While reading a post about how to get people to understand the needs of highly gifted students, I remembered an incident that happened to me about 15 years ago. I was asked to give a presentation to the teachers in our school about the needs of the gifted. What I wanted to do was to give them the emotional feel of how a gifted student perceives normal classroom lessons.
The plan was to have them do an activity that was extremely below their level and to continue doing it for a much longer time than was normal, so that they would experience the frustration with and the lack of understanding of the purpose of such a tedious exercise. It was a good plan.
It failed.
Why? Because I, the presenter, couldn't keep it up for as long as it needed to go on. The teachers were perfectly content to sort and re-sort the paper shapes I gave them - many times over. But I couldn't stand to watch them do it for the length of time it required for them to get frustrated and anxious to move on.
It was a good plan, but I just didn't anticipate my own reaction. I think if I had to do it again, I would do it as a thought experiment, rather than a hands on experiment.
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