Week 5

Supporting Social Skills and Leadership Development

How can we help gifted children develop good leadership skills? As you have already read, their talents can make them ideal leaders, but in some cases that is not always true. Gifted children who have confidence issues, for instance, may shy away from taking on a leadership role, choosing instead to remain in the background. While we want to respect the feelings of all of our students, they may shy away from something because of fear or insecurity, and while we might not be able to tackle that in a school year, we can certainly give them the skills and hope they give them a try.

The more pertinent question might be, “Why do we want our gifted kids to be leaders?” First, we must specify that, as educators, we want all students to aspire to their greatest potential. And along with that statement, we can clearly see that gifted children typically have traits, i.e. learning very quickly, being able to communicate knowledge more effectively, the ability to make connections between two seemingly unrelated things, that make them ideal candidates to lead.

Of course, before anyone can become a leader, they first must have appropriate social skills. This is where we will begin our study this week. Before you begin reading the following selections, please take a moment to reflect on your classroom. How do you teach social/friendship skills? How do you model them? Is this something that concerns you or something that you don’t really consider in your lesson planning? Think about these as you read, and write down any other questions that come to mind, too.

"Play Partner" or "Sure Shelter"? Why gifted children prefer older friends..(Gross)

Highly gifted children and peer relationships (Lovecky)

Social Adjustment and Peer Pressures for Gifted Children (Rimm)

Authentic Character Development – Beyond Nature and Nurture (Moyle)