Conversation with CAGT - Mark Hess

Mark Hess is a board member and the editor of the SENG Library. He is President-Elect of the Colorado Association for Gifted Students and serves as the Gifted Programs Specialist in a large, urban school district in Colorado Springs. Mark also serves as an advisory committee member for NAGC’s Teaching for High Potential. His 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade Gifted Social-Emotional Curriculum books are available from Prufrock Press. As Portable Gifted and Talented, Mark has shared over 24,000 free resources for teachers and parents of gifted children. You can visit his website at www.giftedlearners.org

Title: Is Your Gifted Child Thriving?
Virtuosity is your true and transparent talents, and thriving is an exchange between a person’s virtuosity and vulnerability—that place inside ourselves where we are truly assailable and susceptible. Yet perfectionism taps your shoulder and whispers in your ear, “Are you trying as hard as you can? You could have done better. Don’t disappoint me. Enjoy it while it lasts, because you just got lucky.” If thriving is recognizing one’s own virtuosity while being open and vulnerable, then our Generation Z gifted children may rarely be thriving. Is Generation Z a generation wrapped in bubble wrap and safety goggles—overprotected and under prepared emotionally? What happens when perfectionists fall off the wave of wonderfulness? Let’s explore our GenZ gifted kids tendencies together and begin to learn how we can nurture our children through inevitable cyclones of perfectionism.