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What animal describes you this school year so far and why...

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Giftedness and Social Emotional Learning

Jamie Jackson

jamie.jackson@hcesc.org

@jamie.jackson

Bit.ly/GEARSEL

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Community Agreements

Expect and Accept Unfinished Learning

Consider the Perspective

Stay Engaged

Think Critically

Commit To Action

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Learning Targets

  • Understand what SEL is and why it matters
  • Identify why SEL benefits everyone
  • Name the 5 Core Competencies of SEL
  • Name the SEL issues facing gifted learners

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Can you contribute a pebble?

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“The promotion of social, emotional, and academic learning is not a shifting educational fad; it is the substance of education itself. It is not a distraction from the ‘real work’ of math and English instruction; it is how instruction can succeed.”

Aspen Institute of National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development

Why Do We Need SEL?

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  • Self-Awareness
  • Self-Management
  • Social Awareness
  • Relationship Skills
  • Responsible Decision-Making

Five Core Competencies of Social Emotional Learning

SEL 101 Learn about the Competencies

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The Five Core Competencies Explained

Self - Awareness

Self - Management

Social - Awareness

Relationship Skills

Responsible Decision Making

The ability to identify your emotions, thoughts, strengths, weaknesses and needs. When students have this, they can understand/ change their behaviors to learn and grow

The ability to be in control of thoughts, feelings and actions. This enables students to have impulse control, deal with conflicts, cope with stress/anxiety, in healthy ways.

The ability to understand others’ perspectives, appreciate diversity and to demonstrate empathy and respect.

To allow students to create healthy relationships that involve communication, conflict resolution, teamwork, and listening.

The ability to evaluate the consequences of a decision and make responsible choices that are overall positive to the wellbeing of all involve in a situation.

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Asynchronous Development & Overexcitabilities/Intensities & SEL

Gifted children vary in their abilities and often their patterns of growth differ from their age peers. When the social, emotional, physical, intellectual, and creative aspects of a person develop on a trajectory that is outside of norms, and at an uneven rate, it is described as asynchronous development.

Asynchronous Development

This is the innate, inborn heightened, emotions, responses to stimuli, that are intense, the extreme sensitivities which are different from the norms. There are five types/areas of intensities, a person reacts more strongly than normal for a longer period than normal to a stimulus that may be very small.

Overexcitabilities involve not only psychological factors, but also, the central nervous system.

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An individual with psychomotor intensity needs lots of movement and athletic

An individual with psychomotor intensity needs lots of movement and athletic ability, has trouble smoothing out the mind’s activities for sleeping, has tons of physical energy, fast talking, lots of gestures and sometimes nervous tics.

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Things you can do in the classroom:

  • Let them fidget with something
  • Allow them to stand and work
  • Provide opportunities for breaks and serious movement
  • Consider allowing students to chew gum
  • Try to build in some time for spontaneity in your classroom

They have so much energy that can be channeled into GREAT things!

Psychomotor Intensities

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Sensual Intensity

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The Sensual OE is the “cut the label out of the shirt” demand, the child limps as if with a broken leg when the seam in the sock is twisted, bad smells, bright lights, and loud sounds are the end-if-the-world . This is all about the senses.

It is also the child who is awed by a song, a picture, one who has aesthetic awareness.

Things you can do in the classroom:

  • Provide an environment that limits irritating stimuli and promotes comforting stimuli
  • Give opportunities to “stop and smell the roses”
  • Co-create an aesthetic environment

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Imaginational Intensity

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These are the day dreamers, the space cadets, the strong visual thinkers. These imaginationalists vividly remember every dream, often react to their dreams, some believe in magic, and hold on to all those childhood beliefs, beyond the age of their peers.

Things you can do in the classroom:

  • Provide opportunities for your students to use their imagination in a meaningful and productive way.
  • Help them understand appropriate times when it is okay to daydream and imagine.

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Intellectual Intensity

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Intellectual overexcitability is the usual definition of “giftedness.” These children enjoy logic problems, brainteasers, complex reasoning, puzzles, and figuring things out (like mysteries).

They have a total love for academics and any new information. They can absorb new information sometimes faster than you can get it in their hands.

Things you can do in the classroom:

  • Show them that you understand
  • Help kids to monitor and filter their reactions towards other people when they find others' ideas frustrating or silly.
  • Help the child set up a system of setting and tracking progress toward learning goals.
  • Teach them how to research, and provide them time to do it.

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Emotional Intensity: A Heavy Hitter

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The final OE, Emotional, drives all the others. It is believed to be the central intensity, the energy center from which the entire constellation of overexcitabilities is generated.

This is being happier when happy, sadder when sad, angrier when angry.

There is a need for deep connections with people and animals. If this individual can’'t find a friend, they invent imaginary friends, make do with pets and stuffed animals.

Things you can do in the classroom:

  • Listen to them… validate their feelings instead of minimize them
  • Help them to recognize what triggers their strong emotions

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What are Social Emotional Issues Facing Gifted Students?

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Gifted children demonstrate greater maturity in some domains over others, they may be at greater risk for specific social-emotional difficulties if their needs are not met.

  • Anxiety
  • Perfectionism
  • Stress
  • Issues with Peer Relationships
  • Concerns with Identity & Fit

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THINK, LISTEN, REFLECT

If you could think about who you have learned the most from in your lifetime, who would come to your mind?

Through the Eyes of a Lion

Author: Levi Lusko

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  • Resources

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Asynchronous Development

Asynchronous development means simply, out-of-sync, uneven development. That is when a student develops cognitively at a much faster pace than they develop physically or emotionally or socially. Although their bodies and their emotions may be in sync with their age peers, academically gifted students’ minds function at a higher level.

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The student may be many ages at one time. The child may be eight, chronologically, as he rides his bike, twelve while playing a game of chess, and fifteen while doing his accelerated, advanced Math homework. You know, our society values and cheers on the accomplishments of gifted students, however, I do not believe we understand that this same student reacts and cries, emotionally, about the thoughts of war after seeing the news on a screen.

Expert: Dr. James Webb, Author of Misdiagnosis

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Resources

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