Keeping in touch with my students over the years has been a real joy. I love to hear about what they are now doing and to take the temperature on their levels of happiness and contentedness with their lives. It’s wonderful to have this connection with these outstanding human beings and to learn from their experiences to inform my future practice with other gifted kids.
Leonor on campus at the Australian National University (ANU)
One such recent interaction was with a stand-out past student, Leonor. Leo and I first met when she joined my class of gifted students who were accelerated by one year in Mathematics. Leonor was a brilliant student of Mathematics! I remember her describing how she thought about maths all the time – even lying in bed at night, all she could think about was maths. Throughout her secondary schooling she was accelerated a full-year and a further acceleration of one year in Mathematics. My Gifted Ed staff team had worked hard to provide her with enough challenge and affective support for optimal talent development. We thought we had done this, but Leo recently told me that this year at university is the first time she has truly felt challenged. Well, gutted is one way to describe my feelings. The literature is pretty clear about the importance of challenge. Appropriate challenge in terms of depth, complexity, student strengths and interests, and pace were front and centre of my team’s work. Sadly, even though we were vigilant, we did not nail it. But how could we truly "nail it" considering resourcing and the system within which we work? I am sorry this happened for Leonor. Moreover, I’m sorry that this has likely happened for so many other exceptional students.
The following is some recent communication that I have had with Leonor about her journey, growth, and experiences. I hope you find it inspiring.
“I never considered myself as gifted. From the age of five I was forced to adapt to a whole new language and environment moving from Portugal to Australia. I was thrown into the challenge of constantly never being able to express myself and understand others, but when life threw me in the deep end, I excelled, learning an entire new language in six months.
Leonor and her lovely Mum soon after their arrival to Australia from Portugal
That’s how my brain is wired. It loves a good challenge. Like when I moved schools being put into the gifted class and experiencing major imposter syndrome; however, as time went on, I realised how I was more academically inclined then I initially thought and grew more confident in myself. Year 6 was another challenge - accelerated maths. I didn’t think I deserve to be there, but I decided that I was going to work hard to prove to myself that I did and then I got 100% on my first test and maths started becoming like a third language to me which was easy to understand. Year 7 I moved schools and consequently repeated a year of math content which didn’t push me at all, and it was just not the right environment for me which made me appreciate how important it is to keep challenging your brain as I grew bored and lost all motivation because of it. Whilst returning to my old school, I still had the same lack of motivation to push myself to learn new content, and whilst I was still maintaining excellent grades even with skipping a year of maths, I was putting in no effort to push myself. If there’s nothing driving you to work hard, that’s when you start limiting the person you will become, and thankfully I had teachers which weren’t going to let that happen.
THAT’S WHEN I WAS GIVEN A CURVEBALL.
Those moments when it feels like you’re driving down a straight road, but now there’s a potential different route which will be a lot windier and more difficult. I was asked to grade accelerate and at first, I was thinking no way will I go through this; however, I’m wired to be thrown into a challenge so I couldn’t possibly turn this one down. I even remember writing a pro/con list where the only con was friends which proved to not be a challenge since I’m still good friends with people from the year below and the rest of the list was all pros It was a no brainer. It was exhausting to catch up on a year of content whilst also completing another year. It was exhausting to not get excellent marks at first. It was exhausting to push myself, but it was beyond rewarding when I saw the results play out. I hadn’t learn essay writing techniques due to missing Year 9 material that I felt super overwhelmed with my first essay and I ended up beyond upset about my grades, but with feedback from teachers and peers I was able to achieve an A on the next one which ignited a love of learning back into me. My perfectionism also had to quickly adapt to not being 100% all the time and I had to learn that previous bad marks are a spotlight to show what you should improve on.
Leonor was awarded Dux at her Year 12 Graduation
INCOMING SHOCKWAVE NUMBER 2
None of this would have happened though if it wasn’t for my beautiful teachers, family/friends and mentors, who saw me at my worst, who built me up when I was a nervous wreck and who cheered the loudest at my graduation. There is no point in going through a hard time by yourself when you have so much potential support around you and that was the biggest lesson I learn since I couldn’t have overcome any of the challenges in my life without them.
Leonor with her special Mathematics teacher
Just because you’re out of school doesn’t mean that challenges no longer exist or there isn’t still learning potential. I am currently at ANU studying Mathematical Science and Actuarial and I recently have had to learn about the art of adulthood since I moved six hours from home. However, I have also immersed myself in a bunch of extracurriculars to keep stretching myself to learn new things such as being on my accommodation’s council, stage managing for Grease and being a staffie again for NYSF. Just because I’m out of school, doesn’t mean that the same school challenges don’t apply now. I have had to work extremely hard since math courses in university are on a different level to uni courses, but it just makes the whole journey more rewarding.”
Leonor with friends enjoying her time as a National Youth Science Forum (NYSF) "staffie"
Leonor, thank you for sharing your inspirational journey. I wish you the very best in everything. You deserve it!