Reinvigorating the Professorate: Reflections about Teaching Academically Gifted Youth.

Teaching academically gifted youth is a challenging, invigorating, and potentially rewarding experience for educators. This is especially true for the professorate as it provides an opportunity to teach academically advanced students, ages 12-14, rather than traditional college students in their late teens and early twenties. Younger students generally respond more candidly and are less conscious of pleasing their professors compared to older students who are often concerned about how their answers influence their class standing. Gifted youth also tend to be independent learners, very persistent, highly self-motivated and self-directed, and very task-committed (Howell and Bressler, 1988). As such, teaching academically gifted youth can be a refreshing change of pace because the students often ask insightful and challenging questions that tend not to be the norm in many collegiate classes (from our experiences, many students are often wary of speaking in front of their peers).

The authors of this article--a professor of Education and Biology and a professor of English--found this experience to be a challenge and pedagogical stretch. We maintain that our experiences have important implications for the teaching we do at the university level, as well as for gifted adolescents in summer residential programs. What follows is a description of what we experienced teaching in such an enriching environment, specifically, Francis Marion University's Program for Young Scholars, and our insights about how it has extended, energized and enriched our teaching of college age students.

Francis Marion University's (FMU) Program for Young Scholars (PYS), a program for academically gifted youth, was established in 1997 by Dr. Robert N. Sawyer, the founding director of Duke University's Talent Identification Program (TIP) and Duke University's Pre-college Program (PCP). PYS targets students 12-14 years of age, primarily from South Carolina but also from the southern and southeastern United States, who have scored, on average, 500 SAT Mathematics or Verbal and 18 to 25 on the ACT, Mathematics or English, respectively. Instructors in the PYS are predominately university faculty who hold terminal degrees in their fields or master high school teachers with experience instructing academically gifted youth. This article focuses on our experiences as two professors who taught in this program and what we learned about teaching academically gifted youth.

PYS is an intensive three-week residential program. Students are in class seven hours a day, five days a week, as well as three hours on Saturday. Skilled Teaching Assistants (TAs) conduct supervised study halls and problem solving sessions Monday through Thursday evenings. These TAs are typically university undergraduates majoring in the content area of the PYS class. For example, in Hildreth's biology course, the TA was a sophomore at Georgia Tech University majoring in Biochemistry, while the TA for Sawyer's Document Production and Design course was a recent English graduate from Francis Marion University. The total time the students are on task is over 130 hours for the three-week program.

In these three weeks of intense study, students often complete an entire semester's worth of advanced high school or collegiate-level work. In some mathematics classes, students may complete two, three, or four years of high school work in three weeks. For the professor who is not ready to face a room full of students wanting nothing more than to learn all that they are able, the experience can be bewildering at best and harrowing at worst.

These apprehensive feelings are especially true when one considers constructs such as teaching efficacy. Efficacy refers to an individual's perception of how effectively she or he can perform certain behaviors (Morin & Welsh, 1991) and is customarily based on Bandura's (1977) study of social learning theory. Furthermore, teaching efficacy has been described as the belief individuals have regarding their personal ability to be successful teachers (Coladarci, 1992). If teaching gifted students is a new experience, then one may feel uneasy or nervous about the experience, reducing that sense of efficacy.

The feelings we had upon entering the classroom at PYS were indeed feelings of uneasiness and anxiousness. We worried that our classes would not hold the students' interest. We were accustomed to classes of 25 or more students for up to 3-4 hours a week when teaching at the university level. In PYS, we had smaller classes (6-10) and met for a minimum of 7 hours a day. We were also concerned about meeting the challenges and needs presented by the PYS students during the strenuous and rigorous schedule.

While it is clear that the students benefit from the classes --whether this be in the form of high school credit, AP credit or an expanded knowledge base--it is not always as clear that the instructors benefit as well. Throughout the program, we found ourselves moving away from the comfortable, uncontested atmosphere we enjoyed when teaching at the college level. For instance, our college classrooms are composed of students who are wary of speaking up and who recognize the teacher as the authority in the domain of knowledge.

These academically precocious students forced us to grow and evolve as teachers because the rich environment we shared with them allowed our pedagogical skills to flourish. When such an environment is experienced by educators, Coleman (1994) suggests that "optimal experiences", sometimes referred to as flow, take place. Flow is a construct that, "... is associated with a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 49). As educators, a major goal of teaching in PYS is to facilitate intellectual growth and critical thinking in our students even though we might experience challenge from the students as we teach them. Teaching in FMU's PYS afforded us this and, as a result, allowed us to teach in such a manner as to engage in flow, becoming better teachers in the process.

Courses

Biology

David Hildreth, first author, instructed a collegiate level biology course which combined FMU's first two freshman biology courses. The course began with examining and applying the scientific method and then provided students with exposure to myriad introductory topics, including fundamental biological principles, and spanning levels of natural organization from biological molecules to the biosphere.

The first part of each day was an interactive discussion conducted with the aid of Microsoft Power Point, group activities and presentations by the students, a review of current events relevant to biology, and multimedia presentations focusing on particular topics. In the afternoon, students typically engaged in a laboratory activity that augmented the material covered that morning. Laboratories completed by the PYS students were the same laboratory activities completed by FMU's first year biology-major students. Example laboratories include enzymatic activity, cellular respiration, basic ecology, osmosis and diffusion, photosynthetic processes, and human physiology.

A final experience for the biology PYS students was participating in activities with some of Francis Marion University's biology faculty. For example, a cell biologist showed the students how to use microcomputers to measure and identify cellular shapes and structures, a herpetologist allowed the students to handle some of his specimens and also demonstrated some of the techniques used to capture these specimens, and a physiologist illustrated how he tracked turtles using radio telemetry. Thus, PYS students had rich hands-on opportunities to see diversity in the biological sciences and had a glimpse of how research is conducted at the university level.

Document Production and Design

The class taught by the second author, Paul R. Sawyer, was not traditionally found in the standard classes offered at gifted programs. Document Production and Design was a blend of an upper-level college Introduction to Technical Writing as well as a graduate-level class in Document Production. The course focused on the page as a space. Students began to think of how text, images, graphics and other items were placed on the page and how these items interacted with each other.

The average day in Document Design started with lecture and discussion. Topics included Semiotic Analysis, the uses (and misuses) of color, image placement, and other aspects of Visible Rhetoric. These discussions were often quite lively as students voiced their opinions and felt free to agree and disagree with the professor and each other. After a mid-morning break, the students worked on one of several small projects. such as crafting a simple set of instructions, a personal web page, or many other documents. A single student or small groups usually completed these assignments.

The rest of the day was spent completing the major project that the class was producing at the time. Some students were taking photographs with the digital camera while others were working on the actual layout of the document. Once the document was complete, each student edited the proofs and discussed them as a class. The final draft was then created.

Course content started with an introduction to basic elements of design that enabled the students to begin to think of a blank page as a space rather than a container. Once the students began to accept the idea that a page could be more than just a container for words, work began in earnest. To introduce the class to the suite of programs on the classroom computers, the class created a 30+ page user friendly manual on how to use Microsoft Word '97. This activity gave the students a chance to exercise their newly found layout skills as they created the text and the images as a class. The results were quite spectacular.

Armed with their honed design skills, the class created, designed and laid out a PYS yearbook. This document was entirely an in-house creation. The students took pictures with a digital camera, created text and combined the two in a Microsoft Word document. The resulting yearbook was taken to the campus printer where it was mass-produced for camp members and staff.

After students experienced traditional design, the class focus moved to cyberspace. The class used the print yearbook as a point of departure in the discussion of how a traditional document differs from a virtual document. Students took the printed yearbook and moved it on-line. The web-based yearbook was in excess of 26 web pages and 60 megabytes. Interestingly, the student-produced electronic document continues to be used as an overview of the PYS for prospective students. (See http://www.fmarion.edu/~docprodespys/yearbook)

Pre-Program Tasks: Getting Ready

One of the main hurdles facing the instructors in the weeks before the program was how to make a college-level course appropriate for gifted youth. That is, how could material presented to students in their late teens and early twenties (or older), be relevant, understandable, and captivating to students who were often not yet in their teens? An important goal was to refrain from academically overwhelming the students by being cognizant of developmental attributes (mental, social, and emotional). Sawyer was especially aware of this problem because he often taught the course in Document Production and Design to graduate students preparing their theses and professional portfolios.

For Hildreth, the problem centered on how to combine fundamental elements from an Introduction to Life Science course and an Organismal Biology course into a three week period--including selected laboratory exercises. This predicament was amplified because many students enrolled in this course considered using the PYS biology course for high school credit. To illustrate, students occasionally use this course as a replacement for their 9th or 10th grade biology class and enroll, instead, directly into their school's Honors AP Biology class. As an example, a student who had just finished the eighth grade took the Biology PYS course. The following year, as a ninth grader, she enrolled in her school's Honors AP Biology Course, took the AP exam, and made the highest score possible--a five--and thereby earned up to potentially 12 hours of collegiate biology credit. Thus, it was critical that the students have a broad, but as in-depth as possible, introduction into biological processes.

A Week-By-Week Look at The Program

Week I

The first week of the PYS experience for the authors was filled with nervous excitement and shock. The latter feeling came from the realization that what was thoughtfully planned for at least two days of instruction was usually covered in one day, perhaps even a half-day. The students moved at such a rapid pace, it was hard to plan a seven-hour class--less consider planning for subsequent days. Sawyer offset this difficulty with his large projects that were to span several days. However, those were often completed in less time than anticipated.

Furthermore, it was difficult not to compare these students academically with the collegiate students--as it is to the college students' disadvantage. Although both authors instruct very bright college students, it was hard to imagine that the PYS students were accomplishing what our college students accomplished (often times at a faster rate) at such a young age. This profound desire of our PYS students to learn affected our sense of efficacy. Initially, it made us nervous and insecure because we felt additional pressure to excel in our role as teachers since these students were so eager to learn. Over time, however, this eagerness actually increased our desire to be successful and gave us confidence to try new approaches and pedagogies with the students because they so much wanted to learn. That is, we gradually recognized that we could try things and be more rigorous with these students and they would, more than likely, respond positively or help us develop and refine our lessons with their feedback.

For the students, the first week seemed to evoke a plethora of emotions: excitement at seeing old friends and making new friends, nervousness at being immersed in such a rigorous academic program, homesickness, and a sense of humility as many of them discovered they were no longer the biggest (academic) fish in the sea.

Week II

The second week brought out strong feelings of pride and accomplishment for the PYS instructors. By meeting the challenge of successfully teaching highly motivated and precocious youth during our first week, our sense of efficacy shifted to a positive sense of accomplishment and we were much more confident in our abilities to teach gifted youth. Considering the mental challenges associated with fulfilling the academic needs of these precocious youth, it is not surprising that week two also produced fatigue, both mental and physical. Fatigue was, in retrospect, not surprising because teaching seven hours, Monday through Friday and three hours on Saturday was a difficult adjustment from our usual teaching loads. In those long days, there were few, if any, opportunities to rest as students were always pushing to learn, whether it is in the classroom, walking to the cafeteria, or at evening activities. Whenever the students saw their instructors, there was usually a barrage of questions. Moreover, we were constantly challenged as instructors to ensure that the class continue to be invigorating and captivating to help overcome the students' mental and physical fatigue. It was quite the change from the silent class of freshmen that many college professors have encountered.

For the students, week two typically brings about a sense of stability. Having survived the first week, they seemed to feel confident that they could indeed be successful which brought about a marvelous change in some students. It was not uncommon for shy and introverted students to start interacting with their classmates. Usually, their classmates were very accepting as the shy students acclimated to an arena of social interaction. The more these students interacted and participated in the class, the more positive feedback they received--from their peers and from the instructors at PYS. It was a fortunate cycle characterized by moving a student with little to no social skills and placing them on track for productive interaction with peers. This may be one of the unsung benefits of programs for academically gifted youth.

Week III

For the instructors, the final week of the PYS brought about many emotions: a sense of urgency (we only had a week left to accomplish our goals), sadness, and disbelief at the extent of our accomplishments and the progress made by the students. A major regret, at this point, was the concern that perhaps the students were not given enough of an academic challenge.

For the students, the final week was an emotional crescendo. They were excited about their accomplishments and nervous that they would not obtain goals they had set for themselves. Again, the students were mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted. One reason is that many of these students were accustomed to easily obtaining their academic goals without much effort and, in a program such as this, we believe they were being challenged as never before.

Conclusion

What Went Well For Us

We left the experience of teaching gifted youth in the Program for Young Scholars with a higher sense of teaching efficacy and, consequently, we felt reinvigorated about teaching. Due to the nature of these classes, we had optimal experiences (Coleman, 1994) which helped improve our belief that we are good instructors--of not only gifted students, but of all our students. To have students who want to learn as much as we could teach them improved our sense of efficacy and helped us approach our college teaching in a more positive manner. Thus, we are more likely to try innovative pedagogical approaches with our college students

Moreover, we left PYS armed with new ideas and activities for our college students. The PYS students were very astute at pointing out weak spots in their classes--they tested the limits of the class to make sure its boundaries were well defined. In fact, Sawyer took several ideas that were generated in his PYS class and incorporated them into his graduate level class. Quite simply, Hildreth's and Sawyer's classes are stronger for having been taught at PYS.

What Went Well For The Students

PYS, itself, afforded students several opportunities to experience success. For example, Howell and Bressler (1988) indicate that gifted students tend to favor fewer lectures, extended opportunities for independent study, and ample time to complete tasks. Thus, by their nature, both the Biology course (with its incorporated laboratory exercises) and the Document Production Course (with the self-directed pace of developing the Program Website), provided students with an environment conducive to optimal learning. Furthermore, both instructors challenged their students to think critically, a key component in effective gifted teaching (Wendel and Heiser, 1989).

As students spent a lot of time with professors, it was also very important that we showed a genuine interest in their academic and social well-being. This was especially true since Maddux, Samples-Lachmann and Cummings (1985) found that, with respect to teacher characteristics, gifted youth tend to value personal-social characteristics of the teacher more so than cognitive or classroom-management skills. Expanding upon this concept of student well-being, an important point to make is that, as adolescents, both instructors had attended similar academic enrichment programs. The ability to relate to the students has been found (Freehill, 1974; Maker, 1975; Torrance and Myers, 1970) to be an important teacher attribute for gifted students. Thus, our ability to truly understand what the students were experiencing was quite powerful.

In Reflection

Students leave PYS changed. Some students complete a year, or several years of high school or college classes in 3 weeks. Other students begin to form a safety net of peers who understand what it means to be gifted in a general population. These students often stay in contact with each other for years. Indeed, some students from other gifted programs still are in contact almost 20 years later, and are returning to the programs they once attended as students to be Resident Assistants, Teaching Assistants or Instructors, just as we have done. PYS and its sister programs help establish friendships and learning communities that can last a lifetime.

Instructors also leave the program changed. Teaching in a program for academically gifted youth is a tremendously rewarding undertaking. Interacting with students who challenge their instructors constantly forces teachers to remember what education is all about: reaching and academically stimulating those who want to know and learn. This teaching environment provides an opportunity to facilitate excitement and enthusiasm about teaching. Thus, instructors depart from the program as better instructors. In reflection, it is clear that our experiences were similar to those documented by Coleman (1994) who found that teaching academically talented students may result in the teacher having a very positive and emotional experience. Challenged to push themselves to the limit and to adequately prepare lessons for academically insatiable adolescents, educators are compelled to reevaluate and expand their pedagogical approaches and abilities to better reach all students.

REFERENCES

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David Hildreth is an assistant professor of Education Studies at Guildford College, Greensboro, North Carolina. His current research interests include teacher attitudes toward teaching science, improving K-12 science pedagogy, and incorporating technology in teacher education programs. Paul R. Sawyer is an assistant professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. His current research interests include online instruction and student interactions with technology. He is on the staff of three gifted programs: Duke's Talent Identification Program, Northwestern Louisiana University's ADVANCE Program, and Francis Marion's Program for Young Scholars.

Manuscript submitted March, 2000.

Revision accepted January, 2001.