Dr. Joyce Juntune is a frequent TAGT presenter. Her education, experience and hands-on technique make her an expert who is, not only knowledgeable but, down-to-earth and approachable. Originally from Minnesota, she now proudly calls herself a “Texan”! Dr. Juntune serves a professor of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M.
In this 6-hour course, Dr. Juntune provides counselors and administrators with an excellent overview of how to understand giftedness and why talented and gifted programs are so important.
Where does giftedness come from?
Giftedness is not something that can be taught to children or adolescents. Giftedness develops prenatally. It is encoded into an individual’s genetics. As such, it is important to know what it means to be gifted, and how to identify it in order to understand students.
Giftedness does NOT equal:
- Maturity. They are bright yet their actions are often immature.
- Experience. Because of high literacy, they may appear to have experience in things they actually have none in.
- Tactfulness. This needs to be taught. Many times, they’ll do and say things without thinking.
Giftedness does equal:
- Imagination. Storytelling and imaginative play are things they enjoy.
- Intelligence. They are very bright. Problem solving and abstract thinking comes easily to them.
- Intensity. When they are happy, they are extremely glad. When they are sad, they seem inconsolable.
Who is gifted?
Do you know that the learning category most often confused with gifted and talented is high-achievers? More harm is done than good when an ill-informed educator may try to make a gifted child act like a high-achiever. The two groups are completely different, one cannot act as the other. Understanding and identifying the difference is vital to the education of your students.
Gifted and talented vs. the high-achiever
High Achiever
Memorize
Rubic based
Asks “What do I do…?”
Goal oriented
Gifted and Talented
Ponder
Guideline based
Asks “Why am I doing this?”
Journey oriented
How to engage G/T students
Dr. Juntune gives us several straightforward thoughts on how to engage G/T learners.
- Find their interests: “Their interests are the hook, it’s their motivation. I’m going to tell you honestly, if you don’t tie to their interest, they disconnect.”
- Identify their areas of giftedness: “Giftedness could show itself in math or in science or in the language/fine arts.” It’s up to you to identify where it is.
- Group them together: “Gifted children understand each other. Hovering grade levels, multiple grades, it doesn’t matter. Cohesiveness is important for G/T.”
- Allow time to think: “A teacher who understands gifted allows ponder time, think time, reflection time.”
- Do not teach everyone as if they are all G/T: “If you do that, it’s either not going to serve the regular students or it’s not going to serve the gifted.”
“Another ditto sheet?… BORING!”
Once you find their interests, it’s important to know the incentive that motivates your gifted students. Dr. Juntune explains that our public schools are mostly wired to motivate the high-achiever.
High-achievers are naturally driven by “extrinsic motivations: points, grades, prizes, all those kinds of things.” This simply will not work for the gifted and talented learner who is driven by “intrinsic motivation: Does it have purpose? Does it have meaning? Is it worth my time?” As educators, we need to be ready to answer those kinds of questions and facilitate their way of learning.
This, and much, MUCH more!
The learning does not stop here. In the complete six hour presentation, Understanding Giftedness – 6hr Course for Administrators and Counselors,Dr. Juntune dives into much more information.
Here are some of the things you will learn in the full course:
- The history of giftedness
- Annemarie Roeper’s definition of giftedness
- The Columbus definition of giftedness
- How asynchronous development plays into giftedness
- How genetics and biology play a role into being gifted
- How the environment of poverty affects the gifted learner
- Introversion vs. extroversion
- Dr. Cattell’s fluid vs. crystallized intelligence
- How to identify gifted learners who come from poverty
- Positive characteristics of gifted learners that may rub off negatively
- Ideas on redirection of negative energy
- The importance of helping your G/T learner find their creative outlet
- The three emotional traits of the gifted
- The gifted and multi-potentiality
- The three overexcitabilities that are found in G/T students
How to get this course
When you order Dr. Juntune’s Understanding Giftedness – 6hr Course for Administrators and Counselors, you will receive a plethora of information plus her reference sources, insight, knowledge and experience.
Just click here to order this course, or call TAGT Learning On-Demand if you prefer to speak to someone: 512.677.9097.
P.S. Let us know in the comments what kind of work you’ll be doing during the mythical “8-week summer vacation”
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