Category: Social/Emotional

Educators constantly seek to understand what motivates gifted students to achieve, as well as factors that contribute to gifted learners underachieving.

If you are reading this, you know that gifted kids have the same needs for understanding, love, equity, and advocacy as any other child with a learning difference.

Even before the global pandemic, maladaptive stress and anxiety were on the rise. Gifted children are particularly at-risk related to their high emotional sensitivity. In this workshop, the presenter offers specific strategies to help gifted youth reframe stress from maladaptive to adaptive, and move past the hold of anxiety.

Using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a framework, participants will explore how to address the social and emotional needs of gifted English Learners. Topics include how to lower the affective filter, offer a culturally responsive classroom, provide language support, and address funds of knowledge, as well as other ideas.

The importance of social and emotional education for the gifted has been a topic of research for decades.

Most educators who have worked with students identified as gifted know that the classic teacher-pleasing student may be recognized as gifted, but more than likely, the truly gifted student may be in that same class—masked by myriad characteristics that too many educators do not associate with giftedness.