Gifted children typically are quite successful at school academics early on in school. The question is how they react when they hit their first bit of challenging material. For some this might not happen until college unless specific plans are made to introduce them to challenging material before that.
In the article “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids1/) Carol Dweck suggests that teachers should focus on process, not on intelligence or ability. Doing that for a gifted child is often difficult as their intelligence or ability often comes through immediately and it is difficult for a teacher or parent to focus on the process. Again, the question is how such students react when they hit their first stretch of challenging material.
Richard Rusczyk, co-founder of artofproblemsolving.com, shared some of these same ideas in 2009 in a talk at Math Prize for Girls (http://mathprize.atfoundation.org/archive/2009/rusczyk ). He says “it’s very crucial for your children to not simply think that what’s going on in the classroom is enough. Unless you’re at a very special school or have a very special teacher, what’s happening in the classroom will not prepare you for the challenges that you’ll see in college and that you’ll see in your careers.”
One of the most famous young mathematicians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Wood), Melanie Wood, said “I wasn’t even sure if becoming a professional mathematician was the right career for me. I found graduate school lonely and discouraging in parts.” (http://www.ams.org/publications/journals/notices/201605/rnoti-p524.pdf ) In that same article, the interviewer says “All mathematicians feel discouraged occasionally. How do you deal with discouragement?” I suspect gifted children think feeling discouraged means something is wrong, not that overcoming discouragement is a part of life.
For me, participation in a math contest can be one of those opportunities for presenting challenging material so students can encounter and know how to react to challenging material. My experience has been once students realize a math contest is not so much an opportunity to show what they know, but an opportunity to take on a challenge and see how much they can figure out on a contest, they react positively to the challenge. They gain valuable experience with struggling to overcome. This perseverance will serve them well later in life as most adults experience some struggle.
Providing an opportunity to students to explore mathematics and to experience struggle in mathematics has led me to run math contests (https://sites.google.com/site/sbumathcon/home) for 18 years at Southwest Baptist University. This has grown from hosting a contest in 2000 for 65 students to hosting 4 contests a year for over 900 students. How do you say no to students (and parents and teachers) who want to give up a Saturday to work on math? I usually cannot, even when facility space is near capacity and it is a challenge to grade everything in enough time to give awards the day of the contest.
From these contests has come the opportunity to run Math Contest Camp (https://sites.google.com/site/sbumathcon/math-contest-camp-2016) since 2006. Students, parents, and teachers all recognize the value of a group of like-minded students gathering together to take on the challenges of math for a few hours or a few days. They value the comradery they experience at a contest or at camp. This is evidenced by the fact that camp started in 2006 with 25 students in one week and it has grown to 4 weeks with about 85 students. As campers age, many have returned as junior counselors as they recognize how valuable the experience was to them and they want to be a part of passing that on to future generations. A parent recently commented “The comradery between these like-minded talented kids is invaluable. The value to finding a peer group to hang with for a week should not be underestimated. For some it may be almost as valuable as the math.”
I first started offering these opportunities to be sure my own children (who were gifted) had opportunities that I didn’t experience growing up. They have now grown, but I see many other children with the same need for opportunities and I am challenged to continue to offer them, even as they grow beyond my expectations for numbers participating. I pray that God gives me the energy and health to continue doing this until I can turn over the reins to my son who has a few more years in graduate school while pursuing his PhD in mathematics. If he takes over, it won’t be long before he will have a second generation of students coming to these events.