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Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children: A Parent's Complete Guide

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Barbara Jackson Gilman of the Gifted Development Center wrote this book to assist parents who need assistance in advocating for their gifted children. Because Barbara has worked closely with gifted children and their families for over 15 years, and parented her own gifted children, she knows firsthand that highly intelligent kids need support just as any other children who are outside the norm. She has seen the damage that may be done when gifted kids are not challenged in school, and has worked with many brilliant kids who tune out or give up and drop out of school. This book also contains heartfelt essays written by Quinn O'Leary. Quinn shares his reflections on growing up as a precocious boy who didn't often find adequate challenge in school.

Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children-A Parent's Complete Guide is a complete handbook on advocacy, but also a useful resource for parents who are striving to understand their gifted children. Barbara explains that gifted children often experience the world differently, and devotes a generously sized chapter one to this topic. Chapter two is titled, "What Do We Mean By Gifted?" and it covers asynchrony, personality traits, levels of giftedness, and more. Chapter three will be tremendously helpful to those who are still considering testing or assessment, as well as those who are trying to determine what exactly, their child's test results mean. Sometimes it is important to choose the right instrument for testing. Gilman states, "The WPPSI-III can be given to six-year-olds, but the WISC-IV is usually a better choice when the child is likely gifted." My son's score on the WPPSI taken at age six was in the gifted range, but nowhere near what we'd anticipated based upon his developmental milestones. I wish we'd known enough to request the WISC. School administrators tend to assess more kids who are at the lower end of the spectrum, and are not always familiar with how to do things with extremely bright children.

Chapter seven outlines varieties of gifted programs and educational options. Gilman is a proponent of homeschooling, especially for kids who are highly to profoundly gifted. She points out which school programs are more successful for gifted students, and which are not so successful. The further reading suggestions at the end of the chapter include some terrific books, articles, and websites related to gifted education.

The must-read chapter for parents who need help with school advocacy is chapter eight. The author carefully walks the reader through the steps necessary to get academic accommodations in place. She explains, " Parents should trust themselves to assess the level and urgency of their child's needs, and they can wisely consider various alternatives. Sometimes the best choice is to work with the school and the current teacher to provide accommodations; sometimes it is to move to another classroom, grade, or an entirely different school; and sometimes it is best to remove a child form school altogether. There is no benefit to teaching a child to graciously accept being held back. " If advocacy steps don't lead to an appropriate placement, she advises the reader on when to give up, how to look for a better school, and how to get started in homeschooling.

Gilman also interviewed several extraordinary teachers and talked to them at length about how they work with gifted students. These vignettes will be helpful if a parent is still wondering what it would be like to have their child in the care of a motivated teacher who actually enjoys working with bright students.

Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children is the book I wish I had written. It is filled with truisms and insightful observations. The author clearly has been there - and not in a clinical sense - but in a real world in-your-face all politics aside public school system sense. No matter the state - no matter the "gifted" program in your school - no matter how the classroom teacher is "differentiating the curriculum" - you must read this book! If you suspect that your child is bored in school regardless of the accommodation in the gifted program - you must read this book. If you have a child with other exceptionalities who is being treated by his school as less than average in spite of having a photographic memory - you must read this book. If you have a child or grandchild who you suspect may be gifted - read this book! And if you are a teacher and have ever had or expect to have a gifted student, you definitely must read this book!

As I continue to experience the world of gifted education in schools across the state of Ohio I have my own longitudinal data to draw from. I have seen children literally fall off the map and been astonished at how many gifted children become unproductive adults - dropping out of high school, self-medicating in their misery of not belonging in an average world, or worse, leaving this world because it seems to offer them nothing yet expects everything from them. Giftedness has more to do with the way you learn and process information and I am so glad that someone has taken the time to explain this! The label "gifted" is highly charged and quite misleading - perhaps this book will open the discussion and help parents and educators understand what has taken me a lifetime - that high ability is not a "gift" or a "special favor from God" - or an unearned honor. When we talk about giftedness we are really talking about a learning style and the way the brain processes information. Using the term "gifted" to describe high ability is like using the term "cursed" to describe low ability. You would never do so! When parents and adults understand that accommodations are necessary to support learning for that particular child - then the student's needs are met and the risk of losing that student to underachievement are minimized.

One could have all the intelligence in the world but it means nothing if it's not nurtured. "Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children: A Parent's Complete Guide" is aimed at parents at gifted children who want cut through the piles of bureaucratic red tape and give their child the education they need to make the most of their gifted skill in the field of academics. Covering everything from other parents experiences with gifted children, the definition of the subject, testing, classes, what to do about under achievement and much more, "Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children" is a solid and recommended guide for parents, a must for those who suspect their child is more than just the average student.

Review for Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children: A Parent's Complete Guide, by Barbara Jackson Gilman, M.S.
Gifted education is the underdog of education. Myths, ill-formed opinions, lack of funding, and lack of research have beleaguered this educational population. In the past 10 years or so more attention has been paid to gifted education, and we are now seeing some solid research, support, and a culture shift among educators and parents. The change is still slower than most would like, but with books like Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children, those of us with gifted children, and those who educate them have yet another excellent resource.

Giftedness is a term and a subject that has come under fire from those outside the field, and both parents and educators are continually put on the defensive about their needs and choices while battling myths, prejudice, and poorly formed opinions. Anyone who doubts that gifted education is real need only read the first well written chapter titled "The Experience of Giftedness". Also extremely helpful is the chapter on testing. Not many people in the general public understand that IQ is not simply a single number from a single test or a definitive measurement.
Anyone who reads Academic Advocacy should come away with a good appreciation for the experience and trials of being a gifted child including: asynchronous development, difficulty in finding appropriate peers, battling school systems that do not understand the absolute necessity to accommodate gifted learners, the challenges of underachievement, perfectionism, the duality of learning disabled and gifted, Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities, and the isolation that gifted children experience. Parenting and teaching these children is not easy.

This book aims to help map out and give options for supporting the educational needs of gifted children. Parents are given terms, tools, and options to explore and pursue. Homeschooling is not treated as a fringe-of-society oddball, but as a real, viable option for gifted children. If homeschooling is not possible, parents are walked through various other means such as IEPs, charter schools, subject acceleration, whole grade acceleration, and it also explores topics such as special schools for the gifted and concurrent college enrollment. Equally helpful, the book discusses approaches that are not successful for gifted learners. A good amount of space is taken to explore characteristics of gifted children versus disabilities and what those disabilities can look like in a gifted child who may be able to compensate for those deficits. A chapter is devoted for teachers specifically, and another chapter is devoted to the charter school concept. Each chapter in this book has resources for further reading including books and websites.

The ultimate resource, the Gifted Development Center in Denver, is mentioned a few times throughout the book as the author is employed there as Associate Director. Linda Silverman, the Director of the GDC, is a welcome presence felt in the writing and gently supportive tone found in the wisdom, anecdotes, and experiences used to create this much needed resource book. It was a pleasure to read such an even-handed, solidly written book, and I will happily recommend it to any parent or educator who is interested in seriously learning about and supporting gifted children and their parents and teachers in whatever educational situation is at hand.

This book combines academic research, powerful quotes and examples from experts, and concise, pointed writing by an author who is not an academic and has a corporate political warrior's sense of how to cajole, circumvent and fight the Establishment of Mediocrity in education. It also helps you empathically get into your kid's head. The stories of the gifted child's boredom and resignation (or revolt) in schools which don't meet their expectations rang true from my own childhood, my kid's and a dear friend's child's career in school as a brilliant underachiever.