~Exceptional learners of today are thought leaders of tomorrow~

An unknown author said, “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.”  As a co-learner and academic director for students who are gifted and talented, I have experienced this more often!  The dotted lines at times seem a benchmark and some times blur the path! This is so true for a journey for students who are gifted and talented!  There are more dots…  that make this transition a combination and concoction of emotions that range between known and unknown to fear and success! There are many aspects and all stakeholders paly role in this process and there has been extensive and long-standing discussion regarding being 'gifted' or having 'talent', including a range of approaches to define them.

1)  Wherein Parents believe that their ward is gifted and are looking for programs that will sharpen their ward’s skills or will expose their ward to newer/ challenging learning environments.

2)  Wherein school believes that the identified students are gifted and need to get more exposure, they recommend identifying process, exams, courses and parents take this with a pinch of salt smelling a rat (market- money in this- basically not trusting them)

3)  Wherein school and parent both agree but are in dark, because they can not see “good” programs which can be truly for gifted and talented!

4)  Fear… Is my child really gifted? Will he continue to walk this path? Will this not put stress/ burden/ peer pressure/ external pressure for performance!

5) Understanding the fine line between learning and failing to learn vs failures leading to learning with a label of being "gifted"! The debate being should a student fail to eventually understand what is his learning and calling vs attempting multiple times to succeed or eventually give up!

Here is what research has to say about this transition: -A transition is defined in Webster’s as, “A passage from one state, stage, subject, or place to another.” There are various forms of transition that occur when  teenagers, adolescents move from middle school into high school and later to secondary school. This transition includes: academic transitions, organizational transitions, emotional transition and social transitions. Many researchers have recognized transitioning from the middle school to high school as a crucial time in a student’s academic career. Zeedyk (2003) regards this period in a child’s life as extremely arduous, with impact on the student’s academic and social welfare. As students move into high school they are dealing not only with more difficult coursework, but they are also establishing a new identity and social status (Dillon, 2008).   

To ease this process of transition and creating an environment of empowering learning and students, lead to this idea of creating programs for students who wish to go through the rigour and relevance.Exposure to programs that are offered for Gifted students in this phase and attended by the students have a major role in creating their self image, their intellectual identify, their self-image, social wellbeing and show higher levels of interest in taking challenges, in following and learning by inquiry, taking up abstract task and complete them in the given time frame. Thus taking challenges, which is a normal response for tis age group is now triggering a unique learning response. According to Mizelle and Irvin (2000) such students are most successful in high school when their middle school program has provided students with a rigorous curriculum. A challenging curriculum in middle school makes the increased academic demands in high school less stressful for students because the high school academics do not seem to be that different.  

Our Recommendations: -Ask Middle school students to get engaged in this process of getting assessed, getting insights, getting identified and experience some challenging learning build on learning path for the Future. This is what this age group across globe needs! Hand-holding, faith, belief that they can lead and given chance they will lead a path that will be "road less travelled"

Remember: - Exceptional learners of today are thought leaders of tomorrow~

Shekhar Hardikar