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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Elementary school teachers, the phone lines are yours. How do you teach with no Gifted and Talented programs? Ryan in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Hi Ryan, thank you for calling.

Ryan: Hey, Brian, thanks for having me. I just wanted to share. I've been a teacher since 2006 and I've never worked in a district with a G&T. You get these classes with wildly different students with different abilities and you just have to differentiate. It's a lot of work, but you don't get into teaching because it's easy. Secondly, I wanted to reference this book called Mindset by Carol Dweck. It's about building intrinsic motivation in people, not just children.

The G&T programs, they go against that. You have these kids from day one, you're told you're gifted, you're talented, you're special, you're good. The motivation is coming externally, it's coming from the teacher. Then one day, they go to college and they get a B or A mindlessly lose it. We're trying to fight against that. I'm all for teaching without G&T programs.

Brian Lehrer: How do you do it if you have kids with different paces? Again, my mother was an elementary school teacher, I know that this is, in a way, it's a stupid question because even with the tracking that exists, kids learn at different paces. If there's going to be a wider range, give me a little bit of your experience on how you deal with many kids learning at their own individual paces.

Ryan: That's when you get everyone involved. If there's a child who is behind, you can't do it alone. Luckily, I've had classrooms with assistants, or I've been an assistant, I've had directors come up. I've had a child who needed extra help with reading, the director is going to be giving that child specific help while I do a more general lesson. You get the parents involved. It's always been about the village.

The more difficult the work becomes, the more the village is needed. I am giving really vague examples right now. You just got to get more people involved. That also comes down to support from your district, from the director, from the principal. The teacher alone can't do it.

Brian Lehrer: Ryan, thank you very, very much. Liz in the Bronx, I think, has a parent's perspective on this, but that's okay. Liz, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Liz: Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good.

Liz: My son attended Village Community School in the village starting at first grade. He went there all the way through graduation. In elementary school, first through fifth, they would have two grades in one classroom, and they would work in packets in every subject matter. In every subject matter, they will work in packets and they would slowly advance so those who would advance quickly would advance quickly, those who advanced slowly would and would get the help that they needed. These were two different grades, and it was extremely successful.

Then, every year they would-- The children who wouldn't advance together, it will always be different groups in different classes first, second, third. That's one way of doing it. My son is now 37. This is not something new. Also, I was in the Gifted and Talented. I grew up in the South Bronx, and they tested me and I tested well, and the same thing. We at one point had these, not throughout the entire time, but had these packets that we worked on. It was extremely great. What the previous caller said about motivation from the outside, that was really motivation from within because myself, and I recognized it in my son, we wanted to excel.

We were extremely competitive. We wanted to do better than everyone else. We really zoomed through those packets. However, the children who needed help, they got the help that they needed, and they slowly did better and better and better, It exists. The School System Now, I was listening to on Friday with the mayor, he should just draw on what is already established.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that being a girl in South Bronx who tested into a G&T program, that you benefited from that education in a way that makes you think something's going to be lost for kids like you were today?

Liz: What do you mean something to be lost? I'm not quite sure.

Brian Lehrer: Well, if there's no G&T program, then nobody could do what you did which was test in. If you feel you benefited from it, there's something lost if even if something is gained.

Liz: Well, I definitely benefited because not only that, they ended up having a really special program where it was the fifth floor, the top floor of the school right on St. Anne's Avenue, where it was only Gifted and Talented. We would have just one group of teachers and we would have the same students, so they really focused in on us. That was really, really good. I ended up going to Stuyvesant along with two other classmates.

Will it be lost? I think no because based on how my son did, now he was in Village Community School, he was, and that was most-- he was like, only two or three Blacks in the classroom. They focus on each child's doing as best as they could and move at their own speed. That's what's needed in the public schools. It can be done without the Gifted and Talented. That's what I saw at VCS.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much, Liz. We really appreciate your call. Bob and Baldwin, a retired teacher. Bob, you're on WNYC, hello.

Bob: Hi. I've had many different experiences in the educational system. I feel that probably the best way to address this is if you're going to get rid of Gifted and Talented, you have to deal with grouping in classes. That's what I did. I had different groups because the students learned at different speeds. You can't hurry up learning. Students that learn at a quicker pace just do and students that learn at a slower pace do, and they need extra time.

If you have many teachers who just look straight down the middle and only go at whatever speed they feel comfortable at, it causes a lot of problems. I'm just worried that taking away the Gifted and Talented is going to have an exodus of a lot of parents from the public school system, they'll just look for private schools.

Brian Lehrer: Well, that may be an issue, we'll find out. The way the classroom was, as you were describing it, it sounds like it was tracking but within a class. Do you feel like both the faster learners and the slower learners benefited from having the different tracks in the same room rather than on different floors or in different buildings?

Bob: Well, if you're tracking you're going to track-- If you're going to address needs, you do it in math and reading. You can have social studies and science and things like that where everybody comes together. The problem with reading and math is that not everybody can read the same material and not everybody gets the concepts in math as quickly as others. If you address the needs within those two subjects, and then you come together for the other subjects, people in the class are going to mix naturally.

Somebody can be very sharp but can read very well. Well, they can still participate and add to the discussion through insights. I've had students that were dyslexic who could talk up the blue streak, they were just so intelligent, and others that just could not hold up. At least, if they are working together in those other disciplines, they can get a sense of the rest of their class and come together as a community.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, thank you so much for that. Ellen in Stanford, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ellen.

Ellen: Hi, how are you? Thanks for your program, I love listening. I was thinking that-- I was working as an elementary school teacher for over 20 years and I have seen programs come and go. Differentiation is nothing new. They want teachers-- Actually, it's very hard for elementary school teachers now because you are expected to teach to every level and every individual student, and it does take a tremendous amount of planning and work. There's a constant bit of assessment going on.

What I think about taking away a Gifted and Talented program is this, from my experience, a lot of times Gifted and Talented students came from wealthier backgrounds where parents had exposed the children to a lot of different things early on. They would expose the children to travel and they would have lots of different enriching activities, and a lot of the kids who didn't have those experiences might not be as precocious or have as high a vocabulary and so on. Kids that would go to Kumon and other programs would have a leg up.

I feel that taking away Gifted and Talented is actually not a bad thing because it might level the playing field, however, all children should be given enrichment, and all children should be exposed to high-quality education. Instead of selecting a few, why not try to inject a lot more into the school system to help enrich everyone that's my point of view.

Brian Lehrer: Well, the previous caller was talking about pace and that different kids learn math or reading or whatever it is at different paces, so he wound up tracking within his classroom. I guess the question becomes, yes, you want to give every child, no matter where they're at, as rich an education as you possibly can, but you can't just say, "Oh, we're going to teach everybody like they teach at Stuyvesant," or something like that because a lot of it is about pace and not every kid can do it. We have 30 seconds left in the segment, but what's your answer if somebody were to raise it that way?

Ellen: Well, that's true, but a lot of it is developmental. I really think that they talk about growth mindset, the Carol Dweck thing. I really do think that that's a healthy way of looking at it. I think that you can give people a lot more than they would be getting. Yes, you can. Some kids are going to be ready to move on and other kids are going to need very basic explicit instruction. I think you have to do it all. It's very hard being a teacher nowadays, but I think it's possible. I think keeping things open-ended and-

Brian Lehrer: Should be ways to enrich, that don't have to do with pace I would think. Thank you for your call. Thanks to all of you teachers who called in. The Brian Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Alison, Mary Croke, Zoe Azulay, Amina Srna, and Carl Boisrond. It was Milton Marrero Ruiz at the audio controls.

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