Know Thyself: Growing Up Gifted

In gifted education, the focus is usually on accelerating academic accomplishments. However, a gifted person is not just their brain. It is imperative that gifted students have a personal understanding of their unique emotional landscape, character, values, strengths and weaknesses and how they can effectively and efficiently monitor and amend these in the face of the challenges that they will surely face during their teen and adult years. Just as Socrates said, it is necessary to know thyself.

Gifted Girl

At the age of 5 or 6, I was identified as gifted. I was accelerated to Grade 3, skipping Grade 1 and Grade 2. My teacher said not to tell anyone that I was gifted. Not that I understood what being gifted meant. The Know Thyself project is to deepen my understanding of what it means to be gifted and to share these understandings with a commitment to improving the education of gifted students everywhere.