Perfectionism and the Gifted Adolescent, part 2

Teachers

1. Educate yourself about the intellectual characteristics and the social and emotional issues of gifted adolescents. Understand how their perfectionism, sensitivity, and intensity can be helpful or harmful to them.
2. Learn and recognize the manifestations or perfectionism when it becomes stressful: a delayed start, an unwillingness to share work, refusal to turn in work or accomplish a goal; an inability to tolerate mistakes; and impatience with others imperfections.
3. Expect excellence but not perfectionism from your students; talk with your students about the difference. Examine our own behaviors that encourage perfectionism. Don’t compare one student’s performance with another’s or a sibling’s.
4. Encourage and role model the principle “dare to dream.” Talk with your students about how high standards can serve as motivators. Share how you have handled failure and successes in your own life. Use biographies of famous people in all subject areas to illustrate overcoming failures. Study an expert’s changing arguments or styles over time to illustrate how an individual’s ideas evolve.
5. Teach the skills of task analysis, time management and goal setting in your classrooms. This will help the perfectionist to understand the value of more manageable steps.
6. Teach and use the creative problem solving process. Encourage and reward creativity in thought and product. Gifted perfectionists need opportunities to use their creative abilities within a structured framework that is applicable beyond the classroom.
7. Use specific criteria for assignments, projects, or products created by other students. Show your students exemplary products that other students have created. This will help the perfectionist to set realistic goals and not to be overwhelmed in thinking they have to produce beyond their capabilities.
8. Help perfectionistic students to shape their thinking by setting goals and expectations prior to classroom assignments, to deal with situations as they work, and to evaluate their work during and after it is finished. Use contracts to encourage underachieving gifted perfectionists to finish or share their products.
9. Provide opportunities to fail in a safe environment. Introduce gifted perfectionistic adolescents to new experiences so they can learn to take risks. Focus on open-ended activities. Offer more choices so that they don’t always choose the things at which they are most successful. This is helpful for those perfectionists who tae no chances and who go through enormous effort to ensure their success.
10. Try not to grade all assignments; use pass/fail at times. Provide rewards that are connected to improvement, not perfection. Limit the use of extra credit work; perfectionists like to go above and beyond for an A+ grade, even if they are struggling in the subject.
11. Focus on the perfectionistic gifted adolescent’s strengths and successes, not on the mistakes they make. Be careful about criticism because it can add to their own self-criticism for not being the perfect student.
12. Be aware of gifted female adolescents putting more pressure on themselves to perform, and how teasing about being smart and/or perfectionistic is especially harmful to gifted male adolescents. Work to create a non-sexist environment and curriculum.
13. Use humor in the classroom: create a “humor” bulletin board; discuss types of humor; have a joke of the day; incorporate humor in writings and problems; use humor instead of punishment; laugh at yourself.
14. Learn techniques that are beneficial for gifted learners (e.g. curriculum compacting, ability grouping, acceleration opportunities). Modify and adapt current curriculum to provide more challenge.
15. Use educational therapy techniques to address social and emotional issues: bibliotherapy, biography, journal writing, art, music, film, simulations and role playing, inquiry-based class, small group discussions, small group projects based on human behavior (e.g. creative individuals).