ACTING ON SIGNALS THAT MAY ALREADY BE THERE.
Marijn Bergsma looks at how schools and educators might identify and respond to unexpected indicators of gifted behavior.
Small changes, big impact
In the third grade our son had a teacher who let him draw during class. He would draw when instructions were being given, when he finished his work early, or when his mind needed somewhere to go. He was happy at school, and he wasn’t being disruptive.
Halfway through the year that teacher left. The new teacher made a change: no drawing during class time. Within weeks our son’s behavior changed. His performance dipped and by the end of the year he had decided he was bad at drawing and stopped doing it altogether. One small change affected his ability to regulate and be comfortable in the classroom.
I recognized something in that story, because I was that kid too.
You might teach children just like him
This child may not necessarily be your highest achiever or might be underperforming. They may ask questions that derail the lesson, not to cause trouble but because their brain genuinely went somewhere else. They finish tasks quickly and then may become a distraction to others: boredom for a gifted child is not always passive.
Gifted behavior is not always what you expect. A child who reasons like an adult may melt down like a six-year-old. Intellectually restless, emotionally intense, and sometimes years ahead in one area, they may be struggling in another.
For teachers it can be genuinely hard to know what to do; the behavior is visible, but the cause isn’t always. You might recognize this but may not always have the structures in place to deal with it.
Smart enough to coast
At 12, I sat the SAT as part of a gifted identification program and scored in the top 2% nationally. I was invited to a summer program at Duke University but declined; I didn’t want to go to school in the summer.
More problematic was that I drew the wrong conclusion from those results. A score like that meant I was smart enough for college, so I stopped seeing the need to try hard at school. The identification had given me a ceiling to coast under, not a floor to build from. Something smaller could have made a real difference; a project on something I truly cared about, a challenge at the edge of my ability. I had glimpses of that kind of support along the way, but never consistently enough to change my trajectory.
Identification alone is unlikely to change anything without action, and in my case, it had an unintended negative effect. I was a teenager making my own choices too, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But the signs had been there since I was 12, and without action and alignment they just resulted in report cards full of ‘if only he applied himself’.
Mine is not an isolated case. Research suggests that nearly half of gifted students experience underachievement at some point in their school years, often going unnoticed precisely because they are still passing.[1]
What you can do today in your school
When I work with schools, I think about three conditions that matter most to gifted learners: purpose, alignment, and structure.
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Purpose
This is the answer to what every disengaged student is quietly asking: why am I here, and why should I care? It is the difference between a school that feels like somewhere worth being and one that is simply a place you have to go. It does not always take a formal program — sometimes it is a project with genuine depth, or a small shift in the environment. In my son’s case, part of caring about class was being allowed to draw.
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Alignment
Alignment can begin with staff finding shared language to talk about a specific child and develop a shared approach. One such opportunity is between classroom teachers and after-school activity leaders. A child learning to persist through difficulty in a robotics club is building skills that transfer directly into the classroom. When teachers know what’s happening in the other parts of a child’s day, they can use it.
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Structure
Structure ensures that whatever is put in place is deliberate and sustainable, rather than a one-off response to a single child. A school that has thought about how to identify, support, and follow through for gifted learners gives both teachers and children a more reliable foundation. Structure is what makes the difference between a child who was lucky enough to have the right teacher, and one whose needs are met as a matter of course.
The point is action, not perfection
Teachers are doing their best, and under real pressure. Gifted learners rarely register as the most urgent priority in a busy classroom — not because anyone is indifferent, but because the need is less visible.
Yet identification is rarely the issue. Most teachers will already have a child in mind when reading this. The question is what happens next, and it does not have to mean a formal program. It can be a small change, tried deliberately, a project with some genuine depth, or checking in with an after-school activity leader about what a child is working on.
There is no single answer, and no perfect approach. What matters is that someone notices, and decides it is worth doing something about.
Marijn Bergsma is the founder of BrightPath Education, a consultancy advising international schools on gifted education alignment and went through the international school system himself across multiple countries.
Website: education.brightpath.nl · LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/marijn-bergsma
[1] Raoof et al. (2024). Psychometric analysis of underachievement tool for gifted students. Cogent Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2024.2397167
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