Film Little Man Tate Provides an Inside

¶ … film Little Man Tate provides an inside view to the world of an intellectually gifted child. While many educators only have the opportunity to view a gifted child in the classroom setting, the movie allows the viewer to see the entire world of the child. This movie provides a solid foundation for realizing that a gifted child is still a child. Intellectual giftedness must be addressed but not by busy work or by treating the child as an adult simply because of their thought processes.

The film provides a backdrop for understanding the social, emotional and cognitive needs of a highly gifted student. Fred is an eight-year-old gifted student with a single mother raising him alone. The entire movie revolves around all adults involved finding their footing in this boy's life. Teachers and parents of gifted children are often faced with the dilemma of challenging the child's mind, while allowing them to still be children.

The social needs of a gifted child, in the movie and in readings must be met with age appropriate activities while at the same time understanding that the child sees the large social picture much more clearly than non-gifted peers see it. For instance on a playground a gifted child may try to reason with a student who he has conflict with by delving into why he is angry, and the non-gifted children simply avoid the problem student. This can create a problem as the gifted child angers the others even more and they begin to target the gifted child.

It is important to work with a gifted child in the classroom to help him or her understand why others do not always think like he does while at the same time providing an outlet for that higher level thinking.

One way I would handle this in my classroom would be to allow the gifted child to be in charge of a social task. This might be leading a discussion, choosing a playground activity or something else. I would be careful to promote the sharing of ideas so that the gifted student would be able to accept other ideas and the other children would believe the gifted student had something positive to contribute. Something I would not do was have the gifted student be responsible for other students in ways such as grading, decision making etc. This would set the gifted student apart in a setting where he or she already may feel different than the others.

Academically, the gifted student does not need busy work. Gifted abilities are not about needing more work but about needing higher level thinking challenges. A gifted child often finishes work early and can become disruptive out of boredom. I would set up an area in the back of the classroom for the gifted child to quietly work on projects when he was done with his work. Whether it was growing a silk worm, hatching a chicken in an incubator or studying French, the gifted student would be allowed to move to the project area when finishes with class work and explore many topics. To promote social growth for the gifted child I would allow the other students who were finished with their work to move to the area and help the gifted student with the projects as well.

Another way to challenge a gifted child is to give him different academic work. Gifted children have many questions. I have heard about gifted children who were often unhappy in class because they were not encouraged to ask. I would tell the gifted child we would write down any questions that we could not answer that day. The gifted child could choose a partner and together they would be responsible for locating the answer and sharing it with the class. I believe this would satiate the gifted student's need or knowledge, while promoting social growth.