How to Make Your Summer Productive...But Not in the Way You're Thinking.

It can seem like summer is a stagnant time for advocacy. This month we explore how to keep your advocacy efforts going, while enjoying your summer and taking care of yourself.

Hello Gifted Guides! 

We’re so glad you’re here! 

How are you doing?  

We ask this every month, but we really do want to know. As we grow Guiding Gifted, we want to hear from you! Tell us what your experience supporting gifted learners has been like by filling out our Gifted in My Area Survey. Your responses will help to inform our work as we continue to support the families of gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) learners. 

For many families and educators in the United States, the 2023-2024 school year is winding down. Perhaps the end of the year has you feeling exhausted after all the work you put in this year. Maybe you’re feeling a bit shocked that you made it to the end of the year at all, because there were certainly times where it may not have felt like you’d make it through. Maybe you’re unsure how you feel because it feels like this year has gone by in a blur. 

Whatever your feeling, we’d like to encourage you to take a moment to pause and feel proud of all the work you did to be a gifted guide this past school year. 

No seriously...we’ll wait... 

Being a gifted guide is hard work. Often, it can be hard to know when you’re making progress, or even if you’re making any progress at all. But the secret is that even when you feel like you’re not moving the needle at all, you are making a huge impact.  

By showing up, day after day to be a gifted guide and to support the gifted and 2e learners in your life, you are showing them that you believe in them and are on their side as they navigate environments and experiences that are not often created with neurodivergent learners in mind. 

The hardest days are made easier if you know you’ll be able to connect with someone who loves, understands, and supports you. By showing up every day as a gifted guide for the learners in your life, you are demonstrating for them, time and time again, that someone is on their side and is willing to support them when it comes to meeting their needs or reaching their goals. Being this kind of presence in a learner’s life is a huge achievement in and of itself, and we want to say that we see you and all you do—especially when what you do is slow, hard, frustrating work. 

Thank you for being a gifted guide!

Hopefully you’re starting to recognize the impact you’re making on gifted learners and are feeling good about what you’ve accomplished this year. But, because the work we do is slow, hard, good work, your mind might be starting to drift into wondering what’s next. 

Just like giftedness does not start and end at a classroom door, advocacy doesn’t begin and end with a school calendar. So, what can you do to keep making progress in your advocacy, even over Summer Break? 

We’re so glad you asked!  

This month in Guiding Gifted, we’ll be discussing how to breakdown the advocacy progress you made during the 2023-24 school year, so that, when school starts back up, you can move forward in a thoughtful, productive way. 

Breaking Down Progress 

When the final school bell rings for the year, students, parents, and educators alike will likely welcome the break. Rehashing advocacy efforts from this past school year doesn’t necessarily sound like a relaxing or enjoyable way to kick off Summer Break. 

You’re right. 

We don’t want anyone to use their whole break rehashing what did or didn’t work in the past year. We also don’t want you to lose the advocacy momentum that you’ve built up this year. 

Instead of any of that, we’re suggesting a two-part check-in, to help you tune into your Gifted Guide Gut and help you make the choices that are fits for you and your student, both over the summer and during the new school. 

• Part 1 can happen now when the 2023-2024 school year is still fresh in your mind. 

• Part 2 can happen later in the summer (July or August), when you start your back-to-school preparations.  

  • Please note: We’re working with the typical, traditional school calendar in the United States. We know that many of you may be homeschooling or may otherwise have a different school calendar that you work with. This strategy can be adapted to whatever your school calendar looks like. 

Part 1 is simple enough. It only requires you to answer three questions: 

• Based on your experiences this year, what is something you’re thinking you’d like to start during the 2024-25 school year? 

• Based on your experiences this year, what is something you are thinking you need to stop for the 2024-25 school year? 

• Based on your experiences this year, what is something you’re thinking you might like to continue for the 2024-25 school year? 

You can list small goals or big goals. They can be general or specific.  

Try not to spend too much time overthinking or agonizing. Go with your Gifted Guide Gut. This is just a starting point. You aren’t locked into any type of commitment or change at this point. By taking note of your initial Start, Stop, Continue responses, you can get a sense of where your thought process and priorities may be in this moment. 

You may already be familiar with this Start, Stop, Continue activity. It is a common activity in education when it comes to getting feedback from a group. This is because it is a quick and easy way to take a read of how a situation is being understood or working.  

However, unlike its typical application in a classroom, we don’t want you to act on your responses just yet. 

The idea of this two-part Start, Stop, Continue is that you can gather information based on what you’re experiencing right now, but you don’t have to immediately react to it. 

So much of gifted and 2e advocacy is reactionary in nature. You can do all the proactive advocacy work you want—research, relationship building, regular communication, etc.—and there is still an unpredictable element that you can’t entirely pre-plan for. In those moments, you can only react to the situation as best you can, with all the tools in your Advocacy Toolbox supporting you. 

If you find yourself regularly advocating from a reactionary place, you might also find yourself in a stress cycle that is never quite coming to an end. This can leave you feeling frustrated, unsure, and overwhelmed. You might also start to feel defeated, asking yourself why you should even bother, if it seems like you’re constantly hitting walls or dead ends in your advocacy work. 

We don’t want you to stay in this cycle over the summer. We want you to be able to use this time to enjoy your break and come back rested and strong in the fall.  

That’s why you are not going to do Part 1 of your Start, Stop, Continue and immediately start emailing administrators, educators, or parents about what needs to be changed for the new school year.  

Instead, jot down your initial Start, Stop, Continue thoughts somewhere you’ll be able to find them in a few weeks. Maybe this is a note in your notes app. Maybe this is in your designated advocate notebook or folder. Use whatever works for you. The point is that you are recording your initial thoughts, so that you can revisit them during Part 2 of this exercise. 

Progress Breakdown: An Interlude 

Now that Part 1 of your Start, Stop, Continue is done and safely jotted down, ready to be revisited later this summer, what do you do next? 

Enjoy your summer! Even if you are someone who does not have a designated “Summer Break,” take some time to enjoy the festivities and opportunities summer has to offer. 

It can be easy to see any sliver of free time as time with which we can be more productive and can further work toward our goals. However, it can sometimes be more productive to step away for a little bit. By enjoying other activities, you can refresh your perspective, which can help you to eventually see your advocacy goals in a new light. 

Similarly, especially if you’re a parent, taking a break to enjoy summer can give you a chance to reconnect with your child. This reconnection time can help you to better understand your child’s preferences, strengths, challenges, and needs. 

In the hustle and bustle of daily life, it can be hard to recognize the progress our learners are making and what their interests and needs are in the present moment.

Taking some time reset, refresh, and refocus can help your advocacy efforts even more than just doubling down and pushing through. You never know what new observations, ideas, or insights you might find along the way. 

Progress Breakdown: The Finale (For now...) 

Once you’ve gotten to enjoy your summer, revisit your Start, Stop, Continue with fresh, rested eyes. 

A few weeks before the new school year starts, ask yourself: 

• Based on your experiences this year, what is something you’re thinking you’d like to start during the 2024-25 school year? 

• Based on your experiences this year, what is something you are thinking you need to stop for the 2024-25 school year? 

• Based on your experiences this year, what is something you’re thinking you might like to continue for the 2024-25 school year? 

Once you have your new answers, find the answers you jotted down back here in May. How are your answers similar? How are they different? Which answers feels closest to what you and your learner currently need? 

Being able to put past reflections in communication with current needs is something we cannot always do spontaneously. We might need some planning to make this thought exercise a reality.  

By staggering your reflection between now and the end of summer, you will have a built-in way to integrate your current needs (Part 2 responses) and goals with those you have in mind right now (Part 1 responses). By answering the same questions at the start and end of summer—and seeing how your responses change along the way—you are setting yourself up to a be a more thoughtful, creative, and responsive gifted guide in the fall. 

You won’t be holding yourself back by still working through old goals or information leftover from the 2023-2024 school year. Instead, you’ll be taking that old information, blending it with more up-to-date information, and making advocacy moves based on the current moment and need. 

Conclusion 

We talked earlier about how the work of a gifted guide can end up being reactive, even when you are trying your best to plan ahead and be proactive. By taking this summer to recharge, reflect, and have some new experiences, you are proactively taking the steps you need in order to better understand your learner and yourself, as you are today, at the end of the 2023-24 school year. This gives you a solid foundation to work off of as you continue your advocacy in the new school year. 

Over the next few months, we’ll be talking about how to enjoy and navigate summertime asynchrony and transitions. We’ll also explore what advocacy outside of school can look like. 

As always, wherever you are in your gifted guide journey, know you are not alone. We are here to support you as you support your learners.  

Thanks for reading and subscribing. If you’re like even more curated resources from the Davidson Institute, click here. To learn more about our Young Scholars program, consider attending our next virtual Young Scholars Application Q&A on Monday, July 8, at 4 pm (Pacific). 

Don’t forget to tell us what your experience supporting gifted learners has been like by filling out our Gifted in My Area Survey. 

We’ll see you next month. Stay well, Gifted Guides!