Social-Emotional Curriculum With Gifted and Talented Students by Joyce Van Tassel-Baska & Tracy L. Cross

Author:Joyce Van Tassel-Baska & Tracy L. Cross [VanTessel-Baska, Joyce L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

CHAPTER 8

Focusing on Where They Are: A Clinical Perspective

Jean Sunde Peterson

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My perspective on an affective curriculum in education for gifted students is colored by my clinical experiences as a counselor, including those as a counselor of gifted children, adolescents, and adults. During my last 5 years as a teacher in K–12 education, I directed a complex program for gifted high school students, which included an emphasis on affective concerns (Peterson, 1990). Ten discussion groups per week, geared almost entirely to social and emotional development and involving 115 students per year, taught me a great deal about nonacademic concerns of highly able students. The program actively sought out gifted underachievers, who became approximately 30% of total participants and were articulate contributors in the groups as well.

Later, I facilitated several similar groups for diverse gifted middle school students, counseled gifted children and adolescents and their families in a clinic geared to giftedness, and also worked with medical students and others with high ability in private practice. The individuals I met while doing ethnographic research on perceptions of giftedness in nonmainstream cultures educated me further. I also sometimes encountered gifted individuals as a counselor in two substance-abuse treatment centers, in an alternative school for expelled high school students, and as a substance-use evaluator in a K–12 school district. Currently I prepare counselors for work in K–12 schools and advise and supervise many highly capable graduate students. These varied clinical experiences with gifted individuals inform this chapter.

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