Learning Journal

Teaching The Art of Learning In a Rural Wyoming Elementary School (Part One)

Categories: Elementary School, Gifted, The Learning Journal April 7th, 2010 2 Comments
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Heather Danforth

Guest Blogger: Heather Danforth

Heather, an elementary school teacher in rural Wyoming, is working with The Art of Learning and sharing her classroom experiences…

As I read and re-read passages from The Art of Learning, I recognized the potential of many of the ideas in this book to help my students (and me) to be successful. I teach gifted students in a rural Wyoming town, and I have truly brilliant students. But as smart as they are, some of them struggle even to get passing grades. The statistics surrounding gifted students are unfortunate – for example, research shows that as many as 20-25% of students who drop out of high school score in the gifted range on tests of ability. When I work with my youngest students, I generally find kids who are ecstatic about learning, even if it isn’t about the things that I plan to teach. They have a million questions and dozens of ideas to contribute to every discussion. But as they get older, they too often seem to lose faith in the school system – they develop a cynicism about jumping through hoops to get passing grades rather than actually learning about the things that they care about, or they develop crippling perfectionism that prevents them from taking any classes in which they don’t actually know all of the material already for fear that they will lose their identity as the smartest, or they choose to do mediocre work out of a desire to fit in or the long-term discovery that mediocre is all that they really need to do. Every day, as I approach my job, I am floored by the potential of my students and the overwhelming responsibility I feel to help them reach it, when faced with other, equally bright students who have not. Every day I ask myself if what I am doing for them is actually beneficial – if I am getting the right messages across. Reading The Art of Learning, I felt that many of its ideas are the very ones that I am trying to teach my students. This was, in some ways, reassuring. With the book in mind, I am setting out to teach these ideas to elementary students – gifted learners in grades kindergarten through 5 – in hopes that I can help them to reach for the stars. I know that they can get there.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Elementary School, Gifted, The Learning Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Teaching The Art of Learning In a Rural Wyoming Elementary School (Part One)”

  1. Elenore Says:

    April 8th, 2010 at 4:30 pm

    I relate powerfully to your point about the debilitating perfectionism that runs rampant among high-achieving students. “Success” is a double edged sword in our education system. I’m interested to hear how you’ve begun to wrestle with these ideas.

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  2. emma Says:

    February 2nd, 2011 at 10:52 am

    I have set-up a program for gifted children, mainly to fix the inability of the state system to “feed” them (I am in Switzerland).
    I have 3 gifted children myself and had a first interesting discussion with my first child. She said she can’t remember when or how she learnt how to read (me neither…). She said “does one actually learn how to read? You mean you have to go to school to learn this. Doesn’t it come naturally like learning how to walk or talk?”. My son said to his teacher: “there is no need to learn addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They are just the same thing, but seen from another angle”. I could give example forever but my strong belief is that the best way to learn for gifted children is to learn “everything together”, in arborescence. Any subject triggers questions about other subjects (most of which are not in the national curriculum) and if you do not answer these questions, or suggest a way to answer them later, they clearly lose interest. Everything is a good prop for a learning experience. Size of shoes, rebate on a pack of cereals, exchange rates, etc.. I do not use books, I use “life” and things from life. If a child sneezes in the class, it’s a good idea to talk about the speed at which you sneeze and the weight, mass, speed and impact of a pea if you had one in your mouth. Children can understand much more than many educators assume. Life is not boring so why should school be?

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