I'm not usually comparing one student against another in this way, but across all my university classes, over 32 years of teaching, I can think of a dozen students who really, really stood out as unusually talented or bright. How could I tell?
First I'll tell you what they're not.
They're usually not the Honors student, who writes facile prose without a single sentence-level error, but rarely digs deeper than the typical structures or grids of analysis and essays. They were the first to master the five-paragraph theme; they are the last to master the mistakes and uncertainties of creative thinking. Humanities professors tired of grading papers riddled with grammar errors or punctuation mistakes give them "A" after "A" for glib, flawless writing that doesn't say anything original.
Then there are the students who read everything, absorbe everything, and also get an "A" on almost every essay. They stick close to the text in discussion, and if you ever have a question of identification or description, they will know the answer. If you challenge them to analyze a text and to think of it in terms of contexts -- the economic or political challenges of Sheffield, England, in the nineteenth century, to pick a random example -- with a bit of practice this student can do this well. But synthesis and figuring out how this particular way of thinking about the world (one presented by the author or his characters) might be relevant to life today, are usually beyond this student.
Both these groups will probably do just fine in life, by the way. The well-read and diligent will often enjoy more success than those who scale the heights with greater confidence. (I'm thinking of success here as being a content human being in a secure job with friends and family to love and be loved by who thinks about life's meaning and purpose.) The Honors student might be slightly more at risk because he or she hasn't really stumbled yet. They're used to being right; and when they make their inevitable mistakes, they see them as death and shame -- rather than opportunity. I'm being a little reductive here.
However, the truly bright student that catches my eye usually catches my ear first. By that I mean if I hear a student in class make three or four comments that demonstrate real familiarity and comfort with the ideas and points of view of an author but go much farther, I start to listen. The good and talented student will connect the day's material with what she's learning in other classes, or what he's studying on his own; the extremely bright student can easily do that, too, but is pushing himself to the edges of his thinking so he can go beyond. The extremely bright student is the one who is confident but not overly confident, knows and understands the material under consideration very well, but also lets curiosity lead her. She has new ways of looking at old problems and can knit together any number of classes and readings into syntheses of new questions, new possibilities, new ways of acting in the world. You might call these students the entrepreneurs, but to think of them as only that is to diminish them. These are the students who not only get a job at Google but also play in a klezmer band and volunteer at the local bicycle library. On Saturdays they take a screen-free day and go for a bike ride so they can lie under a tree and day dream. They're quirky, they're thoughtful, they're not always the straight A student (but often are), but they are ones who think in new ways about the world. They're more likely to travel (most likely with a rucksack and staying in youth hostels or their own tent), they have skills like juggling and magic card tricks or making children laugh. They don't show off. They listen at least as much as they talk. They're comfortable with who they are. They're not in it to make a ton of money -- they're trying to make their lives interesting and rich and to learn as much as they can every day. At their core is curiosity as much as talent.
Students I am most interested in as the brightest and most talented can come from any background; they need not be perfect writers yet (although they care about writing and continuously improve); and they might be studying in any field at all. But these are the handful of students who are curious, creative, and thorough in equal parts. Their curiosity drives them to learn whatever is under study and more; their creativity allows them to try on new ways of looking at any problem under discussion; and their thoroughness is a combination of the Honors student's facile understandings and the earnest student's dogged learning of the particular text and ideas.
More than anything, though? Do you want to know how I know who my smartest students are? They are the ones who can frame a good question. They are the ones who can define an area, or even better a way into an area, where their focused questions will sharpen understanding and maybe even light a new path through the darkness. (In the meantime, some of the students who have been told their whole lives that they're so bright, may well be the ones who look for the darkness with a flashlight. They're so bright that they can't see a thing.)
All this article is owned by:
Sarah Sloane - Professor of English, Rhetoric, Nonfiction writing for 32+ years. Travel writer.
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