Parents need to be able to understand what their teachers and administrators are talking about when entering a discussion about gifted education.
In 1929, the Yankees became the first baseball team to use player numbers on the uniforms so the fans that were sitting high up in the stands could tell who was making a play or who was at bat. “You can't tell the players without a program,” the concession owners would bark out since then fans would want to have a list of player numbers to keep things straight.
For parents trying to navigate education issues in general, and gifted education topics in specific, sometimes they must feel like the fans up in the balcony before Babe Ruth wore number 3. To help mitigate this concern, understanding some of the more common terms and abbreviations used in gifted education is important.
Parents need to be able to understand what their teachers and administrators are talking about when entering a discussion about gifted education. Parents and teachers who have worked with gifted children know that in many cases, raising and teaching a gifted child is not an easy task, so the sooner the identification can be made, the sooner the parents and the school can get to work. It is especially important to focus on gifted children in their early years as this is when a great deal of the cognitive growth occurs.
Perhaps even more importantly, this is the age when children are forming their self-images about themselves. It is during this period when children decide if being gifted is okay for them, if it’s really bad, or somewhere in between. It might be that once identified, keeping the gifted stdeuent in the regular education class is the best option; however, without having the discussion the parents will not even know their options.
