During my time as an elementary school teacher for the gifted, I realized many gifted students were longing for help learning how to better understand their emotions and interact with their peers.  I developed a curriculum for helping students gain skills and confidence in this area.  This course is designed to help students do the same from the comfort of their own home in a safe and inclusive environment. The class will follow a four week course rotation, however they can be completed in order. 

Each session will begin with a welcome sharing time, then the content of the week will be given, followed by an opportunity for students to role play and practice the skills discussed.  

Week One: Creating a Positive Self-Identity
Many gifted students struggle with feeling their intelligence is their only identity and it becomes their sole source of confidence.  This can lead to a negative self perception when life presents challenges as it inevitably does.  This week we will focus on understanding ourselves as unique and complex individuals and developing a positive holistic self-identity. 

Week Two: Recognizing and Identifying Emotions
We know from research into Dabrowski's Overexcitabilies that gifted children often feel emotions stronger or more acutely than their age level peer, but have difficulty identifying those emotions and/or recognizing them in their peers.  During this session, we will examine over twenty different emotions then practice identifying them in others' based on their facial expressions, tone of voice, and word choice.  Students will also be introduced to the idea of how to cope with a variety of emotions in healthy and positive ways.

Week Three: Coping Mechanisms
For most gifted children, many academic and developmental milestones come with ease.  This means that gifted children do not experience frustration as often in the key developmental time periods of their age level peers.  This often manifests in later years as seemingly inappropriate "outbursts" or "tantrums" that can baffle adults and caregivers in their lives. This is typically the result of gifted children failing to organically learn coping mechanisms for common place irritations and frustrations.  In this session, we will discuss common triggers for gifted children and introduce potential coping mechanisms for handling them.  Students will leave with the tools to practice these healthy coping mechanisms at home or in school as well. 

Week Four: Perfectionism and Underachievement
In this final week, we will discuss two sides of an important gifted and talented issue.  Perfectionism and Underachievement in gifted students are closely linked and tied to our initial class topic of self-identity.  We will discuss both of these mindsets in this class and role play positive self talk for when students encounter these difficulties in the real world.