Gifted Teachers/Teachers of Gifted Learners.

Gifted Teachers: Facilitators of Becoming

"What I wanted was a place where children could experience the joy of becoming", says Billie D. Vincent, a teacher in the early '70s of young children at Sycamore school in southern California, in her book, Room 5. The Joy of Becoming. While her short and delightful volume is not about the how, why and for whom which we commonly label gifted education, readers readily recognize the remarkable essences of gifted teaching in the stories about children in Billie Vincent's multigraded classroom. Each child in her multiage classroom of five- to eight-year-olds comes with unique background, abilities, beliefs, and ways of approaching learning. Yet each child finds affirmation, joy and guidance in becoming the special who for which her or his gifts have uniquely set the stage.

It was the intent of this special issue of Roeper Review to capture the many different essences of teachers who, like Billie Vincent, are especially adept in assisting children in their becoming. To this end, this issue of Roeper Review sought to feature scholarly treatises designed to illuminate the specifics of what it means to be a gifted teacher. These manuscripts would reflect on how one initiates and matures in that special occupation of gifted teacher, how teachers might enhance their abilities toward becoming gifted in their teaching, and how that occupation relates to the nurturance of gifted learners. We propose that, just as children are not equally gifted, nor have equally distributed types of gifts, some individuals who become teachers have greater specific intensities for interpersonal understanding, along with more highly developed interpersonal perspectives for applying their giftedness in teaching. It was also our intention to move away from the specific strategies and programs that show prospective and in-service teachers how to best meet the needs of the gifted youth, and especially to move away from the concept of training in teacher education.

Of course, it is our interest in this field and for this journal to focus on addressing the intellectual and personal needs of the particular population of learners whose potential is admittedly so extraordinary that ordinary or average schooling does not suffice. One way of doing this is to ensure that such gifted youth will be connected with gifted teachers during as much of their educational experience as possible, so that they may be provided all of the sustenance -- intellectual and emotional guidance and resources -- needed to fully develop their individually remarkable potential.

Nevertheless, as has been found with regard to many other developmental and scientific problems, examining problems from multiple angles and in varied settings heightens insights and enables the creative problem solving needed to arrive at visionary solutions. The manuscripts in this issue derive from varied settings and approaches to reflecting on gifted teaching by teachers themselves, by teachers of teachers, and by various educational experts in the field.

While we don't have an infallible process for identifying exactly which youth will become extraordinary, gifted teachers must be prepared to see extraordinary ability wherever and especially whenever it emerges. Billie Vincent seemed extraordinarily gifted in her perceptions about the children with whom she worked in Room 5. Though many of these children may never have become extraordinarily gifted adults, it seems obvious they experienced during their years in Vincent's classroom the "joy of becoming." What more could any of us ask, at any level of our teaching from the preschooler to the graduate student, than to have been the gifted teacher who moved at least some of our learners along the path of becoming!

Certainly there are many teachers in environments all over the world, and especially in our school classrooms, who become gifted in their craft, finding ways to identify and release and magnify the potential of youth, youth who await such touchstones in order "to become." Few of these teachers acquire a voice to tell you about their endeavors, philosophies and strategies for finding and nurturing giftedness and making gifted learning blossom. To this end Billie Vincent had the foresight and courage to write and self publish her own story of teaching. It was much to my sadness to find out as I inquired about how readers might contact or follow up on the tale of the children emerging as gifted learners in Billie's classroom that she had died on September 9, 1999. Nevertheless, if you can locate a copy of this treasured voice, you too can be caught up in the magic of children becoming who they are to become under the guidance and scaffolding of a gifted teacher. We can be grateful she had the foresight to record and give voice to such teaching.

In the meantime, let us see then, what our authors have provided for your pondering about the nature of being or of becoming a gifted teacher, a teacher of gifted learners, along with the multitude of their references to the relevant theorists of our field from Dabrowsky to Vygotsky so that you too may delve into the how and why of gifted teaching.

REFERENCE

Vincent, Billie D. (1998). Room 5. The Joy of Becoming. The Storehouse Collection, 505 Willow Road, Bellingham, WA 98225.

Patricia A. Haensly, formerly at Texas A&M University while Co-Principal Investigator on the Mustard Seed Project, is now Adjunct Faculty in the Psychology Department at Western Washington University, teaching adolescent psychology courses to many preservice education and teaching certification majors. She is current Chair of the Conceptual Foundations Division of NAGC and is extensively involved in global studies of gifted and the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children. She recently served as Guest Editor for a Special Issue of Gifted Child Today on parenting gifted children and is serving as Guest Editor for this Roeper Review issue on Gifted Teachers/Teachers of Gifted Learners. A biographical sketch appears in the Millennium Edition of Marquis Who's Who of American Women.