What do gifted and talented teachers do

Other schools offer advanced programs for students. While their peers take algebra or pre-algebra, the gifted students study geometry or calculus. The teachers working in this field must know how to relate to those who might have problems at home or at school due to their intelligence. You need a degree to work as a gifted resource teacher, but the type of degree needed varies based on where you live.

There are a few states in the country that only let gifted teachers work in the field after completing an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree and a student teaching experience in a gifted and talented classroom. Though gifted teachers do need state certification, depending on your state, you may not need any special credentials to teach gifted classes.

Certification requirements vary from state to state, but you can contact the Department of Education in your state for more information.

Some states offer a skills test that college graduates can use to receive certification, and other states use a criminal background check as part of its requirements.

If you have any convictions for drugs, sexual crimes or other crimes, you may not pass the test. By pursing a degree in something besides teaching, you bring a level of expertise into the classroom that gifted students may benefit from. Focusing on education as an undergraduate gets you thinking about teaching early. These programs offer coursework that helps you identify, evaluate and accommodate special abilities, and require a research project and internship.

All programs share certain general characteristics, but some will focus on certain student populations or on students with a particular type of gift. Look for a program that is located where you want to be, priced at a level you can afford, and aligned with your particular teaching career goals. Each state governs its own requirements for gifted endorsement certification programs. Most states require a graduate degree and special certification in order to work in a gifted program.

Some states, however, require only a generic teaching degree and certification along with the desire to become a gifted education teacher. Other states require that all regular classroom teachers receive gifted education training. In order to earn certification, prospective teachers are required to pass a comprehensive exam covering the history, theory, and methodologies of teaching as well as general education knowledge. Most gifted education teachers will also need to pass a supplemental exam focused on the needs of gifted learners.

Check with your state Department of Education for information on requirements in your area. Ready to Get Started? Learn How to Become a History Teacher. D, The University of Virginia Some people suggest that gifted education is just sort of "fluffy" or enriching-gravy on the potatoes, perhaps, but not anything especially substantial or critical in the way of mental fare. Good Instruction for Gifted Learners Good curriculum and instruction for gifted learners begins with good curriculum and instruction.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to develop the talent of a highly able student with insipid curriculum and instruction. Like all students, gifted learners need learning experiences that are rich. That is, they need learning experiences that are organized by key concepts and principles of a discipline rather than by facts.

They need content that is relevant to their lives, activities that cause them to process important ideas at a high level, and products that cause them to grapple with meaningful problems and pose defensible solutions. They need classrooms that are respectful to them, provide both structure and choice, and help them achieve more than they thought they could.

These are needs shared by all learners, not just those who are gifted. But good instruction for gifted learners must begin there Good teaching for gifted learners is paced in response to the student's individual needs.

Often, highly able students learn more quickly than others their age. As a result, they typically need a more rapid instructional pace than do many of their peers. Educators sometimes call that "acceleration," which makes the pace sound risky. For many gifted learners, however, it's the comfortable pace-like walking "quickly" suits someone with very long legs.

It's only "fast" for someone with shorter legs. On the other hand, it's often the case that advanced learners need a slower pace of instruction than many other students their age, so they can achieve a depth or breadth of understanding needed to satisfy a big appetite for knowing.

Good teaching for gifted learners happens at a higher "degree of difficulty" than for many students their age. In the Olympics, the most accomplished divers perform dives that have a higher "degree of difficulty" than those performed by divers whose talents are not as advanced.

A greater degree of difficulty calls on more skills-more refined skills-applied at a higher plane of sophistication. A high "degree of difficulty" for gifted learners in their talent areas implies that their content, processes and products should be more complex, more abstract, more open-ended, more multifaceted than would be appropriate for many peers.

They should work with fuzzier problems, will often need less teacher-imposed structure, and in comparison to the norm should have to make greater leaps of insight and transfer than would be appropriate for many their age. Gifted learners may also but not always be able to function with a greater degree of independence than their peers. Good teaching for gifted learners requires an understanding of "supported risk. They see themselves and often rightly so as expected to make "As," get right answers, and lead the way.

In other words, they succeed without "normal" encounters with failure. Then, when a teacher presents a high-challenge task, the student feels threatened. Not only has he or she likely not learned to study hard, take risks and strive, but the student's image is threatened as well. A good teacher of gifted students understands that dynamic, and thus invites, cajoles and insists on risk-but in a way that supports success.