Jennifer is IEA’s Marketing & Communications Coordinator. Her position includes more traditional communications media such as newsletters and brochures, but it also involves much more modern technology, including email newsletters, the IEA blog and website, and social networks.

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 65% of today’s grade school students will end up in jobs that do not yet exist. I can tell you that my job, which includes a great deal of social media and online components, looks very different than what someone in a similar role would have done when I was in grade school. So, how can you prepare for a career field that doesn’t exist yet? I’m going to offer some advice that helped me get to where I am today.

Find a skill that you enjoy and go from there.

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” – Carl Sagan

If you enjoy a skill that can translate into several career paths, hone it. I have always loved languages and writing. So, I took every opportunity I could throughout my education to develop a command of language (English and Spanish for now, but I’m working on Italian and French next, just for fun) and better my writing skills. I entered poetry contests. I kept a “journal” of my thoughts and ideas and often wrote pages of reflections solely for the purpose of writing. My job now may be working with a variety of media that were rare – if in existence at all – when I was young, but at the root of much of my work is writing. I write every single day. It might be as simple as a tweet of less than 140 characters, or it might be an eight-page newsletter. Regardless of the length, the medium, or the purpose, honing my language and writing skills has helped me do my job each and every day.

Certain skills are also valuable across fields, so develop those, too. Written and oral communication skills are extremely valuable in any field. Critical thinking and problem solving are also skills that will take you far in any career. An article in the Washington Post suggests building skills in key areas defined as “anything humans still do better than robots.” This includes “solving unstructured problems and working with new information.”

Find mentors, including at least one who has seen an industry – any industry – change over time.

Learn from that person how he or she adapted, how jobs and strategies changed. This will help you see for yourself what skills are necessary for the ever-changing business landscape. This can include academia, as well. You should also build relationships with a wide variety of people both inside and outside of your area of interest. While you are still in school, these can be teachers or peers.

Learn how to be a good employee, regardless of the field you enter. Be willing to learn new things every day.

Here are a few tips on how to be a good employee, most of which stress the importance of constantly learning new things:

• Learn from the people around you. Respect coworkers and their ideas.
• Learn how to respectfully voice your opinions and ideas. This can be difficult, especially for introverts, but your ideas are valuable to the discussion.
• Be willing to do something that doesn’t exactly fit your job description.
• Take responsibility for your mistakes, and learn from them.

Be flexible. Be open. Be innovative. Be well-rounded.

Gifted individuals are used to thinking outside the box. Go with that instinct. Just because something has been done a certain way in the past does not mean it has to be done that way in the future. Be open to new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new ways of doing things. Be open to new possibilities.

Don’t pigeonhole yourself into a narrow job description or field of study. IEA Apprenticeship Mentor Stan Kong, who is the Head of Product Design at Pasadena City College and a Graduate Industrial Design program faculty member at Art Center College of Design, thought he was going to be a graphic designer until he just happened to take an industrial design class. Opening yourself up to new opportunities and possibilities can really help you find your niche.

While you are still in school, get a well-rounded education and learn from a variety of disciplines. For example, using statistics and other mathematical functions to evaluate data is necessary across a variety of careers. Though much of my job is writing and executing an overall strategy, I spend a bit of time each week looking at web, email, and social media analytics to evaluate our marketing efforts and revise our strategy as needed.

Challenge yourself.

Work on difficult and varied research, which will help you develop critical thinking skills. Keep learning new things, as the landscape in any field will continuously shift. Get experience in a wide variety of areas. It will help guide you toward – or away from – a particular field by seeing it applied hands-on, and the lessons you learn can often be applied to almost any other discipline.

Read. A lot.

I’m not saying you have to read everything, or even that you have to read in a particular genre. I encourage you to vary your reading and include something that truly challenges you once in a while, but the most important part of this tip is that you learn new things and experience others’ ideas. I read everything from books to blogs to journals to magazines on topics ranging from pure entertainment to giftedness to business to education to personal success. I’ll admit that I don’t typically enjoy a few particular genres, so I generally stay away from those unless something really strikes me. And that’s okay. You don’t have to read everything. Just read.

Go beyond the job.

I know I’ve said this quite a bit by now, but I can’t stress it enough: No matter what you decided to do, keep learning. Remember, you probably won’t stay in the career you choose forever, especially if you are a gifted person with many different talents and interests. These skills will help ensure that you can transition to another option if you so choose. You might just end up on another, unexpected but much more fulfilling path, like one that leads you to spread the word about the unique needs of gifted children.

What skills do you think are most important in preparing for a variety of careers?

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One of the greatest frustrations for parents is the assumption that giftedness means performing well in traditional school environments. Gifted children are not intrinsically motivated by good grades; they are more passionate about the acquisition of knowledge than performing rote tasks. This causes a problem when the school structure and grades rely on repetition and memorization.

With budget cuts, growing class sizes, and an emphasis on standardized test scores, it is difficult for educators to differentiate instruction and meet the needs of every student in the classroom. Often, it is the gifted students who are short-changed because they already know much of the material they need to demonstrate on high stakes tests.

Bored, unchallenged students are often a result. Many check out of the learning process, which can lead to underachievement and even academic failure.

Although there are many reasons gifted kids underachieve, the most common are

• A mismatch between students and their classroom environment
• Disinterest in content
• Poor self-concept and fear of failure
• Learning disabilities
• Lack of self-regulation and study skills

It is important for underachievement to be spotted early, when possible, and addressed quickly. If your children think that learning and school require little to no effort, they may continue to slack off and may not ever learn to challenge themselves and work to their full potential in higher level thinking (Winner, 1996). If this is a problem your children encounter, it is important that you work with their school and challenge them whenever possible.

Start this process by finding out more. Why exactly is your child bored? A teacher will not be able to make the necessary accommodations without this knowledge. Is it because the class is struggling to understand division, to which several days of class have been devoted, but your child has perfectly understood division for six months and has nothing to do while the teacher continues to explain it? Approach the teacher with this specific challenge and ask for an accommodation to solve the problem.

When speaking with your child’s teacher, you may have to combat misunderstandings about giftedness and underachievement in gifted children. Be prepared. Bring support to show your child’s gifts (test scores, GATE qualification, assessments, etc.). Many parents also find it helpful to bring research and journal articles to meetings like this to support your concerns and give the teacher the opportunity to learn more. You can also provide the teacher with several potential solutions, including some form of acceleration.

Remember that a good relationship with your child’s teacher or a school administrator is crucial to receiving special accommodations, so do your best to show how this can be a mutually beneficial relationship. Approach the teacher in a positive manner. Acknowledge that the teacher is the expert in education, and you trust his or her expertise there. However, you are the expert on your child, and you can offer the teacher some suggestions on what will be positive or negative situations for your child. Once you’ve discussed the problems, you can try to reach agreements with the teacher on how to mitigate these challenges. Also explain to the teacher that you are available to discuss your child at any time. The better your communication is with the school, the more your child will benefit.

Outside of school, give your child an environment that encourages inquiry and critical thinking. Provide access to supplemental programs geared towards your child’s intellectual ability and pace of learning. The more opportunities you provide for your child to be challenged outside of school, the more you will emphasize that hard work does pay off, even if that isn’t being demonstrated in school. You should also help your child develop communication skills so that he or she can effectively communicate with you and teachers if school is not challenging or engaging enough.

Understanding, spotting, and addressing factors that lead to underachievement early can help your children learn to challenge themselves and work towards their full potential.

This post is a part of SENG’s National Parenting Gifted Children Week Blog Tour. We encourage you to browse the list of participating blogs to find more posts about parenting gifted children.

What has your experience been in addressing your child’s underachievement or unchallenging work at school? Please share your experiences with us in the comment section below!

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