education matters, wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a conversation like this one in the future. New episodes drop every Thursday this season, as we continue to hear from the people who are shaping the education landscape in our state every day. Because in Ohio, public education matters.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai